Op-ed: The Mexican Consul Must Leave



A Mexican envoy is violating his diplomatic privileges and immunities by leading a partisan political attack against Governor Ron DeSantis and a new Florida anti-human smuggling law.


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By Phillip Linderman on October 2, 2023



It is past time for the U.S. State Department to declare the Mexican Consul Juan Sabines persona non grata and ask him to leave the country for behavior inconsistent with his diplomatic status.

Consul in Orlando, Florida, Señor Sabines has clearly crossed a line, publicly denouncing Governor Ron DeSantis and condemning Florida’s new statute criminalizing the transportation of illegal migrants into the state. There should be consequences.

It makes no difference that Sabines is advocating for the rights of an arrested Mexican national, Raquel Lopez Aguilar, who is himself unlawfully in the U.S. and now facing felony charges for transporting illegal migrants into Florida.

The recognized consular duties of Sabines include helping Lopez Aguilar hire a lawyer, relaying messages to the accused’s family, and keeping his foreign ministry in Mexico informed on the case.

Sabines’s duties definitely do not include going to the press to publicly denounce DeSantis as being “anti-immigrant” and labeling the Florida statute “racist”.

His consular immunities and privileges do not entitle him to act as just another open-border Democrat politician in the Florida state legislature.

Sabines’s rhetoric speaks for itself. The envoy stated before the media: “I ask myself again, could it not have been because [Lopez Aguilar] was brown [that he was arrested]? Because this law is evidently racist. I don't know if what has happened to a Mexican immigrant would have happened to a blond, blue-eyed Argentinian, I highly doubt it.”

Since when are Mexican diplomats allowed to mau-mau the governor and law enforcement authorities in Florida?


https://cis.org/Linderman/Oped-Mexic...sul-Must-Leave