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No Secret Immigration Deal Exists With U.S., Mexico’s Foreign Minister Says
WASHINGTON — The Mexican foreign minister said Monday that no secret immigration deal existed between his country and the United States, directly contradicting President Trump’s claim on Twitter that a “fully signed and documented” agreement would be revealed soon.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s top diplomat, said at a news conference in Mexico City that there was an understanding that both sides would evaluate the flow of migrants in the coming months. And if the number of migrants crossing the United States border was not significantly reduced, he said, both sides had agreed to renew discussions about more aggressive changes to regional asylum rules that could make a bigger impact.
“Let’s have a deadline to see if what we have works and if not, then we will sit down and look at the measures you propose and those that we propose,” Mr. Ebrard said, describing the understanding reached by negotiators last week.
Mr. Trump has insisted for several days that the agreement reached with Mexico Friday evening is a strong one, rejecting criticism that it largely called upon the Mexicans to take actions to reduce the flow of immigration that they had already agreed to months earlier.
In a Twitter post on Monday morning, he said, “We have fully signed and documented another very important part of the Immigration and Security deal with Mexico, one that the U.S. has been asking about getting for many years. It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body!”
[President Trump’s immigration clampdown has pushed an increasing surge of migrants into the harsh Rio Grande current as the fastest route to American soil.]
American officials said Monday that what Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to was the agreement in principle to revisit the migration situation, and they said it gave the United States strong leverage over Mexico to live up to its promises. The numbers will be reviewed in 45 days and again in 90 days, officials said.
That was the understanding described by Mr. Ebrard, that if the numbers of migrants have not been substantially reduced, Mexico had agreed to discuss regional asylum changes that they had resisted for years. One of those ideas, “third safe country” arrangement, could eventually give the United States more legal authority to turn asylum seekers away at its southwestern border.
“They will propose third safe country,” he said. “We said it will have to be with the UNHCR, it will have to be regional,” he said, referring to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In his news conference, Mr. Ebrard said that the United States continued to push for a third safe country agreement, but said that Mexico was proposing a regional asylum agreement, one that would review the flow of migrants across Mexico and Central America, with a number of different countries, including Panama and Brazil.
But Mr. Ebrard said an agreement on the asylum changes — which does not yet exist — would have to be approved by the Mexican Senate before it could go into effect. He said that the agreement announced last Friday effectively delayed that discussion, giving Mexico time to prove to Mr. Trump that they would help reduce the flow of immigration that has so infuriated him since the beginning of his presidency.
Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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