Despite Mexico's promise to help the United States' illegal immigration problem by securing its Guatemalan border, plans have yet to be specified, and illegal immigration continues.

According to Associated Press, dozens of Central Americans crossed the Suchiate River, which lies at the Mexico-Guatemala border, this week. They were reportedly within view of immigration agents, who sat on a bridge above the river, and Mexican police officers on the shore. The immigrants paid $1.50 per person to ride on a "raft" made of wooden boards and inner tubes.

"I don't see anything has changed," Luisa Fuentes, a 56-year-old Guatemalan riding one of the rafts into Mexico, said.

Earlier this month, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the implementation of more border inspection stations, and last week Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the country would stop immigrants from riding La Bestia (The Beast), further north from Chiapas, Mexico.

"I don't think they can stop this," Darwin Ernesto Ramirez, a 28-year-old Honduran migrant, said before boarding La Bestia. "A lot of us will just wait for it down the tracks."

Mexico was supposed to reveal more about their plans on Tuesday. The only news that came, however, was the appointment of Humberto Mayans, a senator from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, as the head of an agency separate from the Interior Ministry focused on the issue, Los Angeles Times reports.

"We have to get more cooperation ... to make the southern border an area of stability and rule of law," Humberto Mayans said according to AP.

According to Peña Nieto, his country has seen the number of apprehended and deported Central Americans grow, but it is unknown if this is due to heightened patrol or an increase in illegal immigration rates.

In a June 20 meeting in Guatemala, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told Osorio Chong that migrants might soon start settling in Mexico due to its growing economy, according to an anonymous senior administration official.

"We found very willing partners in the Peña Nieto administration," the official said. "It's not something where we need carrots and sticks. It's been more like we need your help, and they said, 'All right, let me tell you what we can and cannot do.'"
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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