Trump’s Secretary of State offers his version of how the negotiations were in the face of during the 2018 immigration crisis. Ebrard responds that it is “a campaign based on anti-Mexican ideas” that seek to present Mexico “as a threat against for which we must build a wall”
Former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has published this week Never Give An Inch (Broadside Books), his book of memories. Among some scandalous statements that appear in these lines, those that speak of the foreign policy that the Donald Trump Administration maintained with Mexico stand out. Specifically in the negotiations for the migration crisis in 2018, one of the largest that the region has gone through in history.
On this subject, Pompeo recounts a conversation in which Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard accepted the terms imposed by the Stay in Mexico program, through which migrants arriving in the United States were returned at will, but Ebrard asked him to not be made public to not to tarnish the image of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In response, Ebrard has assured that it is “a campaign based on anti-Mexican ideas” that seek to present Mexico “as a threat against for which a wall must be built.”
The first to communicate the Stay in Mexico program to the Government of López Obrador was Pompeo, according to his memoirs, who did so in a secret meeting in Houston, Texas, on November 15, 2018, two weeks before the new Mexican Administration took office. In that meeting, the then Secretary of State told Ebrard, with whom “he had already established a good relationship,” that they would accept the asylum seekers at the border, but that U.S. would return them to Mexico, to await their process in that side.
“Marcelo was visibly agitated,” Pompeo says in his book. “He insisted that his government could not agree to these terms, pointing out the obvious fact that his people would be very unhappy to have thousands of illegal aliens staying in their country.” Whoever was one of Trump’s executive arms replied that that was the very reason why they could not receive them in the United States. What worried Ebrard, says Pompeo, was that the program could be carried out, even though it was not allowed by Mexican law, and that it would be done as soon as the six-year term began.
The foreign minister has assured that the negotiation for the Mexican government was focused on not accepting a safe Third Country agreement, that is, “that would permanently and inflexibly force the granting of asylum or deporting all foreigners who sought protection in the US.” For Ebrard, having avoided this measure has been “an achievement of President López Obrador,” according to what he said in a statement. The Foreign Secretary does not deny having asked to hide the agreement from Pompeo, but assures that the meetings that are held with foreign officials are disclosed to public opinion. However, the meeting held in Houston, which the foreign minister confirmed in the statement, had been a secret in several voices that attracted the press from both countries.
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