MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are meeting for a series of talks on migration, trade and climate change on Tuesday as the three leaders try to mend tensions that have divided the continent.

The three-way gathering is held most years, although there was a hiatus while Donald Trump was U.S. president. It’s often called the “three amigos summit,” a reference to the deep diplomatic and economic ties between the countries.

However, the leaders still found themselves at odds, especially as they struggle to handle an influx of migrants and to crack down on smugglers who profit from persuading people to make the dangerous trip to the United States.

In addition, Canada and the U.S. accuse López Obrador of violating a free trade pact by favoring Mexico’s state-owed utility over power plants built by foreign and private investors. Meanwhile, Trudeau and López Obrador are concerned about Biden’s efforts to boost domestic manufacturing, creating concerns that U.S. neighbors could be left behind.

The centerpiece of the summit will be hours of talks with all three leaders, but Biden will start Tuesday with a bilateral meeting with Trudeau. It’s unlikely to be as contentious as his sitdown with López Obrador on Monday.

During that meeting, the Mexican leader challenged Biden to improve life across the region, telling him that “you hold the key in your hand.”

“This is the moment for us to determine to do away with this abandonment, this disdain, and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lopez Obrador said.

Biden responded by pointing to the billions of dollars that the United States spends in foreign aid around the world, saying that “unfortunately our responsibility just doesn’t end in the Western Hemisphere.”

It was a noticeably sharp exchange after the two leaders had smiled and embraced and shaken hands for the cameras.

Biden and López Obrador haven’t been on particularly good terms for the past two years. The Mexican leader made no secret of his admiration for Trump, and last year he skipped a Los Angeles summit of the Americas because Biden didn’t invite the authoritarian regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

However, there have been attempts to thaw the relationship. Biden made a point of flying into the new Felipe Angeles International Airport, a prized project of the Mexican president even though it’s been a source of controversy.

The airport, which is expected to cost $4.1 billion when finished, is more than an hour’s drive north of the city center, has few flights and until recently lacked consistent drinking water. However, it’s one of the keystone projects that López Obrador is racing to finish before his term ends next year.

The U.S. and Mexico have also reached an agreement on a major shift in migration policy, which Biden announced last week.

Under the plan, the U.S. will send 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela back across the border from among those who entered the U.S. illegally. Migrants who arrive from those four countries are not easily returned to their home countries for a variety of reasons.

In addition, 30,000 people per month from those four nations who get sponsors, background checks and an airline flight to the U.S. will get the ability to work legally in the country for two years.

On Monday, before the summit began, López Obrador said he would consider accepting more migrants than previously announced.

“We don’t want to anticipate things, but this is part of what we are going to talk about at the summit,” López Obrador said. “We support this type of measures, to give people options, alternatives,” he said, adding that “the numbers may be increased.”

Mexico would likely require an increase in those receiving work authorization in the U.S. in order to receive more migrants who are being expelled.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, cautioned that nothing was decided yet.

“What we need is to see how the program announced last week works in practice, what if any adjustments need to be made to that program and then we can talk about taking the next steps,” he said.

The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically during Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the year that ended Sept. 30, the first time the number topped 2 million.

Biden is expected to follow up his first trip to Mexico as president with another to Canada, although it has not yet been scheduled.

A senior Canadian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Canada is working with Americans on a visit in the near future.

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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Maria Verza in Mexico City; Rob Gillies in Toronto; and Chris Megerian and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

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Monday night’s accident was one of the deadliest in the history of the subway, and questions quickly arose about the structural integrity of the mass transit system, among the world’s busiest.

Another 27 people remained hospitalized of the more than 70 injured when the support beams collapsed about 10:30 p.m. as a train passed along the elevated section, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said.

On Tuesday, a crane carefully lowered a train car containing four bodies to the ground. Of the 24 killed, 21 died at the scene, while the others died at hospitals. Only five have been identified so far. Children were among the fatalities, Sheinbaum said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Carlos Miramar waited under a tent on metal chairs with two other relatives to receive the body of his uncle.

The 25-year-old student had been awake since beginning an “exasperating” odyssey the previous night that took them to seven hospitals and multiple prosecutor’s offices in search of his uncle. Now they had found 38-year-old Carlos Pineda, a man he described as a soccer fan and buoyant personality. Pineda is survived by his wife, two children ages 7 and 13, and his mother.

“I’m tired and unable to sleep,” Miramar said. “He didn’t deserve this end. He was a good father, good husband and good son.”

Initial analysis pointed to a “presumed structural failure,” Sheinbaum said, promising a thorough and independent inquiry. She added that a Norwegian firm had been hired to investigate.

“I did not have any report nor alert of any problem that could have led us to this situation,” she said.

The overpass was about 5 meters (16 feet) above the road in the borough of Tlahuac, but the train ran above a concrete median strip, which apparently lessened the casualties among motorists.

Abelardo Sánchez, a 38-year-old cook, was just closing up his sandwich shop beside the metro line when he said the ground shook, a tremendous noise echoed, lights flickered and the air filled with dust and the smell of burning wires.

Stunned, Sánchez didn’t initially react. “Then a guy in a white shirt with blood on his arms, his hands and chest came out and another guy came to help him here on the sidewalk, and he was there trembling,” he said.

The Mexico City Metro — which is among the world’s cheapest with tickets costing about 25 cents —has had at least three serious accidents since its inauguration half a century ago. In March 2020, a collision between two trains at the Tacubaya station left one passenger dead and injured 41. In 2015, a train that did not stop on time crashed into another at the Oceania station, injuring 12. In October 1975, at least 26 people were killed in another accident.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2017 exposed dangerous construction defects in the elevated line near where Monday’s accident occurred. Authorities at the time had done patchwork repairs on the columns and horizontal beams.

Julio Yañez, a 67-year-old lawyer whose apartment overlooks the collapsed metro line, was working at his computer when he heard a loud noise and felt his building shake. He saw a cloud of dust and falling debris followed by an eerie silence until emergency vehicles began arriving. Helicopters landed at a nearby Walmart to ferry the injured to hospitals.

The scene shook him because he had exited the metro at that same station earlier in the day.

“That part there was already declared bad … in the earthquake, and the authorities didn’t pay attention,” Yañez said, noting similar problems were reported at another nearby station, but nothing was done. “They are time bombs.”

The collapse occurred on Line 12, the subway’s newest, that stretches to the city’s south side. Like many of the dozen subway lines, it runs underground through more central areas of the city of 9 million but is on elevated concrete structures on the outskirts.

A report issued by the subway system including photos in 2017 showed that the base of one vertical column supporting the tracks had cracked and shed layers of concrete because not enough steel rebar stirrups had been used when it was built around 2010. In 2017, authorities patched and widened the column by injecting resins, swathing it in carbon fiber, building a jacket of additional rebar around the base and pouring concrete around the collar.

Authorities also found that one of the horizontal beams had come loose from its support at the top of a vertical column and was sagging — the kind of failure that could have contributed to Monday’s collapse. Authorities at the time welded steel diagonal braces to the bottom of the beam, chipped out and repoured fractured concrete elements.

Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard called the collapse “the most terrible accident we have ever had in mass transportation.” Ebrard was Mexico City’s mayor from 2006 to 2012, when the affected line was built.

Allegations of poor design and construction on the subway line emerged soon after the Ebrard left office as mayor. The line had to be partly closed in 2014 so tracks could be repaired.

Ebrard, who leads Mexico’s efforts to obtain coronavirus vaccines, has been considered a potential presidential candidate in 2024.

“Of course, the causes should be investigated and those responsible should be identified,” he wrote. “I repeat that I am entirely at the disposition of authorities to contribute in whatever way is necessary.”

The line was closed Tuesday and hundreds of buses were called in. Thousands in surrounding neighborhoods lined up before dawn to catch the buses for work.

FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ • AP News

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