Mexico City, February 14. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on Tuesday dismissed as “defamation” the comments of the country’s former ambassador to the United States, Martha Bárcena, who claimed to have secretly agreed to the “stay in Mexico”, as former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured in his new book.
“What he maintains in the interview with (journalist) León Krauze, what he has said in other forums is, or is trying to maintain, is simply something wrong,” the foreign secretary said. during the morning press conference of President Andres Manuel López Obrador.
Ebrard thus referred to the statements that Bárcena made to Krauze in a podcast, where he claimed that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had accepted the “Stay in Mexico”, a program of then President Donald Trump (2017-2021 ) for migrants to wait in Mexican territory. while their asylum procedures in the United States were resolved.
The former ambassador thus supported the statements of Pompeo, who in his new book accuses Ebrard of having secretly agreed to the program during a negotiation in 2018.
“It is simply untrue, and I am proud to be part of President López Obrador’s government and what we have achieved with the United States under extremely difficult conditions,” he said.
The official explained that with Trump, the United States tried to impose the treaty known as the “safe third country” that it has with other countries like Canada and, if it does not accept no, they would impose tariffs in Mexico.
“So the main, overriding instruction, what we had to achieve despite all the enormous tension and difficulty that this task meant, was that Mexico didn’t have to sign the safe third country and at the same time we didn’t had no tariffs,” he said. .
On top of that, Ebrard accused Bárcena of slandering him and being “ungrateful” to the government that appointed her.
“Since leaving office, the former ambassador has devoted herself to slandering me wherever she can. It’s an obsessive grudge. His big goal isn’t the truth, it’s seeing how much it hurts me on a daily basis,” he said.
For his part, López Obrador also defended Ebrard’s position and assured that Bárcena’s statements were unfounded.
“It has no basis, it’s the right to protest, the freedom to express yourself, but it’s nothing more than conjecture and whoever interviews it, as you yourself point out, León Krauze, is an enemy of us, an adversary,” he pointed out.
The “Stay in Mexico” program was one of the most controversial immigration measures in the United States under the Trump administration, which forced migrants who wanted to enter the country to wait for their bureaucratic procedures to be resolved in Mexico, which caused chaos in Mexico. the border and accusations of human rights violations.