Andrés Manuel López Obrador's new Mexican government said there was no agreement with the US that would allow asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are settled after the reports indicated Saturday that such an agreement had been reached.

The Saturday, The Washington Post announced that an agreement between the Trump and Obrador administrations would launch a policy of "Staying in Mexico" to replace the current system – often called derisory "handing over to water" – allowing migrants to stay in the United States while their cases go to court, a process that can take years.

"For now, we have accepted this policy of staying in Mexico," Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico's interior minister, told the post. She described politics as a short-term solution, while "the medium and long-term solution is that people do not migrate".

But later, Sánchez said: "There is no agreement between the new Mexican government and the US government." Sánchez, who will take up the post of chief of the Obrador's domestic policy when he took office on 1 December, has not explained the reason for the conflicting statements.

President Donald Trump had appeared to extol the agreement in tweets, stating: "Migrants on the southern border will not be allowed to enter the United States before their claims are individually approved by a court."

"We will only allow those who enter our country legally.Other than that, our very strong policy is that of capture and detention.No" loosening "in the United States," tweeted the president on Saturday. He repeated his threat to close the US-Mexican border if "necessary".

"It is impossible for the United States, after decades of abuse, to endure this costly and dangerous situation any longer!" he added.

Sánchez said migrants also pose a major headache for Mexico.

"Mexico has open arms and everything else, but imagine a caravan after another.This would be a problem for us as well," she told La Poste.

Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Med, said Sunday that he did not support an agreement "Stay in Mexico" "because it is not the law".

"They should be allowed to come in and ask for asylum, that's the law," said Cummings, who is expected to chair the Oversight Committee when his party takes control of the House of Representatives in January, said to the host of "Meet the Press," Chuck Todd.

"I think we have a system that has been operating for a long time, this president is coming in, he wants to change it, it depends on him, but now Congress needs to stand up and hopefully he will," he said. Cummings.

Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, said on Twitter that US and Mexican officials were hoping that a "stay in Mexico" policy could deter migrants from migrating. 39, Central America fleeing gang violence and poverty seeking asylum in the United States

"This is Trump's most recent measure to deter asylum seekers from going to the border," he said. Said Leutert. "The idea is to remove the opportunity to live and work in the United States during the processing of cases.We hope that asylum seekers will no longer want to live at MX for months or years and not will not come. "

She said the policy, if passed, would likely reduce the number of asylum seekers, but warned that she could persuade other people to try to illegally cross the border, without being detected.

About 5,000 migrants from Central America came to Tijuana, a city of 1.6 million inhabitants located across the California border, as part of a caravan in from Honduras then from Guatemala and Mexico. A large number of migrants fleeing poverty, corruption and violence in their country of origin.

The mayor of Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastelum, said Friday a humanitarian crisis and many residents of his city protested against the presence of migrants while Tijuana is struggling to manage his arrival. Most of them camp in a sports complex where local churches and charities help them with the help of Mexican government agencies.

Contribute: The Associated Press

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