https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russian-newspapers-show-solidarity-detained-journalist-63600227
2019-06-10 11:20:00Z
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Senin, 10 Juni 2019
Russian newspapers show solidarity with detained journalist - ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russian-newspapers-show-solidarity-detained-journalist-63600227
2019-06-10 11:20:00Z
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Trump fights back against skeptics of his new Mexico deal - CNN
"Now with our new deal, Mexico is doing more for the USA on Illegal Immigration than the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats are doing NOTHING, they want Open Borders, which means Illigal [sic] Immigration, Drugs and Crime," Trump tweeted on Monday.
Like many of Trump's wins, there are questions about whether the immigration deal adds up to real progress or is a mirage conjured up to get him out of yet another self-created crisis. His determination to politicize the issue -- in a stream of tweets -- is only adding to the doubts.
Trump is reacting angrily to suggestions that the agreement, concluded late Friday night, is just a new example of the alternative reality he often creates to sustain his presidency and will do little to solve the southern border emergency.
Controversy over the Mexico deal also reflects how a common definition of facts has become impossible under a President who has often sought to devalue the currency of truth.
"If President Obama made the deals that I have made, both at the Border and for the Economy, the Corrupt Media would be hailing them as Incredible, & a National Holiday would be immediately declared," Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
"With me, despite our record setting Economy and all that I have done, no credit!"
The dispute over the President's claimed breakthrough comes with fraught relations between Trump and Democrats set to cross another rubicon.
The House is expected Tuesday to vote to hold Attorney General William Barr and ex-White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt, in a further escalation of a separation of powers duel.
And Trump's feud with Nancy Pelosi is deepening after she said she wanted to see him in jail in remarks that reflected pressure on the House Speaker from liberals who want impeachment and drew a livid response from the President.
Jury out on Mexico deal
Democrats on Sunday pounced on a New York Times report that said that Friday's deal mainly includes pledges previously made by Mexico in talks with the United States in recent months.
But the President argued on Twitter that his intervention and threat of tariffs had been instrumental in getting the promises down on paper.
Controversy over the Mexico deal reflects how a common definition of facts has become impossible under a President who has often sought to devalue the currency of truth.
Perhaps in the weeks to come, the President's agreement, reached after exhaustive US-Mexico talks in Washington while he was in Europe last week, will turn out to be a significant breakthrough.
He argues that his threats of new tariffs forced Mexico into a more robust effort to stop the flow of migrants towards the US and will mitigate the southern border crisis that his administration has failed to control.
Conservatives are proclaiming the deal that staved off a building Republican revolt in the Senate as a media-confounding coup for the President's unpredictable art of the deal tactics.
In a Washington Post column, radio host Hugh Hewitt accused Trump's critics being no more able to "admit he played high-stakes poker and won a round on border security than they can admit that the president delivered a magnificent tribute to the heroes of Normandy on Thursday."
Trump stepped back from his threat to impose 5% tariffs on Mexico starting Monday that would have risen by 5% per month until they reached 25% after experiencing stiff pushback from GOP senators.
An alternative interpretation of the weekend's events — and Trump's furious propagandizing on Twitter — is that the deal with Mexico was mostly about saving presidential face.
If that is the case, the GOP is now closing ranks after senators did not hide their dismay at Trump's tariff threats — his dominant foreign policy tool — last week.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt — a self-admitted free trader and no fan of tariffs, even suggested Sunday that the drama could help resolve an even more complicated trade war against a foe that seems far less keen to accommodate Trump than Mexico.
"I think the biggest lesson here and biggest message here is now not to Mexico but to China," Blunt said on CBS "Face the Nation."
"The President is clearly willing to use tariffs and actually the President believes that tariffs are a significant, positive, economic tool."
It's not surprising that Trump faces widespread skepticism for his claims of victory, since he has a record of impulsively escalating crises, then 'solving' the problems he caused.
The President has hyped several trade deals, with South Korea, Canada and Mexico as full rewrites of existing pacts, but critics argue that he only secured cosmetic changes.
Last year, Trump proclaimed a huge new trade deal with the European Union after backing off his threats to impose new automobile tariffs. In fact, the two sides agreed to talk about an agreement that is still yet to materialize.
The President also repeatedly threatened to close the border with Mexico earlier this year if it failed to halt migrant flows, before backing down amid domestic criticism.
Trump had been warned that closing the border with Mexico, the third largest US trading partner, could cause an economic disaster for the US, hike prices Americans pay for staple products like fruit and vegetables and lead to shortages in supermarkets.
Trump claims on deal debunked
Given the paucity of detail about Friday's deal, it's hard to assess just how effective it might be.
The New York Times reported that Mexico's plan to deploy its National Guard — a far less potent force than its US equivalent — to stop migrants had already been agreed to in March. And an expansion of a program to keep asylum seekers in Mexico while their claims were processed had been announced in December, according to the paper.
Critics argued effectively that the President was trying to pull the wool over America's eyes and, far from highlighting his skills, exposed the futility of his approach.
"What the President has done is tout what, in fact, in many respects Mexico has agreed to do many months ago," Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders said.
"I think what the world is tired of and what I am tired of is a president who consistently goes to war, verbal war with our allies, whether it is Mexico, whether it is Canada," Sanders said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Another Democratic candidate, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, said that Trump had "completely overblown what he reports to have achieved."
"They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the President achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has," O'Rourke said on ABC News "This Week."
Friday's deal also does not appear to take aim at the root causes of the human exodus — violence and lawlessness in Central America — apart from vague wording on a greater US role.
Trump has already said he will cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala accusing them of doing nothing to stop the migrant crisis.
And Martha Bárcena Coqui, Mexico's ambassador to the US, refused to confirm Trump's tweeted claim that her government had agreed to immediately buy large quantities of products from "OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS."
She said on "Face the Nation" simply that trade would increase in the absence of new tariffs and under the new US/Mexico/Canada deal — indirectly contradicting the President's tweet.
Either way, Trump has a 2020 card to play
In a political sense, it may not actually matter that much whether the deal with Mexico heralds a genuine breakthrough — a sign of the warped reality of the current political age.
The President has spent the weekend claiming victory, offering new material for his conservative cheerleaders and debunking criticism of his effort as evidence as media bias.
If in a few months the border crisis is eased, Trump can deservedly co-opt a new applause line at his campaign rallies and claim vindication for his hardline border policies.
He will claim that he has honored his predictions of a fix-it presidency that is racking up deals for the American people.
But if it becomes clear that the Mexican deal was a bust, Trump can return to the political well of border politics again in the knowledge that inflammatory rhetoric about migrants and attacks on Mexico feed the agitation in his political base he needs in 2020.
"We can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don't believe that will be necessary," Trump tweeted Sunday, accusing media outlets raising questions about the deal of wanting to see America fail.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/10/politics/trump-mexico-tariffs/index.html
2019-06-10 10:44:00Z
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Six men convicted in the rape and murder of 8-year-old girl that shocked India - The Washington Post
NEW DELHI — An Indian court convicted six men for their involvement in the abduction, rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in a case that sparked a nationwide furor and inflamed tensions between Hindus and Muslims.
Prosecutors asked for the death penalty for three of those convicted. A defense lawyer said Monday that the verdict would be appealed.
India has struggled with a series of horrifying cases of rape and murder involving children in recent years, and authorities are taking increasingly harsh measures against the culprits.
In the wake of the 8-year-old’s murder last year, India passed legislation making the rape of girls under the age of 12 punishable by death.
Official statistics show that incidents of rape are increasing in India, although it is unclear how much of the rise is due to more reporting of such cases. Advocates say that the majority of rape cases remain unreported.
The case of Asifa Bano in the state of Jammu and Kashmir gained national attention both for the gruesome nature of the crime and the response it elicited from local members of India’s ruling party, some of whom protested the charges against the accused.
Early last year, Bano, who belonged to a nomadic Muslim community, went missing from a village in the district of Kathua, which is in the Hindu-dominated area of Jammu. By contrast, the Kashmir valley portion of the state has a Muslim majority.
Days later, her body was found in a forest where she would often go to tend to her family’s horses.
[An 8-year-old girl’s gang rape and murder trigger new outrage over India’s rape culture]
The investigation revealed that the girl had been sedated, gang-raped, strangled with her own scarf and her head bashed with a rock. The brutality took place over four days in a small Hindu shrine.
State prosecutor J.K. Chopra said the crime was a “barbaric act” that deserved the death penalty.
Eight men were arrested for the crime, including one juvenile whose trial will be held separately. The police charged Sanji Ram, a retired government clerk, with plotting the crime as part of a plan to rid the area of the Muslim nomads.
On Monday, three men — including Ram and one police officer — were convicted of the rape and murder while a fourth was acquitted. Three other police officers were found guilty of helping to destroy evidence of the crime.
Outrage over the murder was soon overshadowed by controversial rallies that took place in support of those accused. Two local members of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, participated in such protests. In one instance, lawyers physically tried to block police officers from filing the charges, claiming that Hindus were being unfairly targeted.
The girl’s family approached India’s Supreme Court for protection, saying they had received threats to their lives. The top court moved the trial to the neighboring state of Punjab. The proceeding began in May last year and was closed to the media.
No media was allowed into the courtroom for the verdict, and members of Bano’s family were not in attendance. Outside, there was a heavy security presence including armored vehicles and teams of police officers in case of unrest.
Tania Dutta in Pathankot, India, contributed to this report.
Read more:
India institutes death penalty for child rape in wake of 8-year-old’s brutal death
In India, it’s not easy to report on rape
She was raped at 13. Her case has been in India’s courts for 11 years — and counting.
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/six-men-convicted-in-rape-of-8-year-old-girl-that-shocked-india/2019/06/10/cde7b17c-8b5f-11e9-b162-8f6f41ec3c04_story.html
2019-06-10 10:17:07Z
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Trump raises specter of imposing 'very profitable' new tariffs on Mexico despite deal breakthrough - Fox News
Even as he again hailed his administration's last-minute, much-heralded deal on Friday with Mexico as a "successful agreement" to address illegal immigration at the southern border, President Trump on Sunday bluntly suggested he might again seek to impose punishing tariffs on Mexico if its cooperation falls short in the future.
The president and other key administration officials also sharply disputed a New York Times report claiming the Friday deal "largely" had been negotiated months ago, and hinted that not all major details of the new arrangement have yet been made public.
In its report, the Times acknowledged that Mexico's pledge to deploy up to 6,000 national guard troops to its southern border with Guatemala "was larger than their previous pledge," and that Mexico's "agreement to accelerate the Migrant Protection Protocols could help reduce what Mr. Trump calls 'catch and release' of migrants in the United States by giving the country a greater ability to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico."
U.S. officials had been working to expand the migrant program, which already has led to the return of about 10,000 people, and said Friday's agreement was a major push in that direction. Nevertheless, the Times, citing unnamed officials from Mexico and the U.S., reported that the concessions already had been hashed out in a more limited form.
WATCH: ACTING DHS SECRETARY DISPUTES NEW YORK TIMES REPORT, SAYS 'ALL OF' THE DEAL IS 'NEW'
"Another false report in the Failing @nytimes," Trump wrote. "We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done."
That might have been a reference to discussions about Mexico becoming a "safe third country," which would make it harder for asylum-seekers who pass through the country to claim refuge in the U.S. The idea, which Mexico has long opposed, was discussed during negotiations, but Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has said his country did not agree to it, even as Mexican diplomats said negotiations on the topic will continue.
And, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," insisted "all of it is new," including the agreement to dispatch around 6,000 National Guard troops — a move Mexico has described as an "acceleration."
A Mexican Army soldier near an immigration checkpoint in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, this past Saturday. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
"This is the first time we've heard anything like this kind of number of law enforcement being deployed in Mexico to address migration, not just at the southern border but also on the transportation routes to the northern border and in coordinated patrols in key areas along our southwest border," he said, adding that "people can disagree with the tactics" but that "Mexico came to the table with real proposals" that he said will be effective, if implemented.
The agreement between the U.S. and Mexico headed off a 5 percent tax on all Mexican goods that Trump had threatened to impose starting Monday. The tariffs were set to rise to 15 percent on August 1, 2019, to 20 percent on September 1, 2019, and to 25 percent on October 1, 2019.
But, Trump suggested Sunday, the threat of tariffs is not completely removed.
"Importantly, some things not mentioned in [yesterday's] press release, one in particular, were agreed upon," Trump continued. "That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!"
Democrats seeking to unseat President Trump in 2020, meanwhile, said the Times report was evidence that the administration merely was trying to save face, after Trump suddenly announced his plan for the tariffs less than two weeks ago, on May 30.
Bernie Sanders, for example, derided Trump on Sunday for purportedly picking unnecessary and economically costly fights with a variety of countries.
"I think what the world is tired of and what I am tired of is a president who consistently goes to war, verbal war with our allies, whether it is Mexico, whether it is Canada," Sanders said.
But, in a tense moment on CNN's "State of the Union," Sanders struggled when asked by host Dana Bash why he had called the situation at the southern border a "fake crisis" engineered by the White House.
"Immigration officials have arrested or encountered more than 144,000 migrants at the southern border in May, the highest monthly total in 13 years," Bash began. "Border facilities are dangerously overcrowded; migrants are actually standing on toilets to get space to breathe. How is that not a crisis?"
Sanders responded that the president has been "demonizing" immigrants.
Beto O'Rourke, in a separate interview, conceded only that Trump may have helped accelerate the implementation of a previously existing arrangement.
"I think the president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made and, in some case, months ago," O'Rourke said on ABC News’ "This Week." "They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has."
Mexican officials, meanwhile, insisted that they would remain engaged in active negotiations with the Trump administration.
"We want to continue to work with the U.S. very closely on the different challenges that we have together, and one urgent one at this moment is immigration," Mexican diplomat Martha Barcena said Sunday.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
She told CBS News' "Face the Nation" that the countries' "joint declaration of principles... gives us the base for the road map that we have to follow in the incoming months on immigration and cooperation on asylum issues and development in Central America."
Barcena added that the U.S. wanted to see the number of migrants crossing the border to return to levels seen in 2018.
Fox News' Bret Baier, Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-very-profitable-tariffs-mexico-deal-breakthrough
2019-06-10 09:44:42Z
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'Moscow Rules': How The CIA Operated Under The Watchful Eye Of The KGB - NPR
The Moscow Rules looks at how CIA officers evaded the suffocating security environment during the Soviet era. Courtesy of PublicAffairs hide caption
As a young government employee in 1975, Marti Peterson was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She loved the social scene and it earned her a nickname.
"I was known as 'Party Marti' because I was out socializing with the Marine guards, with younger secretaries, the single, social life," Peterson said. "We did drink our share of Carlsberg beer."
Peterson was actually with the CIA — the first woman officer sent to Moscow. Her "cover" was to be a fun-loving clerical worker, someone Soviet security could safely ignore as it obsessively tracked actual and suspected CIA officers.
Her mission was to handle one of the most valuable Soviet sources the CIA had ever cultivated, a Foreign Ministry worker who saw the incoming cables from every Soviet embassy in the world.
"So we got a huge insight into what the Soviets were planning, what their intentions were and what their negotiating points were before we even sat down with them," she said.
Peterson and her source — code name TRIGON — communicated by dead drops, in the dead of night, often at a Moscow park.
She would place a fake log with messages inside. He would show up an hour later and drop a rusty can or an old, oily glove. Tucked inside was film of top secret documents he'd photographed with a miniature camera.
Peterson never met him. And she never saw those photos — but U.S. presidents did.
"We just knew that we were picking up gold off the street," said Peterson, now retired and living in Wilmington, N.C.
Special rules for Moscow
Jonna and Tony Mendez each served as chief of disguise at the CIA during their long careers at the spy agency. Much of their work involved working with CIA officers in Moscow, as detailed in their new book, The Moscow Rules. Courtesy of PublicAffairs hide caption
This is just one of many spy tales in a new book, The Moscow Rules, by Tony and Jonna Mendez, a couple who both had long careers at the CIA.
Jonna spelled out some of those rules:
"You are never alone. Don't trust anyone. Not the little lady in the restroom who's sweeping out the stalls. Not the flower girl in the corner. You just didn't trust anyone in Moscow," she said.
The CIA considered it too risky to recruit Soviet citizens inside the communist country. They were recruited when they were abroad, and when they returned to the Soviet Union, communication was never direct.
"In Moscow for many, many years, we never met face-to-face because we thought it was too dangerous," she added.
Chiefs of disguise
At separate points, Tony and Jonna Mendez each served as chief of disguise at the CIA. They were part of the Office of Technical Services.
"We were the equivalent of 'Q' in the James Bond movies," she said.
Tony Mendez, who died in January, is best-known for a previous book he wrote, Argo, which became the Oscar-winning movie of the same name. Ben Affleck portrayed Mendez, who guided trapped American diplomats out of revolutionary Iran in 1980.
The couple was never based in Moscow, but traveled there to help CIA officers operate in the city.
Jonna Mendez, the former chief of disguise at the CIA, explains how to hide one's identity.
YouTubeTracking CIA officers
The main Soviet security agency, then known as the KGB, made that as difficult as possible, said Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB officer who became a critic of the Soviet system. He now lives outside Washington, D.C.
"The Soviet KGB was a strong, powerful organization," said Kalugin, who was one of its top officers in a nearly 30-year career.
To escape KGB surveillance, Tony Mendez developed one technique called "disguise on the run."
"He had started as a businessman in a raincoat and a briefcase," said Jonna Mendez. He turned the raincoat inside out, and it became a pink, woman's overcoat. He pulled up his pant legs, revealing black stockings. He put on a mask and a wig of an elderly woman. The briefcase sprouted wheels.
In just 45 seconds, "he ended up [as] an old woman in a pink coat wearing a shawl with gray hair coming out, pushing a grocery cart. And it was just kind of an amazing transformation," she said.
Tony Mendez worked with some of Hollywood top makeup artists to refine his methods of deception and disguise.
Jonna Mendez would develop the tiny roles of film provided by the agency's Soviet spies who used the CIA's miniature cameras hidden in items like pens or lipstick cases.
"You'd think about the people that had risked their lives to get that information on film and you'd just be so careful," she recalled. "Every time you did it, I mean, your heart would just pound."
Their book looks at the Soviet era, and some of the spycraft may be a bit dated.
But the espionage game carries on, Oleg Kalugin said. Many years ago, he was Vladimir Putin's boss at the KGB, and said Putin's background is essential to understanding today's Russia.
"Putin brought back some of the worst sides of the Soviet regime," said Kalugin, now 84. "As a former KGB guy, his psychology is based on the old traditions of the Soviet system."
A source is uncovered
Speaking of the Soviet system, whatever happened to "Party Marti" Peterson and the Soviet source she handled?
After almost two years in Moscow, Peterson went to the bridge one night in the summer of 1977 and hid a package for him. It included money, emerald jewelry and a new camera.
CIA officer Marti Peterson is apprehended by Soviet security officers in 1977 in Moscow after she placed a package for her Soviet source. Peterson didn't know it at the time, but the source, one of the most valuable the CIA had ever cultivated in the Soviet Union, had been uncovered and killed himself three weeks earlier. H. Keith Melton Collection at the International Spy Museum hide caption
As she walked away, she was "accosted by these three men who grabbed me," she said. "They knew exactly where the package was and there was a whole van full of people in suits."
They were KGB, and they took Peterson to their notorious headquarters in central Moscow, Lubyanka.
She learned that her source TRIGON — whose real name was Alexandar Ogorodnik — had been uncovered by Soviet security three weeks earlier.
When confronted, Ogorodnik said he would write a confession — but only with his own pen.
"This pen contained a natural poison the CIA had provided to him, fulfilling his request to have a way to commit suicide, which he did at that time," said Peterson.
After she was detained, CIA officer Marti Peterson was taken to the KGB headquarters, Lubyanka, in central Moscow. She was held for four hours, and kicked out of the Soviet Union the next day. She went on to work another 26 years for the CIA. H. Keith Melton Collection at the International Spy Museum hide caption
Peterson was kicked out of the Soviet Union the next day. But she worked another 26 years with the CIA before retiring, and now lives in Wilmington, N.C.
Before all these stories could be published in The Moscow Rules, Tony and Jonna Mendez had to submit their manuscript to the CIA for review. It's a lengthy process that came as Tony's health was declining from Parkinson's disease.
The CIA "knew that Tony was not well," Jonna Mendez said. "I sent a note in, saying, 'Could you consider pulling our manuscript and putting it on the top of your pile. Because I'd really like for him to know it's OK.' "
The CIA gave its approval this past January. The next day, Tony Mendez died.
Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/10/724099134/moscow-rules-how-the-cia-operated-under-the-watchful-eye-of-the-kgb
2019-06-10 09:03:00Z
CAIiEMFEBuFwKNb5rgrMww4q3EIqFggEKg4IACoGCAow9vBNMK3UCDCvpUk
Hong Kong protests: Leader Carrie Lam defiant on extradition plan - BBC News - BBC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMSLFd7af7c
2019-06-10 09:31:59Z
52780310542261
Trump raises specter of imposing 'very profitable' new tariffs on Mexico despite deal breakthrough - Fox News
Even as he again hailed his administration's last-minute, much-heralded deal on Friday with Mexico as a "successful agreement" to address illegal immigration at the southern border, President Trump on Sunday bluntly suggested he might again seek to impose punishing tariffs on Mexico if its cooperation falls short in the future.
The president and other key administration officials also sharply disputed a New York Times report claiming the Friday deal "largely" had been negotiated months ago, and hinted that not all major details of the new arrangement have yet been made public.
In its report, the Times acknowledged that Mexico's pledge to deploy up to 6,000 national guard troops to its southern border with Guatemala "was larger than their previous pledge," and that Mexico's "agreement to accelerate the Migrant Protection Protocols could help reduce what Mr. Trump calls 'catch and release' of migrants in the United States by giving the country a greater ability to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico."
U.S. officials had been working to expand the migrant program, which already has led to the return of about 10,000 people, and said Friday's agreement was a major push in that direction. Nevertheless, the Times, citing unnamed officials from Mexico and the U.S., reported that the concessions already had been hashed out in a more limited form.
WATCH: ACTING DHS SECRETARY DISPUTES NEW YORK TIMES REPORT, SAYS 'ALL OF' THE DEAL IS 'NEW'
"Another false report in the Failing @nytimes," Trump wrote. "We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done."
That might have been a reference to discussions about Mexico becoming a "safe third country," which would make it harder for asylum-seekers who pass through the country to claim refuge in the U.S. The idea, which Mexico has long opposed, was discussed during negotiations, but Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has said his country did not agree to it, even as Mexican diplomats said negotiations on the topic will continue.
And, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," insisted "all of it is new," including the agreement to dispatch around 6,000 National Guard troops — a move Mexico has described as an "acceleration."
A Mexican Army soldier near an immigration checkpoint in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, this past Saturday. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
"This is the first time we've heard anything like this kind of number of law enforcement being deployed in Mexico to address migration, not just at the southern border but also on the transportation routes to the northern border and in coordinated patrols in key areas along our southwest border," he said, adding that "people can disagree with the tactics" but that "Mexico came to the table with real proposals" that he said will be effective, if implemented.
The agreement between the U.S. and Mexico headed off a 5 percent tax on all Mexican goods that Trump had threatened to impose starting Monday. The tariffs were set to rise to 15 percent on August 1, 2019, to 20 percent on September 1, 2019, and to 25 percent on October 1, 2019.
But, Trump suggested Sunday, the threat of tariffs is not completely removed.
"Importantly, some things not mentioned in [yesterday's] press release, one in particular, were agreed upon," Trump continued. "That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!"
Democrats seeking to unseat President Trump in 2020, meanwhile, said the Times report was evidence that the administration merely was trying to save face, after Trump suddenly announced his plan for the tariffs less than two weeks ago, on May 30.
Bernie Sanders, for example, derided Trump on Sunday for purportedly picking unnecessary and economically costly fights with a variety of countries.
"I think what the world is tired of and what I am tired of is a president who consistently goes to war, verbal war with our allies, whether it is Mexico, whether it is Canada," Sanders said.
But, in a tense moment on CNN's "State of the Union," Sanders struggled when asked by host Dana Bash why he had called the situation at the southern border a "fake crisis" engineered by the White House.
"Immigration officials have arrested or encountered more than 144,000 migrants at the southern border in May, the highest monthly total in 13 years," Bash began. "Border facilities are dangerously overcrowded; migrants are actually standing on toilets to get space to breathe. How is that not a crisis?"
Sanders responded that the president has been "demonizing" immigrants.
Beto O'Rourke, in a separate interview, conceded only that Trump may have helped accelerate the implementation of a previously existing arrangement.
"I think the president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made and, in some case, months ago," O'Rourke said on ABC News’ "This Week." "They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has."
Mexican officials, meanwhile, insisted that they would remain engaged in active negotiations with the Trump administration.
"We want to continue to work with the U.S. very closely on the different challenges that we have together, and one urgent one at this moment is immigration," Mexican diplomat Martha Barcena said Sunday.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
She told CBS News' "Face the Nation" that the countries' "joint declaration of principles... gives us the base for the road map that we have to follow in the incoming months on immigration and cooperation on asylum issues and development in Central America."
Barcena added that the U.S. wanted to see the number of migrants crossing the border to return to levels seen in 2018.
Fox News' Bret Baier, Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-very-profitable-tariffs-mexico-deal-breakthrough
2019-06-10 08:44:29Z
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