The Mexican government has agreed to provide roughly $1.5 billion toward a host of new construction projects along the U.S.-Mexico border to strengthen the United States’ ability to screen and process migrants, a White House official said Tuesday.
The agreement was discussed on Tuesday when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Former President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of building a new border wall that he would get Mexico to pay for. While the Trump administration did build hundreds of miles of new and renovated border wall, the Mexican government did not pay for it.
Now, Mexico has agreed to pay for a host of projects through a joint multi-year effort along the two country’s borders, including “modernizing” ports of entry and enhancing screening processes of immigrants attempting to cross from Mexico to the United States. The exact details of the new projects are still being worked out, but, the official said, the new agreement will not result in the building of any kind of wall or border barrier.