The Biden administration is investigating Ken Salazar, a former senator and Secretary of the Interior, to serve as US ambassador to Mexico, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: President Biden is about to publicly name a list of ambassadors. When considering a former senatorial fellow for Mexico City, he acknowledges that the crisis at the border requires both diplomatic and political skills to resolve.
Driving the news: Biden has started calling some of his potential ambassadors to offer them foreign broadcasts, people familiar with the matter say.
- The process is still in its early stages and not everyone who will eventually get an ambassadorship has been contacted, a trusted person told Axios.
- “The president has not made a decision on the vast majority of his ambassadorial appointments,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday.
Go deeper: Salazar, who describes himself as a “12th generation son of the Southwest,” was elected to the Senate in 2004 and resigned to become President Obama’s first Secretary of the Interior.
- When he left the Home Affairs department in 2013, he joined the international law firm WilmerHale, where he still works.
- During the campaign, the 66-year-old co-chaired Biden’s Latino leadership committee.
The big picture: On immigration, Biden takes a different approach from President Trump, both in terms of the border itself and its relationship with the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico.
- Trump threatened López Obrador with closing Mexico’s northern border to the United States and demanded that Mexico deploy troops on the southern border to prevent Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico on their way to the US.
- Trump and López Obrador eventually agreed to the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their applications were processed in the US.
In one of his first acts as president, Biden was suspended the MPP and has tried to change the tone of the Mexican government.
- López Obrador has placed the blame for the border crisis on Biden’s feet: “The expectation was raised that there would be better treatment of migrants in President Biden’s government,” he said last month.
- “This has led Central American migrants, and also from our country, to want to cross the border with the idea that it is easier to do so.”
- Biden has continued to use a Trump-era public health order to quickly return to Mexican migrant adults and some families trying to cross the border.
Flashback: President Obama’s last ambassador to Mexico, Roberta Jacobson, came out of retirement to serve as Biden’s border guard.
- She announced last week that she will be leaving her post for the next few days.