MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) – Some 10,000 migrants and asylum seekers arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border daily last week, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday, amid record numbers of people moving north across the continent.
Some 6,000 people are entering southern Mexico daily, Lopez Obrador said, and even higher numbers have been reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Last week, 10,000 migrants reached the northern border every day,” Lopez Obrador said at his regular morning press conference.
In September, the number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border was on pace to approach, or surpass, previous monthly highs.
Lopez Obrador emphasized officials must address root causes driving migration, including people’s need to find work and improve their living conditions.
“What we need is to build bridges of understanding and collaboration so that people are not forced to migrate,” he said in advance of an upcoming meeting with foreign ministers from Latin American countries and U.S. officials.
He also lamented the deaths of 10 Cuban migrants who were killed in a traffic accident in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on Sunday.
(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey and Raul Cortes in Mexico City; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
