Guatemala City, Guatemala - US top diplomat Antony Blinken will travel to Guatemala this week for regional talks on migration, the State Department said Sunday.

Washington has been wooing the Central American nation's new administration as a partner on migration, with presidents Joe Biden and Bernardo Arevalo meeting in March. That visit also saw the announcement of $170 million in US aid.

The month before, Guatemala also agreed to three-way cooperation with the United States and Mexico on migration.

On Tuesday, Blinken will lead the US delegation gathering in Guatemala for the regional meeting of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

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The hemisphere-wide framework for cooperation on migration was reached during a summit in the California metropolis led by Biden in 2022.

"Secretary Blinken will underscore our advances over the past two years and look ahead to next joint steps to bolster humane migration management and robust enforcement, lawful pathways and access to protection, and increasing refugee and migrant integration in the Americas," Miller said in a statement.

Blinken is also set to meet with Arevalo, as well as other regional leaders, Miller said.

Tuesday's migration talks come as record numbers of migrants have been seeking to enter the United States, largely from Central America and Venezuela, as they flee poverty, violence, and disasters exacerbated by climate change as well as decades of US intervention and destabilization.

Nearly 130,000 Guatemalans crossed the US-Mexico border without documentation from October to February, according to the US Border Patrol.

Immigration and border policy has emerged as a top political issue as Biden eyes a rematch with former president Donald Trump in the November elections.

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Trump has spouted racist vitriol against migrants and pledged the biggest-ever deportation program if he returns to the White House. Meanwhile, Biden had to apologize for referring to migrants as "illegals" during his March State of the Union address. The Democratic president has also threatened to shut down the border, which advocates warn will lead to further human rights abuses.

Arevalo took office in January, following unsuccessful attempts by Guatemala's political establishment to block the inauguration of the underdog anti-corruption campaigner.

The United States – as well as the European Union, Latin American countries, and international organizations including the UN – repeatedly spoke out against moves to bar Arevalo from assuming office and hailed his anti-corruption platform.