The government of President Joe Biden announced this Saturday that it has terminated agreements with three Central American countries -
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador
- signed by the administration of former president Donald Trump to deport migrants who sought asylum in the United States there. .
One of these deals, signed with Guatemala, had been suspended for almost a year due to the health emergency due to the coronavirus.
The agreements with El Salvador and Honduras, on the other hand, were
never implemented
, according to the State Department.
Known as 'safe third country' pacts, these pacts required asylum seekers who had passed through those countries before reaching the US border to seek protection there first.
Thus, it was intended to reduce the volume of income to the country through the border.
[More and more migrants and unaccompanied children cross the border: some are released, others deported]
This measure joins several others that Biden and his government have announced on immigration matters in the first days in office and that are
aimed at reversing his predecessor's anti-immigrant policies
.
"The United States has suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperation Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path toward greater partnership and collaboration in the region outlined by President Biden." said Secretary Anthony Blinken.
Migrants deported from the United States to Guatemala in the summer of 2019. AP / AP
What does the measure mean for migrants at the border?
Since the agreement with Guatemala was implemented, some 945 migrants have been deported there, according to a report from the Senate of that country quoted by The Washington Post newspaper.
Many of them were not citizens of that country, but of neighboring El Salvador and Honduras, since the agreements signed with the United States allowed it.
["I wanted a better life." This is how 13 Central American migrants were shot and burned in Mexican drug territory]
According to that report, no one was granted asylum until January of this year, and the vast majority even tried to apply.
The Post highlights how Guatemala is
a country very poorly prepared to handle requests for international protection and offer it
, since it has, like its neighbors, other problems such as poverty and violence.
Although so far the number of people who have suffered this setback from the fate of ending up deported in a place with the same problems from which they had fled is small compared to the tens of thousands who have requested asylum in the United States,
suddenly the Suspension of safe third country agreements should mean that no one else runs the risk of having the same experience under these assumptions
.
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The government wanted to make it clear that the end of these pacts, however,
"does not mean that the US border is open,"
according to Blinken. But it expressed the intention that it would change the way in which migration from Central America is covered - in great increase in the last few months after the pandemic hiatus - about how the Trump Administration did it.
The idea is to help the countries of origin of the migrants - hit, in addition to by the global health crisis of COVID-19 and by
structural problems of violence and poverty
, also by the recent
natural disasters
caused by the passage of hurricanes Eta and Iota— to develop opportunities for a better life for its citizens and thus prevent them from being forced to emigrate.
[A small village in Guatemala mourns the massacre of 13 migrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico]
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, revealed after the first phone call with the new US president that Biden pledged to allocate 4,000 million dollars to promote the development of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and thus stop forced migration.
Meanwhile, immigrants cross the border and are freed
The United States also had an agreement with Mexico since the beginning of the pandemic for this country to accept
migrants expelled by the northern neighbor as soon as they crossed the border
with the alleged justification of the health risk that would entail welcoming them into its own system of reception of foreigners.
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But a recent Mexican law has caused a substantial change in the situation at the border, since it establishes that the country will
no longer accept families or unaccompanied minors returned by the United States
.
And because several US migrant detention centers
no longer have the capacity to receive more people
, the government has begun releasing hundreds of the migrants who have just crossed the border to Texas, pending their processing. asylum applications.
It is not yet clear whether this measure is strictly temporary or will continue in time.
Many migrants who have arrived at the border recently feel hopeful that the new Administration will treat them less harshly than Trump did.
And there are activists who view Biden's first immigration measures favorably.
But Blinken cautioned: "While we are committed to expanding legal avenues for protection and opportunities here and in the region, the United States is a country with borders and laws that must be followed."
With information from AP, EFE and The Washington Post.