Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to deploy military to slow migration

Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala have approved deploying of troops to their borders to slow down the movement of migrants trying to enter the United States, a Biden administration official said Monday.

"We have made agreements to place more troops on their own border," Tyler Moran, a special assistant to President Joe Biden on immigration policy, told MSNBC News.

"This will not only prevent traffickers and smugglers, and cartels that exploit the children on their way here, but also to protect the children," Moran said.

The U.S. Border Patrol is struggling with an increase in the number of people trying to cross the southwestern U.S. border due to violence, starvation, natural hazards and a lack of access to food in Central America and Mexico.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) caught 172,000 people trying to cross the border in March, an increase of 71 percent over the previous month.

Most of those caught were single adults, and the CBP, according to the latest data, displaced 104,000.

Many of those trapped at the border, however, it was just 19,000 in March, with no unaccompanied children starting to fill CBP detention facilities and the housing capacity of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Mexico has agreed to maintain 10,000 troops on its border, Honduras has sent 7,000 troops to disperse an emerging caravan of migrants, and Guatemala has deployed 1,500 troops on its border with Honduras, said Jen Psaki, press secretary of the White House, told reporters Monday.

Biden proposed extensive legislation on immigration reform to the U.S. Congress, but the bill was not passed for action by lawmakers.

The bill would facilitate a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the US. Republicans and Democrats are far apart on the matter.

U.S. Republicans and some Democrats have been critical of the Biden administration's handling of the border since taking office in January.

Biden sought to reverse the "family separation" and "stay in Mexico" asylum policies of his predecessor in an attempt to complete a more humane migration process in accordance with U.S. law.