SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the State Department. Bienvenido, a todos y all. Thank you very much for being here today.
A year ago, we came together in Mexico City to launch the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities, and we set three primary goals together: protect our people, prevent cross-border crime, and we track criminal networks. And what is so critical is that we defined these goals together. They reflect a shared responsibility and a shared interest in working together to address challenges that none of our nations can adequately address alone.
Today, we have the opportunity to assess the progress we have made on these interconnected goals, and to identify what more we can do to achieve them.
The high-level group represented here – including the attorney general, including the Secretary of Homeland Security, including the USAID administrator, Ambassador Salazar, other key US Government officials focused on the fight against corruption, on drug policy, on public health – all together we reflect the comprehensive approach that the United States is bringing to this set of issues. And we can visibly see a similar commitment on the part of our Mexican counterparts.
That commitment is also evident in the unprecedented investments, the new legislation, the deeper coordination that we have shown in our first year of implementation.
Last November, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which includes $1.9 billion for six new construction and modernization projects on the US southern border that include enhanced security features .
In June, the President signed the Bipartisan Safer Safer Communities Act. This is the first major US gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, making straw purchases and gun trafficking a federal crime, and which we have been using to keep to the traffickers responsible.
We have made considerable new investments in substance use prevention, treatment, recovery – both to reduce the harm caused by illicit drugs, and to reduce demand. This year, our Drug-Free Communities Program worked with 745 community coalitions in all 50 of our states to prevent substance use among youth.
Having said that, we still have a lot of work to do.
We must strengthen our efforts to disrupt the illicit production and trafficking of fentanyl, and synthetic opioids more broadly. Last year, about 108,000 people died in the United States from overdoses, mostly from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Synthetic opioids are also on the rise in Mexico – something we’ve talked about in recent months.
We must strengthen our efforts to disrupt illicit arms trafficking. Last year, more than 33,000 people in Mexico were killed in intentional homicides; more than two-thirds of those came from firearms.
So, in these security issues and in many, the same truth holds true: our ability to protect our people depends on working together effectively. And that is what we are here to do today, from treating substance use as a public health concern, to dismantling the financial networks of transnational criminal organizations, to addressing the root causes that drive people to organized crime, including lack of economic opportunity.
Marcelo, I want to say to you and to all our colleagues here we are so grateful for the spirit of openness and cooperation that you all continue to bring to this effort – in the days leading up to today, today, indeed every day. And this is happening not only among those at this table, but critically, throughout the working levels of our governments. We appreciate it very, deeply; we appreciate it very much, and we look forward to a frank, open and productive discussion today as we have had in recent months.
With that, let me turn it over to the attorney general. Merrick.
ATTORNEY GENERAL GARLAND: Thank you, Secretary Blinken, Tony; Secretary Mayorkas, Ali; and to our esteemed friends from Mexico, Ale. It is great to see you all again and to have this opportunity to reaffirm the central importance of the law enforcement partnership between our two countries.
The first framework goal that we will address today, the protection of our people, is a wall that runs through everything we do. That’s why we do this work. On behalf of the Department of Justice, our prosecutors, and each of our law enforcement components, including the DEA, ATF, FBI, and the United States Marshals Service, I want to thank the Government of Mexico for your continued partnership in our shared efforts to protect the people of our two countries. I look forward to all our discussions today and our continued work together.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. Ali?
SECRETARY MAYORKAS: Thank you very much, Secretary Blinken and Attorney General Garland, for your comments. Secretary Ebrard, Secretary Rodriguez, Attorney General Gertz, and all colleagues, I am happy that we can come together in this 20 – this 200 years of friendship of our country to celebrate the successes in our implementation of the bicentennial historical framework that was adopted last year. Of course, we are regularly reminded of how interconnected our nations are. Not only do we have a network of communities across our shared border that shows every day how much we have in common, how connected our peoples are, but we also share many of our respective cultures, we have common democratic principles, we were interconnected. economies, and of course, we face similar challenges.
It is both a privilege and a pleasure to work together with all of you to strengthen our ties that have grown so remarkably over the past few years to address the challenges we both face with a truly united purpose and shared fundamental principle. . I am very optimistic about the future because of all of you around this room and the teams you represent. I look forward to our dialogue today and our continued work and friendship together in the days and years to come. Thank you.
SECRETARY EBRARD: Thank you, Antony. Muy buen día I will turn to Spanish.
(Through interpreter) Thank you very much, assistant secretary. Thank you, Attorney General, Secretary Mayorkas, and all the rest of the officials who are here. I just want to say that for Mexico, this bicentennial framework is a high priority for us. It is strategic, and today we will review the achievements of this year of joint efforts. And we will determine what we will do in 2023 to set goals for that year. President López Obrador has launched a new security initiative. I launched it as soon as he came in and to get to the root causes of insecurity and deal with the youth in the rural sector. We have more than half a million people – 2.2 young people are unemployed, I’m saying. There are a large number of unemployed people and therefore – especially young people, and they are in a program created by the – we created a national guard. For the first time, we will have domain over the entire territory by law enforcement (inaudible). Before, we had 400 policemen.
Another key point is ours – it’s this framework with the United States. That’s why it’s a framework, because we have common security issues. And so I can tell you, and I would like to thank and emphasize our gratitude to Secretary Blinken for his efforts, and to Attorney General Garland who we have met on many, many occasions, and to Secretary Mayorkas with whom we have spoken a lot. because they became personally involved in all these efforts. What was achieved during this year? Okay. There 32,000 weapons were seized. How do we view this in Mexico? We – for the first time, we have a reduction of the murder rate of 9.2 percent approximately was reduced. Of these 32,000 weapons were in Mexico, if we had not worked together, we would not have had a 9.2 percent reduction in the homicide rate. This means 17,000 cartridges, and each cartridge can kill someone in Mexico, so it is something that is very important. This is not just a statistic. We are talking about saving lives.
And we simply cannot do it without working together, which is why we consider it very important. And we will see shortly – we will take a very quick look at – that there have been arrests of 5,000 chemical precursors and fentanyl as well. It could poison thousands of people if they got where they were going – 150,000 tons of methamphetamine. It’s almost – if – it’s if we give a dose of methamphetamine, which allows you to give every person in Mexico who is over 50 years old, that will be enough methamphetamine. Ninety-four tons of cocaine were also caught with a special interception at sea – interdiction at sea. It was – I will not go into more detail – of these details. I just want to say with these results what we should do is that next year we should make it higher figures to reduce violence and prevent drugs from reaching people in Mexico and the United States.
Now that I have said this and with our gratitude, I give the floor now to Rosa Icela Rodriguez, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection.
SECURITY SECRETARY RODRIGUEZ: (Through interpreter) Good morning everyone. I am very happy to be here with you all. Greetings, and I thank our hosts for their hospitality. Secretary Blinken, Secretary Mayorkas and Attorney General Garland and everyone present and Ambassador Ken Salazar. I thank and say to the members of the cabinet of the Government of Mexico.
And yes, I want to underline that security is a priority – a subject or issue for our governments and it should – this binational vision should remain in place, government to government, the government of Lopez Obrador and the current government of the United States, and at all times there is – sovereignty and respect prevail.
This is a great decision by this country. The bicentennial framework allowed us to work in a coordinated way and to agree on this collaboration without conditioning – without any conditions, so we emphasize that this instrument is part of peace, peacekeeping, or the efforts of -peace in our two countries. And our nations are obliged to work together together because we have a shared responsibility to fight organized crime – transnational, which on this side in the United States leads to overdose deaths, and Mexico has violent homicides due to t -transfer of these drugs.
So then – by working together and putting into practice, as we have done so far, the capabilities of our states to reduce crime and to disrupt these criminal groups and bring peace to the Americas, and therefore , Mexico and the United States, we are united in peace. Because we have a bilateral relationship of brotherhood; because we are neighbors, partners; in many regions, we are members of each other’s family. That’s all. Thank you.
FOREIGN SECRETARY EBRARD: (Through interpreter) Thank you very much, Secretary. Before I give the floor to Dr. Alejandro Betz (ph), the attorney general – or Gertz – of Mexico, I want to emphasize the presence, and it is very important in this national defense framework – Cresencio Sandoval, our presence minister of defense, and Admiral Rafael Ojeda, who is the secretary of the navy of our country. Thank you so much for joining us here.
You have the floor, Mr. Attorney General.
ATTORNEY GENERAL GERTZ: (Through interpreter) Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, thank you very much for inviting us. It is an honor to be with you all. Thank you to each and every one of you, ambassador too.
I believe it is very important to point out that the work we have been engaged in over time has been – it has become even stronger as a result of Ambassador Salazar’s presence in Mexico.
The first thing we should mention is – and we should consider this – crime has no borders. Crime is a structure that precisely takes advantage of the sovereignty of states and circumstances that are so clear about what our legal authorities are, our own competences, to use them against the citizens of both countries. That is why when we work together with full respect for each of the governments, we can achieve something that would otherwise be absolutely impossible.
The first thing I mentioned with Ambassador Salazar were three things that we were very concerned about because of the damage that was being caused in Mexico and the United States as a result. For example, what is happening with fentanyl is a phenomenon that we should attach a very high substantive importance to. We have been living with this drug problem since the 70s and 80s. We have made some progress, but now what we are facing is one of the most painful phenomena that is destroying the lives of young people, children in Mexico and the United States. This for us should be our highest priority, and I believe that everything we do is very little compared to what life means for the families and the new generations of Mexico and the United States.
We also saw something that was so important to avoid, what is being done with it – the migrants. Migrants are victims, and those who manipulate them are heartless criminals. So if we don’t have the ability to get to the heads of those organizations, otherwise we won’t be – we won’t be able to do anything. We cannot solve this problem. The problem comes to Mexico from all over Central America and all over the world. It comes to Mexico. We must understand that this phenomenon is a very complicated phenomenon. Why? Because immigrants are not criminals. The criminal is the one who uses them and exploits the migrants in an absolutely inhuman way. If we do not go after the heads of these groups and these people, we will not be able to solve the issue.
And what we are doing, what is absolutely essential to do – drug trafficking for us is a problem that goes back many, many years – we have to find a way to prevent the illegal purchase of weapons in the United States and for them to come flooded in Mexico. And they cause all these confrontations, which cost thousands and thousands of lives. It is absolutely essential that we understand this phenomenon, and we are very clear about this.
And let me tell you one thing that I believe is of utmost importance. This is data that has been supported by the National Geographic and Statistics Institute. I believe this is a known statistic to you. The phenomena of crime which had grown enormously were stopped. We don’t know the means, but if – in reality, if you look at the statistics, the figures of how the mortality rates in Mexico were evolving, and based on under this government – and remember, prevention is not my bailiwick. That’s not my field. But to contain these crimes, to contain a criminal phenomenon for those of us who know – we know what it involves and the effort that must be made, and what was done by the armed forces was only exemplary. And this is something that we should consider very much.
If you look at the statistics of how we stopped common crimes, especially homicides – and let me say that when it comes to federal crimes, what we are concerned about – and this has been acknowledged – federal crimes have been reduced on these. four years with 32 percent. This had never happened in the past. The media talks a lot about the bad things, but not about the good things. And so they talk more about the scandalous things, but we are fully convinced that what is being done and should be recognized because that – the President of the United States is represented by the ambassador, and the ambassador has done an exemplary job. We are always in close contact with Secretary Mayorkas, with the Attorney General, with each and every one of you, because we believe that if we do it together, we can live what we want to do. If we don’t, we forget it. This will not work.
And so a meeting like this deserves the highest respect and deserves to have that deep belief that we are all working on behalf of our people, our countries, but at the end of the day we are also working – it is working for us and we are working for you too. Thank you very much.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you very much. I think we will give our colleagues a minute to leave the room.
