Mexico Replaces Its Two Top Envoys to the U.S. Due to ‘Hostile Climate’

Expressing concerns about an increasingly “hostile climate” against its people, Mexico on Tuesday announced the sudden replacement of two of its top diplomats to the U.S.

Paulo Carreño — a communications official in the office of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto — was named Deputy Foreign Minister for North America, while the Mexican consul in Los Angeles, Carlos Sada, has been appointed his country’s ambassador to the U.S., pending Senate approval, Reuters reports.

Mexico’s leaders have expressed alarm at the statements of U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has repeatedly targeted his country’s southern neighbor and said, if elected, he will make Mexico pay for a border wall.

“This rhetoric has made it clear that we have to act in a different way,” Reuters quoted Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu as saying, “so that this tendency being generated doesn’t damage the bilateral relationship.”

[Reuters]