The Biden administration is on pins and needles as Mexican citizens head to the polls this weekend to cast their vote for the successor to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Little is known about the type of policies that candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, who polls show has a double-digit lead over her opponent, would implement. That lack of clarity could create problems for the White House months ahead of the U.S. election, particularly if Mexico upends border agreements that have brought reduced illegal immigration.

If elected, Sheinbaum would have the legal authority to undo an April agreement that Lopez Obrador entered into with President Joe Biden that the White House touted this week as having a positive effect in reducing illegal immigrant arrests at the U.S. southern border, according to the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan global affairs think tank in Washington, D.C.

“The next Mexican President has the authority to undo the late April Agreements since the Mexican government reported they were cooperation commitments,” wrote Lila Abed, acting director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in a statement Thursday. “Constitutionally, the President has the authority to coordinate Mexico’s foreign policy.

Because the April deal was a cooperation or partnership agreement, the next Mexican president would not need congressional approval to drop out of it, leaving the United States in a wait-and-see position.

Josh Trevino of the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation said it is partly the fault of the Biden administration that little is known of how a Sheinbaum administration would approach that agreement.

“You cannot blame Sheinbaum for it. You can’t blame the Mexicans for it. It’s our fault that we don’t really know. And that’s going to bear some fruit,” said Trevino, TPPF’s chief of intelligence and research.

Millions of Mexican voters will head to the polls Sunday to choose their next president.

Term-limited Lipez Obrador will be replaced come October by the winner. Only a month later will U.S. voters head to the polls in November to choose between preemptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and incumbent Democrat Joe Biden.

Immigration is the No. 1 issue among U.S. voters, topping even the economy and foreign policy. The Biden administration took action earlier this year to attempt to stem the flow of migrants surging across the border and improve the situation.

In late April, Lopez Obrador and Biden spoke by phone and said they had “ordered their national security teams to work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights,” according to a joint statement issued April 29.

The White House maintained this week that U.S. relations with Mexico were in a good place and expected cooperation to continue in the coming months as Mexico elects a new leader.

“We have every hope and expectation that it will [continue],” said White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, during a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “We certainly have no expectation that Mexican cooperation and support is going to diminish.”

The top two polling candidates are Sheinbaum, the former Mexico City mayor and member of the Morena party, and Xóchitl Gálvez of the conservative National Action Party. Either candidate would be the first woman president of Mexico.

Sheinbaum is a member of Lopez Obrador’s Morena party, which he founded a decade ago. She has campaigned on the platform of reducing crime nationwide through a strategy she implemented to successfully reduce murders in Mexico City.

But Sheinbam is up against massive corporation-sized criminal organizations known as cartels that control each city and state throughout the country and profit billions of dollars annually by facilitating human smuggling and drug trafficking. Violence in Mexico is cartel-driven as a result of infighting among cartels and against the government.

She has planned to double the number of federal investigators, increase the number of National Guard military troops, and reform judicial policies in a — staying in line with Lopez Obrador’s actions.

But Sheinbaum has not indicated if she will continue the April agreement.

“There’s not a lot of evidence there, nor does her public policy career prior to seeking the presidency really give us much insight into what she might do,” said Treviño. “Claudia Sheinbaum has been very, very careful to allow no daylight between her and AMLO on policy. … We don’t know what we’re going to get. What she has promised the Mexican domestic audience is continuity.”

Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank in Washington said Steinbaum is a policy-minded politician and more similar to Biden as opposed to non-politicians Lopez Obrador and Trump.

“She represents the same political coalition [as Lopez Obrador],” said Brown, senior adviser on immigration and border policy for BPC. “Biden is more policy-minded. They may hit it off fine.”

Dr. Néstor P. Rodríguez, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose research tracks migration through Mexico, said the continuation of a partnership to deal with migration issues may not dramatically impact migration at the U.S. southern border because there are so many other factors that impact migrants decision to flee.

“Mexico has been pretty active in moving migrants to southern areas away from the US border, so there is some truth to Kirby’s claim, but there are other important variables too in the equation. Migration always fluctuates,” said Rodríguez.

Any change to how the U.S. and Mexico deal with the shared border may not come until after the November election when Mexico knows who will be in the White House for the next four years.

“In terms of how they will deal with immigration and the U.S. they do not have many degrees of freedom,” Rodriguez wrote in an email. “They will very likely will follow US line (especially if Trump is elected). The US controls the economic strong cards.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

In addition to border security and immigration, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade that the Trump administration brokered in 2020 is also up for renegotiation in 2026.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.