WASHINGTON.— US border agents rented buses in Guatemala last January to transport hundreds of Honduran migrants back to the border with Honduras, using unauthorized federal funds for this illegal operation and without ensuring the safety of those migrants.
This is warned by a report from the Democratic bench of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, published by Senator Bob Menéndez, who demands explanations from the State Department where the funds came from.
The illegal operation, discovered by Democratic advisers, also violated agreements signed between the departments of State and National Security, because federal agents can provide advice to the police on anti-narcotics matters, but they
are strictly prohibited from being involved in police operations abroad.
[First migrant caravan of 2020 leaves Honduras for the US]
The matter is serious because, although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, for its acronym in English), has migratory cooperation agreements with Central America,
this would be the first time that its agents participate directly on foreign soil in the deportation of migrants bound for to this country.
According to the report, advanced to The Wall Street Journal newspaper, agents from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), were deployed to the border between Guatemala and Honduras on January 15, and next to the Guatemalan police prevented a caravan of hundreds of Honduran migrants from crossing.
With the help of agents from the Division of Ports, Airports and Border Posts (DIPRAFRONT), CBP agents participated in the secret operation near the town of Corinto, on the border with Honduras.
There, agents rented three buses, detained and processed an unknown number of migrants,
and dispatched them back to the border with Honduras.
[Hundreds of Hondurans cross Guatemala to the US A migrant dies on the journey in the middle of the pandemic]
None of the buses had logos identifying DHS, CBP or DIPRAFRONT, and it is unknown if the Honduran migrants were informed about their rights in Guatemala, or if they had access to the asylum process before being deported.
The operation was improvised
, the agents did not implement protocols to protect the security or human rights of the migrants
and, in addition, they divided the migrants into groups of men, on the one hand, and children and women, on the other, according to the report.
DHS could not say if there was a separation of families, how many children were without the company of adults, or what measures it took to reunify families that have been separated, the report said.
By failing to protect the human rights of children, refugees and potential asylum seekers, DHS "may have contributed to new incidents of family separation" and facilitated the forced return of refugees to risky situations, the document said.
The separation of migrant families was the result of pressure from the Trump Administration
Oct. 7, 202000: 54
Without proper protocols, DHS also exposed the US government to "possible complicity" in violating international agreements of 1951 and 1984, respectively, on the treatment of refugees and the prevention of torture, he added.
Questioned by Democrats in January, both the State Department and DHS eventually acknowledged that CBP agents "exceeded their authority" to only provide training to local police.
However, the State Department first denied that the Corinto incident had occurred.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor CBP are authorized to act as immigration police in Latin America, and it is time for Congress to “get involved again to put a stop to the deranged anti-immigrant agenda” of President Donald Trump. Menendez stated.
Menéndez, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to the State Department Inspector General seeking answers to the scandal, which came to light a few days after a caravan of Venezuelans broke up in Guatemala. 3,000 Honduran migrants.
In this October 2, 2020 photo, Wilmer Chávez, a 33-year-old migrant who uses a wheelchair, receives help getting into the back of a freight truck carrying migrants in Río Dulce, Guatemala.
A new caravan with some 2,000 migrants left neighboring Honduras in hopes of reaching the United States.
(AP Photo / Moisés Castillo) AP
Experts consulted by Noticias Telemundo agreed that the operation apparently violated the agreement between the State and National Security departments, which stipulated the limits on the use of funds, but also international law by not providing assistance to asylum seekers.
Eric Olson, Washington policy director for the Seattle International Foundation, said the report is "deeply disturbing" because it makes clear that neither the State Department nor DHS had adequate oversight protocols in place.
"By law, the US has an obligation to offer assistance to asylum seekers, and if it did not do so, as is alleged in this report, that is a very serious problem," he said.
"It seems strange to me that an agency of the United States government is getting involved in immigration control activities in another sovereign country, which seems very different from its assigned task of advising the national government," said Andrew Selee, president of the Institute of Migration Policy.
DHS has not reacted to the report, which has also sounded weapons among groups that defend human rights and migrants, who have been warning for years about the situation of insecurity in Central America.
About 3,000 Central American migrants arrive in Guatemala on their way to the United States.
Oct. 3, 202001: 27
On the other hand, the report highlighted that, on January 14, the then Undersecretary of National Security, Chad Wolf, participated in the inauguration of the Guatemalan President, Alejandro Giammattei, and met privately with him to discuss the need to reduce illegal emigration.
[Alejandro Giammattei, new president of Guatemala, faces the migration challenge]
Already in Washington, the report continued, Wolf told conservative Fox Radio that, compared to the migrant caravans of 2018, the US has not only signed migration agreements with Mexico, and the countries of the "Northern Triangle" -Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador-, but the CBP has also deployed “tactical agents in Guatemala”.
Apparently, the Guatemalan immigration authorities were unaware of the CBP's secret operation, the Guatemalan government's head of migration affairs, Eduardo Hernández, told the press.
DHS has had a presence in Mexico, collecting biometric information from detained migrants in that country, and also throughout Central America, to offer training in the fight against illegal emigration.
Yielding to political pressure, the Trump Administration last April restored the foreign aid that had suspended the countries of the "Northern Triangle", but has not proposed a comprehensive plan to reform the immigration system.
