GRAPHIC: Gulf Cartel Gunmen Burn
Rivals Alive in Mexico near Texas Border
Washington, D.C
(December 2, 2019 ) – The Center for Immigration Studies presents
arguments for and against the Trump administration’s actions to designate
some Mexican drug trafficking cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations
(FTO). An FTO designation triggers powerful American authorities to
freeze financial assets, prosecute for activities that
support terrorism, and bar entry into the country. some
70 currently designated Islamic terrorist groups that aspire,
emphatically unlike any of Mexico's cartels, to kill as many Americans as
possible on American soil the present war on Jihadists.” He continues, “The
sometimes shrill calls, with each new gun battle or atrocity, that
Mexican cartels imminently threaten U.S. national security don't hold up
under scrutiny, at least not without more evidence. If the U.S.
government insists on adding a massive layer of new terrorists to existing
U.S. counterterrorism systems, plans for how to resource it and allocate
the greater burden among agencies, without taking from the war on terror,
should be laid out first.” Section
219 of
the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)? Section 219 provides that
the secretary of state may designate a group as a FTO on finding that it
engages in terrorist activity as defined at INA Section 212(a)(3) or
terrorism as defined at 22 U.S.C. Section 2656f(d)(2). Does Mexican Cartel
conduct meet the threshold definitions, including specifically as a threat
to the national security of the United States?
Mexico
Will Reject U.S. Designations of Cartels as Terrorists, Says AMLO
Mexico’s president announced Monday that he will reject any
designation of cartels as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
During his morning press conference, Mexican President Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said he would not accept the U.S.’s potential
designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations–which could enable
direct actions in Mexico.
“We will never accept that, we are not ‘vendepatrias’ (nation
sellers),” Lopez Obrador said.
The president’s statements come
after the relatives of nine U.S. women and children who died in a cartel ambush in
Sonora revealed they would be meeting with President Donald Trump. The family is
expected to ask for some cartels to be labeled as terrorist organizations.
Last week, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca used the
term “narco-terrorism” to refer to the brazen attacks on citizens of Nuevo
Laredo by a faction of Los Zetas Cartel called Cartel Del Noreste. Cabeza de
Vaca publicly called out Mexico City for past inaction in confronting Los
Zetas.
On Monday morning, Lopez Obrador’s foreign relations minister
Marcelo Ebrard called designations unnecessary and inconvenient, adding that
the U.S. and Mexico have a healthy working relationship in fighting cartels.
According to Ebrard, terrorist designations would give the U.S. the legal
avenue to take direct action on cartels on Mexican soil.
Ildefonso
Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded
Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior
Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted
at Iortiz@breitbart.com .
Brandon
Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He
co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and
senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com .
Enough Is Enough’: Josh Hawley Calls for Sanctions on Mexican
Cartels
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that
“enough is enough” and called on the U.S. government to sanction Mexican officials
and cartel members complicit in trafficking meth and killing Americans.
Hawley called for harsh
retribution against the Mexican cartels complicit in ambushing and murdering
nine American women and children near the New Mexico border.
In the wake of the attack on
Americans, as well as the Mexican cartels’ complicity in Missouri’s meth
crisis, the Missouri conservative called for the U.S. government to sanction
the cartel members who are “openly slaughtering American citizens.”
“With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “Cartels are
flooding MO [Missouri] w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering
American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way.”
Hawley said that just over the last
14 days, there had been over 40 drug overdoses coming from drugs across
America’s southern border.
Hawley continued, “In SW Mo last two
weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming
across [the] southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels
increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot
allow this to continue.”
With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels. Cartels are flooding MO w/ meth, trafficking
children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the
other way
In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug
overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story
is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico,
and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue
Hawley spent much of his August
recess traveling across rural Missouri, learning what matters to the average
Missourian.
This AM I had the great privilege of
meeting Brittany Tune, a nurse, a mother of two, a follower of God, and a remarkable
woman. Born & raised in rural Shannon Co., she has raised two kids on her
own while putting herself through nursing school & dedicating her life to
others
Brittany says meth is hammering this
community. She has many friends & family members who have been touched by
this epidemic. She worries about what it means for her own kids, ages 15 &
10. It’s much worse now than when she was growing up, she says
In an interview with Breitbart News
in September, Hawley said that meth coming from
Mexico is destroying local Missouri communities.
“Come with me to any town, any town
in the state of Missouri of any size, and I will show you communities that are
drowning in meth, drowning in it. It is literally killing people; it is
destroying families it is destroying schools and whole communities,” he said.
“Missouri is a border state,” Hawley
said, adding that “we have to got to secure the border to stop the meth” and
“stop the flow of illegal immigration.”
Hawley’s remarks about the Mexican
cartel attack on Americans mirrors that of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday that the
United States was ready for war against the drug cartels.
“This is the time for Mexico, with
the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them
off the face of the earth,” the president tweeted.
Trump has campaigned on cracking
down on violence on the southern border as well as handling the drug cartels.
During an exclusive interview with
Breitbart News, Trump said he is “very seriously” thinking of designating the
drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
“It’s psychological, but it’s also
economic,” Trump told Breitbart News in March. “As terrorists — as terrorist
organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News in May
that he would back Trump’s potential designation of the Mexican cartels as FTOs
and that seizing cartel leader El Chapo’s assets would build the wall and make
the cartels pay for it. In a similar manner to Missouri, Daines told Breitbart
News about how Montana has been ravaged by meth from Mexican cartels.
Daines said that by seizing
“billions” of El Chapo’s assets, it “would absolutely fulfill President Trump’s
promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. In this case, it would be
a Mexican cartel paying for it would be an excellent idea.”
Sean
Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @ SeanMoran3 .
The architect of Mexico's war on cartels was just arrested in
Texas and accused of drug trafficking and taking bribes
LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
·
Genaro
Garcia Luna, who was Mexico's public-security secretary between 2006 and 2012,
was arrested in Texas on Monday.
·
Garcia
Luna, the architect of Mexico's campaign against organized crime in the late
2000s, is the latest Mexican official accused of corruption and involvement in
drug trafficking.
A former high-ranking Mexican security official who led the
country's crackdown on organized crime in the mid-2000s was arrested in the US
and been charged with drug-trafficking conspiracy and making false statements.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, was arrested in Dallas by US federal
agents, according to the US district attorney for the Eastern District of New
York, which said it plans to seek his removal to face charges in New York.
"Garcia Luna stands accused of taking millions of dollars
in bribes from 'El Chapo' Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel while he controlled Mexico's
Federal Police Force and was responsible for ensuring public safety in Mexico,"
US Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in the release.
Garcia Luna faces three counts of conspiracy to import and
distribute cocaine and a fourth count of making false statements with regard to
an immigration naturalization application.
Garcia Luna began his career with Mexico's Center for National
Security and Investigation in the late 1980s before moving to the federal
police in the late 1990s. He was then head of Mexico's federal investigation
agency, AFI, between 2001 and 2005 and secretary of public security, then a
cabinet-level position in control of the federal police, between 2006 and 2012.
Genaro Garcia Luna Felipe Calderon Mexico
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/GettyImages
He was 38 when appointed to the latter position by
then-President Felipe Calderon but already had nearly 20 years of experience in
Mexico's security services, much of it spent tracking organized crime and drug
trafficking.
"By his late 20s, he was considered something of a
wunderkind," according to a 2008 New York Times
profile.
"He really was the architect of Calderon's war on
drugs," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the
US Drug Enforcement Administration, who worked with Garcia Luna in Mexico in
the 1990s.
That war comprised major military deployments inside the country
and the kingpin strategy, which entailed targeting high-level cartel figures in
an effort to weaken the cartels. This approach has been criticized for
fostering more violence, both by state
forces and fragmented cartels .
According to the release, Garcia Luna received millions of
dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. In return, the release states, the
cartel received safe passage for drug shipments, sensitive law-enforcement
information about investigations targeting it, and information about rival
cartels — all of which allowed it to move multiton quantities of drugs into the
US.
Financial records obtained by the US government showed that by
the time Garcia Luna relocated to the US in 2012, he had a personal fortune
worth millions of dollars, according to the release, which said he is also
accused of lying about those alleged criminal acts on an application for
naturalization submitted in 2018.
'Another black eye for Mexico'
El Chapo Joaquin Guzman
Reuters
One detail in the release mirrors allegations made
during the trial of
Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who was convicted on
drug trafficking and other charges in the Eastern District of New York in
February.
"On two occasions, the cartel personally delivered bribe
payments to Garcia Luna in briefcases containing between three and five million
dollars," the release states.
During testimony in November 2018, Jesus "El Rey"
Zambada — the youngest brother of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is
considered Guzman's peer at the top of the Sinaloa cartel and now its de facto
leader — said the cartel twice made multimillion-dollar payments to Garcia Luna.
A $3 million payment, which "El Rey" said was to
Garcia Luna at a restaurant in Mexico City between 2005 and 2006, was to ensure
he would pick a specific official as police chief in Culiacan, the capital of
Sinaloa state and the cartel's home turf.
"El Rey" said the other payment, between $3 million
and $5 million, was in 2007 and was to make sure "he didn't interfere in
the drug business" and that "El Mayo" was not arrested. Zambada
also said that the Sinaloa cartel and its partners also pooled $50 million in
protection money for Garcia Luna.
A press officer for the Eastern District of New York did not
immediately respond when asked by email whether the charges unsealed Tuesday
against Garcia Luna stemmed from allegations made during Guzman's trial.
At the time, Garcia Luna denied Zambada's claims, calling them a
" lie, defamation
and perjury ."
On Tuesday, Calderon said he had heard of Garcia Luna's arrest but was awaiting
confirmation and further details, tweeting that his "position
will always be in favor of justice and the law."
El Chapo Guzman home town
REUTERS/Roberto Armenta
Vigil, who was the DEA assistant country attache to Mexico
during the 1990s, was skeptical of the allegations made during the Guzman trial
and said he was "surprised" by the arrest on Tuesday.
"I worked with Genaro Garcia Luna," Vigil said.
"We, DEA, had a very good working relationship with Genaro. At that time
there were no allegations of corruption. There we coordinated investigations
with them, and we never saw any evidence of compromise."
The allegations made during that trial seemed "less than
credible," Vigil said, in large part because Guzman was arrested twice
during the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who followed
Calderon into office in 2012.
But it was possible that a high-ranking Mexican official could
obscure activities in one area from their work with the US in another area.
"In terms of what the US sees, [it's] very different than
what occurs within the Mexican government, but through time if he were taking
bribes, obviously some of those investigations, you would've known if they had
been compromised," Vigil said. "But there's some areas that could be
compartmentalized in terms of efforts by the Mexican government."
If convicted on the drug-conspiracy charge, Garcia Luna faces a
mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in jail.
"Today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to
justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States
and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their
crimes." Donoghue, the US attorney, said in the release, thanking the DEA,
the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, as well as police in New
York City and New York state.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, it tarnishes a bilateral
relationship in which cooperation against organized crime and drug trafficking
has been a major component.
"I don't know what the evidence is against Genaro Garcia
Luna," Vigil said Tuesday, "but it certainly is another black eye for
Mexico."
THE INVASION!
MEXICO UNDER, OVER
AND OCCUPYING AMERICA AT STAGGERING COSTS
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/04/mexico-in-meltdown-narco-state-pouring.html
*
The former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto,
took a $100 million bribe from JoaquÃn ALAN
FEUER
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to
America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United
States. Mexican drug cartels
are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in
virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH
MEXICO VOWS A NEW INVASION HAS BEGUN, FINANCED BY U.S.
THE NEXT MEXICAN INVASION IS AT HAND:
"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for
mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right".
We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said,
adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job,
welfare, and free medical in the United States."
*
*
"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted
Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG
CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good
deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."
"Many Americans forget is that our country is located
against a socialist failed state that is promising to descend even further into
chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the
bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by
electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who
thinks that Mexicans have some sort of “human right” to sneak into the U.S. and
demographically reconquer it." KURT SCHLICHTER
El Chapo Trial: Former Mexican President Peña Nieto Took $100
Million Bribe, Witness Says
The
bribe was delivered to Enrique Peña Nieto, the former president of Mexico,
through an intermediary, according to a witness at the trial of JoaquÃn Guzmán
Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo.
By
Alan Feuer
The
former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, took a $100 million bribe from
JoaquÃn Guzmán Loera, the infamous crime lord known as El Chapo, according to a
witness at Mr. Guzman’s trial.
The
stunning testimony was delivered Tuesday in a New York courtroom by Alex
Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian drug lord who worked closely with Mr. Guzmán from
2007 to 2013, when the kingpin was hiding from the law at a series of remote
ranches in the Sierra Madre mountains.
“Mr.
Guzmán paid a bribe of $100 million to President Peña Nieto?” Jeffrey Lichtman,
one of Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers, asked Mr. Cifuentes during cross-examination.
“Yes,”
Mr. Cifuentes said.
Mr.
Guzmán may offer more details soon. Shortly after the jury was excused around
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Lichtman submitted his client’s name to the prosecution
as a potential witness for the defense, confirming that the drug trafficker
might testify in his own trial.
Mr.
Lichtman said that adding Mr. Guzman’s name to the witness list does not
guarantee that he will testify. It is simply “possible.”
“If
I didn’t put him on the list, it would possibly foreclose the possibility for
him to testify,” Mr. Lichtman said in an interview. “So, I was just being
inclusive.”
Mr.
Guzmán’s testimony would be a stunning development. While his lieutenants have
shared details about the Sinaloa cartel’s operations, the kingpin himself could
offer even more intimate information, such as how he possibly bribed a
president of Mexico.
According
to Mr. Cifuentes, Mr. Peña Nieto first reached out to Mr. Guzmán about the time
he was elected president in late 2012, asking the drug lord for $250 million in
exchange for calling off a nationwide manhunt for him.
But
Mr. Guzmán made a counteroffer, Mr. Cifuentes added, saying he would give Mr.
Peña Nieto only $100 million.
“The
message was that Mr. Guzmán didn’t have to stay in hiding?” Mr. Lichtman asked.
“Yes,”
Mr. Cifuentes said, “that very thing is what Joaquin said to me.”
Mr.
Lichtman, quoting Mr. Cifuentes’s notes from an interview he gave to American
authorities in 2016, asked whether Felipe Calderón, who preceded Mr. Peña Nieto
as Mexico’s president, took a bribe in 2008 from one of Mr. Guzmán’s rivals,
the Beltrán-Leyva brothers.
“I
don’t recall this incident very well,” Mr. Cifuentes answered. He added moments
later, “Right now, I do not remember that.”
Mr.
Peña Nieto and Mr. Calderón could not yet be reached for comment.
While
other witnesses at Mr. Guzmán’s trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn
have testified about huge payoffs from traffickers to the Mexican police and public
officials, the testimony about Mr. Peña Nieto was the most egregious allegation
yet. If true, it suggests that corruption by drug cartels had reached into the
highest level of Mexico’s political establishment.
After
testifying about the two presidents, Mr. Cifuentes rattled off other bribes
that Mr. Guzmán and his allies had paid to Mexican officials. On at least two
occasions, he said, the kingpin gave the Mexican military between $10 million
and $12 million to launch operations to “either kill or capture” associates of
the Beltrán-Leyva brothers during his war with them.
Mr.
Cifuentes also said the Mexican federal police not only turned a blind eye to
drug trafficking, but occasionally took part in it. Once, he told jurors,
traffickers gave the police photographs of several suitcases packed with
cocaine that were sent by the cartel on an airplane from Argentina to Mexico.
The police picked up the suitcases from the baggage claim, Mr. Cifuentes said,
and sold the drugs themselves.
All
of this came on Mr. Cifuentes’s exhausting second day as a witness at Mr.
Guzmán’s trial. He has already confessed to a staggering array of crimes.
On
the stand, Mr. Cifuentes admitted to hatching a failed murder plot with the
Hell’s Angels in Canada. He acknowledged buying plastic explosives from the
widow of a Honduran drug trafficker. He said he paid a judge in Ecuador
$500,000 to throw out the case of an Ecuadorean military officer accused of
working with the cartel, adding that he later helped kidnap the officer when it
seemed that he was cheating Mr. Guzmán.
There
were lurid hints that top Mexican leaders might have been compromised by dirty
money from the start of the trial in November. In his opening statement, Mr.
Lichtman claimed his client had been framed for years by a conspiracy hatched
by his partner, Ismael Zambada GarcÃa, in league with “crooked” American drug
agents and a “completely corrupt” Mexican government, including two of its
presidents.
At
the time, Mr. Peña Nieto and Mr. Calderón released statements calling the
accusations false. The judge in the case, Brian M.
Cogan,
later cautioned Mr. Lichtman against making promises to the jury that the
evidence in the case would not support.
Then,
as the first week of the trial came to an end, Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers informed
Judge Cogan at a sidebar conference that a coming witness, Jesus Zambada
GarcÃa, Ismael Zambada’s brother, would testify, if asked, that Mexican
presidents had taken bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel.
But
Judge Cogan forbade the testimony, citing the embarrassment it would cause to
unnamed “individuals and entities” who were not directly involved in the case.
On
Tuesday, however, Judge Cogan allowed Mr. Cifuentes to testify about what he
knew concerning bribes to Mexican presidents with only a few interruptions.
At
one point, under questioning by Mr. Lichtman, Mr. Cifuentes acknowledged that
his personal assistant, Andrea Velez Fernandez, had worked for a political
consultant, J.J. Rendón, who was hired by Mr. Peña Nieto’s presidential
campaign. Mr. Cifuentes said Ms. Velez had once sent him photographs of
“suitcases filled with cash.”
When
Mr. Lichtman asked if the suitcases were “destined for Mr. Peña Nieto,”
prosecutors objected on the grounds of relevance.
“Agreed,”
Judge Cogan said.
After
that, there was no more discussion of the suitcases.
Emily
Palmer contributed reporting.
bUT DOES FOX
BELONG TO THE LA RAZA HEROIN CARTELS?
"Also, Rubin did not mention the moral
responsibility of the child’s father who brought her through the desert in an
apparent effort to use the catch-and-release Flores loophole
to get past border guards. The loophole was created by Judge Dolly Gee who has
ordered border officials to release migrants after 20 days if they bring a
child with them."
Mexican Presidents Deny
They Took Bribes from El
Chapo
3:02
Two former Mexican
presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The
statements came after the legal defense for JoaquÃn “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera
made contrary claims this week.
The
drug lord is facing several money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a
federal trial in New York. In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey
Lichtman spoke of bribes “including the very top, the current president of
Mexico and the former.”
Soon
after the statements became public, Mexico’s government issued a statement
denying the allegations. Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican
President Enrique Pena Nieto said the statements were false and “defamatory.”
El gobierno de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal JoaquÃn Guzmán Loera. Las
afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
Former
Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to social media to personally deny the
allegations, claiming that neither El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him
bribes.
Son absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones
que se dice realizó el abogado de JoaquÃn “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el
cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
Under
Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking
organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The
allegations against Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an
investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators
funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was
carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The
subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were
given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went
largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an
award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel
Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can
follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com .
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of
Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso
Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com .
Should
We Invade Mexico?
The opinions expressed by
columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
One fact a lot of Americans forget is
that our country is located right up against a socialist failed state that is
promising to descend even further into chaos – not California, the other one. And
the Mexicans, having reached the bottom of the hole they have dug for
themselves, just chose to keep digging by electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who thinks that Mexicans
have some sort of hitherto unknown “human right” to sneak into the United
States and demographically reconquer it. There’s a Spanish phrase that
describes his ideology, and one of the words is toro .
Foreign meddling? Mexican
ex-envoy urges Mexico to sic Trump's US political opponents on him
Sic
'em!
That's
the threat we read from Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the
U.S. who wrote in an op-ed in the Financial Times Sunday stating
that while Mexico was "the adult in the room" for
placating Trump over his threat to impose tariffs if Mexico doesn't halt
the border surge of late, he wanted to see Mexico get a lot tougher on the
U.S. over the agreement it made. Quite explicitly, he asked Mexico
to use President Trump's domestic political opponents against him if
Trump gets any tougher on Mexico for failing to keep up its end
of the bargain, as the latter has vowed to do.
Mr López Obrador should not blink and kowtow as
both countries ascertain whether Mexico’s efforts to deter Central American
transmigration have worked. But if Mr Trump does return to the warpath, Mexico
needs to hold the line and work with its many allies and stakeholders in the US
to pile political pressure on the White House.
"Many
allies and stakeholders in the U.S."? Does the writer of this,
the Mexican ambassador from the country's previous conservative
administration (2007–2013) mean registered foreign agents? Because
he's certainly calling on Mexico's current president to ask these people
to do Mexico's bidding. Sounds like a real interesting one for the
lawmen to look into, now that they are busting people on that rap for not
registering these days, as Tony Podesta and Paul Manafort can attest.
Or
does he mean activating and working with House speaker Nancy
Pelosi? Look how cozy he is with her, in this 2009 Cinco de Mayo
celebration photo posted on one of Pelosi's own Flickr sites .
He
ends his op-ed with a warning to Trump that he won't like the result if he gets
any tougher with Mexico in trying get it to keep its end of the bargain in
trying to halt the border surge :
In the coming weeks and months, while Mr Trump
plays checkers, Mexico will need to play chess. The US has had the luxury of an
ally nation at its southern border for decades. Wrecking the new
US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and its political and economic foundations,
will have a hugely detrimental impact on the bilateral relationship that has
been built so painstakingly since the creation of Nafta and in the aftermath of
9-11. Mr Trump should be very careful what he wishes for.
Careful
what he wishes for? What we are reading here is a threat, from a
foreign power, to activate Trump's domestic leftist enemies (and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce) against him, all in the name of advancing Mexico's
interests.
Sarukhan
is not a Mexican official now, but as a former senior diplomat, he remains
a pretty influential person linked to Mexico. It's not far-fetched to
ask if he remains in contact with the Mexican government. We know he
has some impressive buddies on that front — as well as some impressive ones
over here, given his long exposure to life in the states.
The
Chinese often will use someone outside government to state what they really
think, while maintaining a cover of deniability. It's quite
possible Mexico is using Sarukhan through this tactic, too.
Sarukhan
also is an experienced professional diplomat. He knows how to choose
his words precisely and avoid gaffes, which is the bottom-line work of
diplomacy. There is no doubt he meant to write what he wrote with
that threat.
In
making a statement like this, it's quite possible to think Mexico has
effectively announced that it will work to oppose the elected president to
advance its own national interests. One can only wonder what
exactly they have in mind.
Whatever
it is, it's foreign meddling. So where are the Democrats'
howls? Don't hear them, at least not yet, and given that Democrats
are clearly the people Sarukhan is talking about getting the help from, don't
expect we will. But it doesn't make the matter any less outrageous
to voters here, who'd like to be able to choose their president for what he
says he will do for them without foreign powers placing their interests ahead
of them and using local pawns to get it all done. Sunlight is about
the only tool we have for now. They're coming for our president.
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