Mexico - (AFP) - US President Joe Biden heads Sunday to the border between the United States and Mexico , the first stop on a three-day trip that will lead him to Mexico and center on issues of immigration and drug trafficking.

The US president, accused by the Republican opposition of turning a blind eye to the historic influx of immigrants trying to enter the United States illegally, will stop in El Paso, Texas.

Through this, he wants to silence his opponents' grievances against him by not visiting the common border between the two countries, which extends over 3,100 kilometers, since he assumed the presidency two years ago.

There, he will discuss "border control operations" and meet local deputies and activists, before heading to the Mexican capital to hold a summit with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with whom he will participate Tuesday in a tripartite summit alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Speaking late Saturday on Twitter about his trip, the president noted "the need to expand legal pathways for organized immigration," and said, "We can do all of this while simultaneously reducing illegal immigration."

The US president will be accompanied to the border by US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorcas, who called Sunday, in an interview with ABC, for a "regional solution" to the immigration crisis.

On Thursday, the White House announced measures to try to ease the burden on the border, where more than 230,000 people were arrested in November.

Up to 30,000 migrants will be allowed into the United States each 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 contrast, those who cross the border illegally would be sent back more easily, according to the White House.

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

Two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2021 were due to synthetic opioids. As for the quantities of fentanyl seized in 2022 alone, they exceed the amount necessary to kill the entire American people, according to the DEA.

US State Department official for Latin America Brian Nichols said the United States seeks to "expand information exchange" with Mexico on chemical compounds and "enhance prevention."

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

Security expert Ricardo Marques said, "When you hold meetings like this, there is a constant that the Mexican authorities always have something to offer, sooner or later," considering that the arrest process does not affect the structure of the Sinaloa cartel, whose networks extend in 50 countries.

In 2021, the United States and Mexico announced a change in their approach to drug control policy, with a focus on the causes of this phenomenon, after a purely military strategy applied for 15 years. Since 2006, 340,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico, and thousands have been declared missing, without weakening the cartels.

Amid this bloodshed, the Mexican government has sued the US arms industries, accusing them of fueling violence among drug traffickers on Mexican soil.

Climate change will be on the agenda of the talks, as the two countries announced during the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP27) in Egypt a renewable energy project that includes investments worth $48 billion, in which Mexico pledged to improve greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030.

Among the topics on the table are also the exploitation of lithium, the transfer of electric car assembly plants, the construction of six solar energy plants from the Mexican side, and cooperation in the field of clean energy.

The need to develop electronic component supply chains to reduce Washington's dependence on Asia will also be at the center of the discussions.