(NewsNation ) — President Joe Biden and Latin American leaders announced Friday, the last day of the Summit of the Americas, a joint commitment to take in more migrants.
The U.S. is also planning on working to build up the economies of some nations, an effort the president said were hampered during the pandemic. Biden is hopeful it will make a difference in tackling challenges at the border, in part by giving migrants fewer reasons to want to leave their home countries.
“This will bring our nations together,” Biden said, “around a transformative new approach to invest in the region and solutions that embrace stability to increase opportunities for safe and orderly migration.” The shared goal, he said, is “to crack down on criminals and human traffickers who prey on desperate people and coordinate specific, concrete action to secure our borders and resolve the shared challenges.”
The number of humanitarian migrants coming to the U.S. is one of the challenges. Drugs are another.
New numbers from the Texas Department of Public Safety revealed that more than 7,400 pounds of cocaine have been seized by Texas State Troopers this year and more than 40,000 pounds of methamphetamine.
It’s busy at the ports of entry as well. Officials on Wednesday seized 22 pounds worth) of fentanyl in Hidalgo, Texas, with an estimated street value of $330,000.
Nogales, Arizona, has seen two busts in the past few days, yielding nearly 400,000 fentanyl pills. Some were found inside the transmission block of one car, while in another, the pills were hidden in the rims.
