President Biden on Monday met via video stream with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador amid a surge in migrants crossing the southern border.

The migration crisis was not discussed by Biden during a brief introductory exchange open to the press.

“In the Obama-Biden administration, we made a commitment that we look at Mexico as an equal, not as somebody who is south of our border. You are our equal, and what you do in Mexico and how you succeed impacts dramatically on what the rest of the hemisphere will look like,” Biden told the Mexican leader.

Biden said he and López Obrador, who is commonly known by his initials AMLO, would discuss Mexico’s request for COVID-19 vaccine doses, though White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at an afternoon press briefing that the answer would be “no.”

The meeting — Biden’s second virtual summit with a world leader, following an event with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — comes amid a hike in apprehensions along the border.

The Biden administration recently opened two overflow detention facilities for minors who arrive at the border without parents, as critics accuse Biden of creating “pull” factors for potential migrants by dismantling former President Donald Trump’s policies.

In January, which featured the final weeks of Trump’s term and the start of Biden’s, US Customs and Border Protection detained nearly 78,000 people, up from 36,679 in January 2020.

About 2,200 unaccompanied children crossed the border each week in February.

In his first month as president, Biden issued wide-ranging repeals of the prior administration’s immigration policies. He ended construction of Trump’s signature US-Mexico border wall and last month began to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy under which about 71,000 Central American asylum applicants were awaiting rulings in Mexico.

Biden also issued an order affirming the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives work permits and protection from deportation to people brought illegally to the US as minors, and proposed legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US.

Trump on Sunday slammed Biden’s immigration policies in his first extended public remarks since leaving office, saying that “Joe Biden has triggered a massive flood of illegal immigration into our country the likes of which we have never seen before.”

Trump said, “They’re all coming because of promises and foolish words. Perhaps worst of all, Joe Biden’s decision to cancel border security has singlehandedly launched a youth migrant crisis that is enriching child smugglers, vicious criminal cartels and some of the most evil people on the planet.”

The White House is also facing criticism from progressive Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who say that Biden’s detention camps for young migrants are functionally similar to those denounced as putting “kids in cages” under Trump.

Biden administration officials are pleading with potential migrants not to rush the border, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of preparation for an influx.

But Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted Monday at a White House press briefing that there was no “crisis” at the border, just a “stressful” and “acute” “challenge” as migrant numbers surge.

“I think that the answer is no,” Mayorksas said when asked if there’s a border crisis.

“The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock, seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border, that we manage the challenge, as acute as the challenge is,” he said.

Pressed by a journalist about whether the situation is a crisis, Mayorkas said, “We are challenged at the border. The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are meeting that challenge. It is a stressful challenge.”

In December, then-President-elect Biden said he was concerned about abruptly relaxing Trump’s immigration policies because he feared that if he acted too quickly, he would trigger “2 million people on our border.”