PULSE NEWS MEXICO
Former Mexican Ambassador to the United States Martha Bárcena on Tuesday, Feb. 14, accused the country’s foreign relations secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, of having secretly negotiated an agreement on the Remain-in-Mexico policy with the Donald Trump administration’s expulsion policies for undocumented migrants, without consulting President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
In a social media post, Bárcena said that Ebrard had agreed to accept the policy, which deemed Mexico a safe country for deporting illegal migrants to wait for the resolution of their U.S. applications as asylum seekers and that it was she who actually rejected the plan over Ebrard’s protests.
Several days earlier, Bárcena had stated that claims made by former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his recent book “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love” that Ebrard had accepted the controversial Stay-in-Mexico policy and asked him to keep it secret were indeed true.
On Tuesday, she added that she was adamantly opposed to the policy and had pushed back against Ebrard’s accord with the United States.
Ebrard immediately denied the allegations, claiming that Bárcena has held a personal grudge against him since he took office in December 2018 and is out to discredit him.
“Ever since she left office (in February 2021), the former ambassador has tried to slander me in every way she could,” Ebrard said during the president’s daily press conference Tuesday.
“Her hatred of me is obsessive, and her main objective is not the truth, but to see how she can harm my career.”
Ebrard added that AMLO was fully aware of every international negotiation he has made.
“If I had ever tried to hide information from the president, I would have been fired, and I would not be the nation’s chancellor right now,” he said.
Bárcena then responded that she had only spoken the truth.
For his part, López Obrador, who appointed Bárcena to the post in December 2018, said that he had no regrets about the appointment but believed that she had now joined the conservative opposition front against him.