A leading Mexican presidential candidate has rejected paying for President Trump’s border wall and ripped the administration as “insulting and revolting.”
Ricardo Anaya Cortes made his comments during a weekend trip to Los Angeles where he sided with illegal immigrants fighting the administration’s deportations.
Hoy me reuní con Janet Napolitano, Presidenta de la Universidad de California. Platicamos sobre la importancia de apoyar a los dreamers y concordamos en que los migrantes mexicanos merecen respeto. pic.twitter.com/g4ZmtHMU7S
— RicardoAnayaC (@RicardoAnayaC) March 3, 2018
He also met with Janet Napolitano, former President Obama’s first secretary of Homeland Security and current president of the University of California. The two talked about “supporting the dreamers and agreed that Mexican migrants deserve respect,” he tweeted.
According to a translation from Kausha Luna of the Center for Immigration Studies, Anaya slammed current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto for considering a visit by Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
He took exception to U.S. immigration under Trump and said that “the best” Mexico has to offer has been punished.
“After Donald Trump had been insulting, and revolting at the best that Mexico has in the United States, they dared to roll out a red carpet to receive him in Los Pinos, as if he were a head of state,” said Cortes, who is running on the For Mexico in Front coalition ticket, which includes the National Action Party (PAN), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the Citizens’ Movement (MC).
While meeting in Los Angeles over the weekend, he also promised to support Mexicans in the United States if elected, a pledge the leading Mexican presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has also made.
“I want to ask you, with my heart in my hand, that every time you hear an aggressive or denigrating expression, remember that there, in Mexico, you are the heroes of the country, the brave, the enterprising, the generous, those who dared to cross the border to give their family a better future. Do not you forget that you are not alone … all of Mexico is with you and when I am president I will always be on your side,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
