Roberta Jacobson will resign from her post as U.S. ambassador to Mexico after just over two years on the job, she announced Thursday.
Her last day will be May 5, according to The New York Times. The Trump administration has not named a successor.
In a statement on Twitter, Jacobson said confirmed the news and said that the ambassadorship ― her most recent role in a 31-year career with the U.S. State Department ― has been “an honor and a pleasure.”
She is one of the department’s most experienced officials and the latest to depart under the Trump administration, which continues to lose top staffers. The State Department’s third-ranking official, Tom Shannon, announced his departure last month.
“This decision is all the more difficult because of my profound belief in the importance of the U.S.-Mexico relationship and knowledge that it is at a crucial moment,” Jacobson said in a memo circulated to U.S. Embassy staff in Mexico and provided to the Times.
Former President Barack Obama confirmed Jacobson in April 2016 after senators, including Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), delayed her nomination for months, objecting to her support for the Obama administration’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba.
U.S. relations with Mexico have been strained under President Donald Trump. Most recently, a combative phone call with Trump prompted Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to scrap a planned meeting. The two leaders discussed Trump’s promised border wall, disagreeing over which side they would say would foot the bill, the Washington Post reported.
Plans to begin construction inched forward this week, when a California judge decided the president had the authority to waive environmental regulations and other hurdles that stood in the way of the wall. A source of funding, however, has not been secured.
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