US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday he will travel in the coming weeks to Mexico and praised the neighbor for cooperating with President Donald Trump’s administration.
The trip would be the first by Rubio as the top US diplomat to Mexico, which is on the frontlines of Trump’s push for mass deportation of migrants.
“They have been very responsive on our security concerns. They’ve increased their security cooperation with us in ways that have been very productive,” Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“At some point here over the next few weeks, I intend to travel potentially to Mexico along with a couple other cabinet members to, sort of, finalize some of these areas of cooperation,” Rubio said.
Rubio said that the two countries had a mutual interest in battling drug cartels including on their use of US weapons, long a sore point for Mexico.
“The cartels that operate within Mexico and threaten the state are armed from weapons that are bought in the United States and shipped there. We want to help stop that flow,” Rubio said.
“We still have some more work to do on migration, but they’ve been cooperative,” he said.
Rubio traveled to Latin America on his first trip as the top US diplomat but did not travel to Mexico, which sent a high-ranking delegation to Washington.
