Mexico’s foreign secretary threatened legal battle to halt future construction of Trump’s border wall this week, citing the measure is potentially in violation of environmental and human rights, and international treaties.
Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray told congressional leaders that building a new border wall when 600 kilometers of barriers already exist is “hostile” and “deeply unfriendly,” according to a Breitbart report.
He condemned the “outbursts of nationalism that try to close the world” and the “political actors” who “question the principal of global integration.” But in the same speech he said that the United States much recognize Mexico as a sovereign nation.
Videgaray added that not only is the border wall unlikely to resolve the objectives it seeks to fulfill, but it is a “bad idea” and an “aggravating action.”
He also stated that Mexico will not, under any circumstances, be paying for the wall or cooperating with the Trump administration on its development.
“We won’t contribute in any manner, directly or indirectly or financially or in any other form to the continuation of a construction of a wall or any other type of physical barrier between our two countries,” he told the congressional foreign relations committee in Mexico City earlier this week.
Videgaray added that any border wall “is not part of a bilateral discussion and should not be, Mexicans should not be part of that discussion, we will not collaborate in any way the construction of something that hurts us, is apparently an absolute waste of resources.”
The foreign secretary said his office had assigned “a very significant amount of human resources” to assemble a plan to fight the border wall on every possible violation of international treaties, “starting with the ominous Treaty of Guadalupe in 1948.”
He charged that Mexico will fully exercise its legal rights by filing lawsuits in U.S. and international courts if there are any violations of a border treaty, environmental treaties, or an international law regulation. Additionally, he listed other alleged rights violations of the border wall, including private property, cultural, human, and anti-discrimination rights.
Secretary Videgaray warned that any attempt to tax remittances from the U.S. would threaten negotiations on other issues.
“Remittances are not only a flow of foreign exchange from the macroeconomic point of view, but as we all know it is a fundamental support for many families, particularly low-income families,” he said, adding that a tax on payments would be a “breaking point in any dialogue on other issues.”
In his address to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Videgaray also stated:
Mexico would never accept a unilateral decision by the United States to send migrants from other countries to Mexico, and the country is waiting to challenge executive orders “regarding the extension of the criteria to allow express deportation.” They are “waiting for the first act of implementation, not only the Mexican government but the allied organizations, non-governmental organizations, so that when the first act of application exists, proceed to challenge the general rule,” he said. “There is not yet an act of application regarding the criterion of expeditiously deporting someone who has more than 14 days in the country or someone who is beyond 100 kilometers of internment.”
Via http://dennismichaellynch.com/mexico-threatens-u-s-legal-action-stop-border-wall/
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