PRO-EU party co-founder joins Liberal Democrats

A prominent British lawmaker who quit the Labour Party to try to form a new pro-european political force has moved on again, this time joining the centrist Liberal Democrats.

Chuka Umunna’s move is the latest sign of Brexit-driven cracks in Britain’s established political order.

Umunna and 10 other lawmakers left Labour and the Conservatives in February to set up the Change UK party. It then split after poor results in European Parliament elections last month.

Umunna said Friday that he had “vastly underestimated” how hard it is to start a new political party. He said the Liberal Democrats were best placed to stop Brexit.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s immigration chief presented his resignation Friday and the country’s prisons director was swiftly nominated to replace him, as the country embarks on a crackdown on irregular migration through its territory in response to U.S. pressure.

The National Immigration Institute said in a brief statement that Tonatiuh Guillén thanked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the opportunity to serve the country, but it did not give a reason for why he presented his resignation.

“I thank Tonatiuh very much. He helped in the beginning of this government,” López Obrador told reporters. “Now I am proposing as his substitute Francisco Garduño.”

Guillén is a sociologist and former academic at the prestigious Colegio de la Frontera Norte university in Tijuana. Garduño holds a law doctorate and has served as commissioner of Mexico’s penitentiary system. On Tuesday he was named to a five-person team responsible for implementing Mexico’s immigration plan reached in negotiations with Washington.

Guillén had largely remained out of the public eye during the recent tensions with the United States, when President Donald Trump threatened stiff tariffs on all imports from Mexico if the country didn’t do more on immigration. Trump suspended the tariffs late last week.

Mexico’s plan to slow migration has been coordinated by Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

Earlier Friday, López Obrador acknowledged that controls are lax at dozens of crossings at the country’s southern border and vowed to correct the situation.

“We have identified 68 crossings like that, and in all of them there will be oversight,” López Obrador said at a morning news conference, responding to questioning about checkpoints where cross-border traffic was seen coming and going freely.