Early this morning President Trump tweeted that the US and Mexico have a “fully signed and documented” but secret immigration deal that still needs a vote by Mexico’s legislature. However, as Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman write in “No Secret Immigration Deal Exists With U.S., Mexico’s Foreign Minister Says” in the New York Times this morning, Trump wasn’t telling the truth. Shear and Haberman write that in a news conference this morning, Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said:
that the United States continued to push for a third safe country agreement, but said that Mexico was proposing a regional asylum agreement, one that would review the flow of migrants across Mexico and Central America, with a number of different countries, including Panama and Brazil.
In other words, the two sides do not agree and there is no deal.
Every time the press quotes Trump’s notable tweets, they should say that because it’s Trump the tweet is most likely bogus. Anything else is a disservice to their readers. Almost all the news reporting we saw about this before Mexico’s foreign minister spoke, was news reporting that primarily contained disinformation.