No signed agreement with US on asylum seekers: Mexico

There is no signed agreement allowing third-country migrants to stay in Mexico while their asylum applications are processed in the United States, Mexico’s new foreign minister said Friday. Marcelo Ebrard spoke one day after US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the Donald Trump administration will send migrants who cross the southern US border back to Mexico while their cases are being heard.

“We have signed no treaty, nor will we do it,” Ebrard said during the daily press conference of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office on December 1. Mexico’s Washington charge d’affairs Jose Antonio Zabalgoitia told reporters Thursday his country would “guarantee that foreign people who have received their appointment (in the United States) fully enjoy the rights and freedoms recognized by the constitution.”