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Luxurious properties seized from drug cartel leaders have been sold at auction in Mexico City. Houses with swimming pools and escape tunnels, a large ranch and an apartment where a cartel leader was killed were all up for sale. Mexico’s President Andres Manuel López Obrador had pledged that profits from the auction would go towards those affected by drug gang violence. But only nine of the 27 properties on offer actually sold.
The U.S.-Mexico migration agreement reached last week includes a regional asylum plan and Mexico’s commitment to examine and potentially change its laws, according to a copy held up to journalists by President Donald Trump on Tuesday. The deal lays out “a regional approach to burden-sharing in relation to the processing of refugee status claims to migrants,” the document said. A Reuters photograph of the folded document, taken as Trump held it up, allowed reporters to read parts of it.
U.S. President Donald Trump defended his administration’s deal with Mexico against criticism that there were no major new commitments to stem a flow of Central American migrants crossing into the United States, and said on Sunday more details would soon be released. The deal, announced on Friday after three days of talks in Washington, averted Trump’s threatened imposition of 5% import tariffs on all Mexican goods that had been due to start on Monday unless Mexico committed to do more to help reduce an increase in migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border.
Mexico is proposing to send national guard troops to its southern border with Guatemala as it seeks to stem the flow of undocumented migrants and reach a deal with the U.S., Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said. Mexican officials are in talks with U.S. cabinet members in Washington this week to prevent President Donald Trump from slapping a 5% tariff on all imports from Mexico on June 10. Trump said last month he’d scale up the duties incrementally until they reach 25% on Oct. 1 if Mexico doesn’t stop migrants from entering the U.S.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States will impose a 5% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico starting on June 10 until illegal immigration across the southern border is stopped. “The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied, at which time the Tariffs will be removed,” Trump said on Twitter. “Mexico’s passive cooperation in allowing this mass incursion constitutes an emergency and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States,” Trump said in the statement.
Mexico’s president has sent a letter to Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis urging them to apologize for human rights abuses committed during the conquest of the region 500 years ago. Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the indigenous peoples of Mexico had been the victims of massacres. Spain rejected his call and called for a “constructive perspective” instead. The territory which now makes up Mexico was under Spanish rule for some 300 years before gaining independence in the early 19th Century.
Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto accepted a $100m bribe from drug cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a witness has testified. Alex Cifuentes, who says he was a close associate of Guzmán for years, told a New York City courtroom that he had told authorities of the bribe in 2016. Guzmán is accused of being behind the Sinaloa drug cartel, which prosecutors say was the largest US drug supplier. Mr Peña Nieto served as the president of Mexico from 2012 to 2018.
Recently sworn-in Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will sell the Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner which transported his predecessor in a deal that will generate a multimillion-dollar loss. Mexico is likely to get $76 million less than it paid. The sale is an attempt by the president to move Mexico away from excess.
Mexico’s government announced on Tuesday that Jared Kushner the son-in-law of President Trump will be bestowed with the country’s top honor for foreigners. Kushner will join the Order of the Aztec Eagle due to ‘his significant contributions’ to a new North American trade pact finalized in August. Kushner will receive the award on Thursday.
Mexican President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his government will cancel Mexico City’s $13.3 billion airport that is under construction, and instead build a terminal and two runways at a military base north of the capital. The decision followed a controversial four-day public consultation launched by López Obrador in which about 70% of the slightly more than one million people who voted opted for the alternative project.