On his first trip to the region after two years spent at the White House, President Joe Biden visited a section of the US-Mexico border in El Paso

The city is considered the transit point of the state of Texas, which is at the center of the debate about illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

After meeting with Border officers in El Paso, Biden joined some of them for a walk along the metal border fence separating the American city from the Mexican Ciudad Juarez.

Biden spent only a few hours in the city, which is currently the largest corridor for illegal transit.

The president spoke late on Twitter about his trip, citing "the need to expand legal pathways for organized migration".

"We can do all this while at the same time reducing illegal immigration,"he said.

The US president was accompanied to the border by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who called on Sunday in an interview with ABC for a "regional solution" to the migration crisis.

Immigrants are now subject to deportation in the United States, under new rules enacted by the Biden administration last week, which were sharply criticized by human rights organizations.

The White House announced measures to try to ease the burden on the border, where more than 230 thousand arrests were recorded last November.

Up to 30 thousand migrants will be allowed to enter the United States per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but they will have to arrive by air so as not to increase the workload of border guards on the ground.

In return, those who cross the border illegally will be returned more easily, according to the White House.

From El Paso, Biden flew to Mexico, on his first official visit to this country, where he was greeted by his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The two men are holding bilateral meetings ahead of a summit of North American leaders Tuesday in Mexico with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Biden's visit to Mexico is overshadowed by the tragedy of the synthetic drug fentanyl, which is considered fifty times stronger than heroin and its production is supervised by Mexican cartels with chemical components imported from China, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Two-thirds of the 108 thousand deaths caused by overdoses in the United States in 2021 are due to synthetic opioids. The amount of fentanyl seized in 2022 alone exceeds the amount necessary to kill the entire American people, according to the DEA.

Before Biden's visit, Mexico arrested Ovidio Guzman, a major methamphetamine dealer, on Thursday during an operation that resulted in ten deaths among the security forces and 19 in the ranks of the Sinaloa cartel.

In 2021, the United States and Mexico announced a change in their approach to Drug Control Policy, focusing on the causes of this phenomenon after a purely military strategy applied for 15 years.

Since 2006, 340 thousand people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico, and thousands have been declared missing without this weakening the cartels.

Climate change will be on the agenda of the talks, as the two countries announced at the cop27 climate conference in Egypt a renewable energy project that includes investments worth 48 billion dollars.

Also on the agenda are the exploitation of lithium, the transfer of electric car assembly plants, the construction of six solar power plants from the Mexican side and cooperation in the field of clean energy.