Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) told a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers over the weekend that he will work with China to stop trans-Pacific shipments of fentanyl precursors that are brought into Mexico and processed. Despite recent public disagreements over border security and the fentanyl crisis between AMLO and the United States, AMLO has quietly been meeting with American lawmakers on policy matters.

Six Republicans and five Democrats took the trip to meet with AMLO.

It’s not everyday 6 Rs, 5 Ds, and an Independent spend time together working on the most difficult problems facing our country. #Mexico 🇺🇸 🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/pMTtI18FcU

— Tony Gonzales (@TonyGonzales4TX) March 20, 2023

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) led the congressional delegation (CODEL) to meet with AMLO and they returned to the United States on Monday afternoon. They also met with intelligence, drug enforcement, and government officials in Mexico. The delegation included, besides Cornyn, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Mike Lee (R-UT), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Peter Welch (D-VT) and Representatives Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Veronica Escobar (TX-16), and Maria Salazar (FL-27). Cornyn is a member of the Senate Finance, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees.

According to the press release, they received “briefings from U.S. intelligence officials, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on the United States’ security posture with regards to Mexico, recent killings of Americans in the country, efforts to stop drug trafficking, and illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The delegation shared their concerns with Mexico’s handling of these issues with President López Obrador and members of his administration.”

“The United States and Mexico share a common border, which means we should have a shared interest in working together to address the security challenges that put American and Mexican lives at risk, including drugs, murderous cartels, and unchecked migration,” said Sen. Cornyn. “Our delegation made clear to President López Obrador that his administration must do more to address these issues so that we can maintain our historically strong economic and cultural partnership, and I am hopeful that our candid conversations will lead to collaborative solutions that make both countries safer and more prosperous.”

Earlier this month, Cornyn visited the southern border and called on President Biden to enforce the laws in place.

The current state of affairs is unsustainable, but President Biden continues to promote the false narrative that only Congress can fix this border crisis.

We don’t need to completely rewrite our immigration laws in order to fix the humanitarian and security crisis at the border. President Biden needs to do what other administrations have done: enforce the laws already on the books.

Biden is fond of saying he’s the man in charge yet he’s the first one to point a finger at someone else when crises occur on his watch. We’ve seen crisis after crisis during his time in office. Biden prefers to lead from behind, as Obama did, and react after the fact, not proactively. Fentanyl is killing thousands of young Americans each month. Drug cartels control parts of the southern border and are making millions, if not billions of dollars trafficking drugs across the border. Human traffickers are selling women and children into slave labor. The number of unaccompanied minors coming across the southern border is increasing, not decreasing. All of this is unsustainable. Biden risks our national sovereignty and national security. We are on borrowed time as it is – how long before some of the bad actors who are crossing the border as gotaways do real harm by way of a terror attack? It defies logic to expect it not to happen. The world is too dangerous.

So, yes, it is important for American officials to meet with AMLO in Mexico and remind him that the United States expects more than what we’ve been getting. We don’t need lectures about parents and hugging children to counter the fentanyl crisis. We do need to know that cartels along the border won’t be randomly kidnapping and murdering Americans who cross the border. And AMLO has to be a stronger partner with Biden than he is now on illegal immigration. Biden is bad enough on his own. AMLO needs to go back to Trump administration-level cooperation. AMLO isn’t nervous about Joe Biden getting tough with him because he knows Biden won’t do that. He doesn’t care and that’s why we have the Biden border crisis. AMLO delivers insulting lectures about hugging children because he has no respect or fear of Biden.