US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that a “landmark” asylum agreement has been reached with Guatemala, as the US ratchets up pressure on its southern neighbors to stem the flow of migrants toward its border.
Guatemala would now be considered a “safe third country,” meaning that US-bound migrants who enter Guatemala would be required to seek asylum there instead, the White House said.
However, the US Department of Homeland Security said that the term did not appear in the text agreed on Friday, of which few details were initially known.
Photo: AP
“This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business,” Trump said, referring to the “bad people” who have trafficked thousands of migrants through Mexico to the southern US border.
The agreement comes days after Trump threatened tough retaliation against the small Central American nation if it did not sign on to an asylum deal — threatening a travel ban, tariffs, remittance fees or “all of the above.”
The agreement, signed in the Oval Office by Guatemalan Minister of the Interior Enrique Degenhart and US Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, would apply to Salvadoran or Honduran migrants passing through Guatemala toward the US, if not others.
Their asylum claims should now be filed in Guatemala, McAleenan said.
If Central American migrants instead “make a journey all the way to the US border, they would be removable back to Guatemala if they want to seek asylum,” he said.
The deal is expected to be up and running next month, McAleenan added.
US authorities have recorded a dramatic rise in detentions of migrants over the past year, many of whom were fleeing chronic poverty and gruesome gang violence in Central America.
It was not immediately clear how the agreement would jibe with a provision of Guatemala’s constitutional court, which blocked the idea of a deal making Guatemala a “safe third country” for asylum requests.
McAleenan conceded that the term “is a colloquialism” and is not in the text itself.
A top US Democrat assailed the deal as “cruel and immoral,” as well as illegal, saying that Guatemala lacks sufficient asylum and protection processes.
“Simply put, Guatemala is not a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers, as the law requires,” House Committee on Foreign Affairs chairman Eliot Engel said, adding that he expects the “counterproductive” deal to be challenged in the courts.
The non-governmental organization Refugees International called the agreement “very alarming” and said it would put “some of the most vulnerable people in Central America in grave danger,” because Guatemala is not safe for refugees and asylum seekers, the group’s president Eric Schwartz said.
McAleenan said that Guatemala has been undergoing an “evolution” in providing asylum protection.
“Guatemala has had a significant reduction in their murder rate and violent crime rate in the last five years,” he added. “We expect that to continue.”
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