Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rebuked calls by Republican lawmakers to send US troops into Mexican territory after the killing of two Americans in a border city across the river from Texas.
(Bloomberg) — Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rebuked calls by Republican lawmakers to send US troops into Mexican territory after the killing of two Americans in a border city across the river from Texas.
AMLO, as the president is known, said Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will meet US officials Monday to discuss joint efforts to deal with the fentanyl crisis and that Ebrard would “respond directly” to the Republican pitch. AMLO acknowledged that President Joe Biden hasn’t shown any indication of using US troops in Mexico.
“They have the arrogance to say that if we don’t fight crime in Mexico, they’re going to pass an initiative in Congress so the armed forces of the US intervene in our territory,” AMLO said during his morning press conference on Friday. “We won’t allow it. And not only are we not going to allow it, we’re denouncing it.”
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AMLO said that Ebrard would inform Mexicans and other Latin Americans living in the US about any potential initiative and encourage them to vote against Republicans were it to move forward. It was the second consecutive day AMLO railed against the Republican plan, which he called an attack on Mexico’s sovereignty.
The dispute with Republicans comes after a group of four Americans traveling to Mexico last week were kidnapped, allegedly by drug cartel members. Two among the Americans, who traveled to the border city of Matamoros for one of them to have a medical procedure, were killed. The slayings spurred Republicans to intensify pressure on the Biden administration to crack down on drug gangs active around the US-Mexico border.
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