Trump suggests Mexico agreed to host waiting asylum seekers. Mexico denies it.
President Trump said on Twitter Saturday evening that migrants seeking asylum at the southern border will wait in Mexico while their claims are processed:
His comments fit with a Saturday Washington Post report that the Trump administration had reached a deal with Mexico's incoming government to keep migrants in Mexico while their cases are considered. The Post story cited senior figures in President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador's transition team, and The Wall Street Journal made a similar report.
But the incoming Mexican government denied the story, with incoming Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard saying no specific agreement has been proposed or settled. Likewise, incoming Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero told Reuters no deal has been made, a statement contrary to what she told the Post.
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Trump seemed to proceed as if nothing had changed, posting another tweet on the topic Sunday morning:
U.S. officials, meanwhile, told the Post negotiations are indeed underway, but López Obrador's team is not yet ready for a public commitment.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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