How Ted Cruz win in SC hurt US-Mexico relations

WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz often tells supporters about his US Supreme Court win against the federal government in 2008, defending Texas’ right to execute a Mexican man for murder, as evidence of his conservative and anti-establishment credentials.

But there is one part of the story that goes untold.

The Medellin v Texas case, decided when Cruz was the state’s solicitor general, set the stage for years of diplomatic tension between the United States and its southern neighbor.

Mexico has publicly protested US executions of its citizens over the years, but interviews with diplomats and reviews of official Mexican government communiqués reveal that the turmoil caused by the Medellin case ran deeper, coming up at nearly every meeting between the United States and Mexico and leading to an official protest to the United Nations Security Council in 2014.

Given the level of frustration, Cruz’s role in the court battle raises questions about US-Mexico relations if he were to beat billionaire Donald Trump to the Republican nomination and win the US presidential election in November.

"I think relations would be complicated with a President Cruz," said Sergio Alcocer, who was Mexico’s deputy foreign minister responsible for North America between 2012-2015.

Alcocer praised Cruz as intelligent and pragmatic but said the senator was too inflexible on issues like immigration and the death penalty.

"Cruz takes certain positions that are very clearly defined. And he’s much more conservative, much more dogmatic than Trump," Alcocer said.

A Cruz campaign official did not respond to requests for comment.

In Mexico City, a foreign ministry spokesman said Mexico had no preference among the US presidential candidates and would not comment on the election.

In the Medellin case, Cruz defended the death sentence a Texas court imposed on Mexican citizen Jose Ernesto Medellin after he was convicted in 1994 for his role in the gang rape and strangling of two teenage girls in a Houston park.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice of the United Nations ruled that Texas and other states had violated the Vienna Convention by failing to notify Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row of their right to contact the Mexican consulate after arrest.

President George W Bush ordered Texas and other states to review the sentences.

Cruz argued that, while the United States had submitted to the international court’s decisions, the White House could not implement an international agreement that required states to change their court procedures without action by Congress.

The Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 decision.

Winning the case raised Cruz’s profile in conservative circles.

He has recently said he would appoint justices who would narrowly interpret the Constitution - as he did in the Medellin case - a crucial talking point in the election following the death of Supreme Court conservative icon Antonin