Mexican president says too soon to congratulate Biden; migrants at border with US celebrate

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Saturday that it was too soon to congratulate Joe Biden and he would wait for "all legal issues" in the US presidential election to be resolved.

"We don't want to be imprudent. We don't want to act lightly and we want to respect people's self-determination and rights," Lopez Obrador told reporters.

"We have a very good relationship with the two candidates," he added.

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"President Trump has been very respectful with us and we have reached very good agreements, and we thank him because he has not interfered and has respected us," said the left-wing populist.

And "the same" goes for Biden, Lopez Obrador added.

Trump has launched a slew of legal challenges and refused to concede after the major US television networks announced Biden's win.

Meanwhile, flag-waving migrants on the Mexican-US border on Saturday welcomed Joe Biden's presidential election win and voiced hope that Donald Trump's defeat would bring greater respect for human rights.

With Biden in the White House, the migrants expressed optimism that "families (who enter the United States illegally) will no longer be separated and children will no longer be caged" in US immigration facilities.

Trump sparked angerduring his 2016 election campaign when he branded Mexican migrants "rapists" and drug dealers, and vowed to build a wall across the southern US border. But Lopez Obrador has managed to maintain cordial relations with Trump and even visited him in July on his first foreign trip since taking office.

Trump's "zero tolerance" policy launched in 2018 saw thousands of children separated from their parents at the frontier, a tactic apparently meant to frighten the families, before the government backed down.

Surrounded by migrants from Haiti and Central America and US flags, Banda took up a symbolic position near the border crossing where thousands of US citizens or legal residents pass each day.

Biden supporters waved the Stars and Stripes and some motorists honked their horns in celebration.

Migrants living in the city's shelters learned about the election results by television or through their cell phones, largely isolated from the outside world due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Under an agreement between Mexico and the United States in January 2019, asylum seekers must wait in Mexico for their applications to be processed in the United States.

(with inputs)