Mexico tells US it wants regional migration agreement

Mexico has told the United States that it wants a regional agreement to tackle the tide of migrants arriving at the two countries' borders, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday.

Ebrard said he had raised the proposal in his telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday about arrivals of Haitians with refugee status in Brazil and Chile.

"I told him that it would be desirable to reach a regional agreement. We will be in communication about it," tweeted Ebrard, who plans to take up the issue with Blinken at the UN General Assembly in New York.

The State Department said after the phone call that the two top diplomats "discussed the need for a coordinated regional effort to stem the flow of irregular migration."

Tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, mostly Haitians, have arrived in recent months at Mexico's southern border seeking a new life in the United States.

The US authorities have begun to repatriate Haitians by air from the Texas border city of Del Rio where thousands are waiting in the hope of entering the country.

Many of them have arrived in Mexico from Brazil or Chile, where they had been living as refugees, after a treacherous journey across a dozen countries.

Ebrard told reporters that a regional agreement was needed because the wave of Haitians "has crossed all the countries of Latin America."

The joint effort could include regional and United Nations support to improve the situation in Haiti as soon as possible, he added.