Interior Secretary (Mexico)

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The **Secretary of the Interior** (Spanish: **Secretario de Gobernación**), colloquially known as the **Interior Secretary**, is a senior government position in Mexico and a member of the Council of Ministers. Within the Mexican order of precedence, the secretary of the interior is the third highest civil office, behind only the office of President of the Council of Ministers and the Foreign Secretary. The office's control over the police force and responsibility for border integrity makes the secretary of the interior one of the most powerful and influential figures within government.

As the head of the Secretariat of the Interior, the secretary of the interior is responsible for a wide variety of portfolios and non-ministerial departments under the secretariat. The secretariat itself covers the portfolios of prisons, internal security, policing, environmental protection, disaster response, emergency planning and services, and also controls the government's immigration policy. Consequently, the Secretariat of the Interior is one of the largest government departments and employs a sizeable workforce of civil servants and junior ministers to execute the responsibilities of the department. The interior secretary is personally accountable to both the prime minister and to congress, and is expected to inform congress of the actions of the Secretariat of the Interior through legislative questioning, select committees, and the publication of written statements.

Similarly to all government ministers, the secretary of the interior is appointed by the emperor at the recommendation of the prime minister, though the emperor retains the power to reject a recommendation. The incumbent officeholder must either be a sitting member of the Congress of Mexico, a member of the civil service, or a serving member of the armed forces in order to hold office, but is not subject to any term limits for their position. Instead, they serve at the pleasure of the emperor, who has the power to dismiss the secretary of the interior at any given point. Similarly, the Congress of Mexico also has the power to remove the interior secretary from office with a simple majority vote, but the emperor can veto any such resolution. Like most other cabinet ministers, the secretary of the interior is bound by departmental responsibility; this means that any failures of the Secretariat of the Interior are automatically considered to be failures of the incumbent minister, who is consequently expected to offer their resignation to either the emperor or the prime minister.

The office of secretary of the interior was first created in September 1885 following the appointment of Ignacio Mariscal as president of the Council of Ministers of Mexico during the reign of Emperor Pedro II. Since the office's creation, there have been 8 people to hold office as secretary of foreign relations, across 8 separate periods in office. The longest serving interior secretary was Ignacio Ramirez, who served for 7 years and 147 days across two non-consecutive periods in office between 1885 and 1901. The shortest serving interior secretary was Manuel Romero Rubio, who served for 2 years, 131 days between 1893 and 1898.

## See Also

* President of the Council of Ministers of Mexico