Guatemala Signs Agreement with U.S. to Restrict Honduran/ Salvadoran Asylum Cases

Last Friday, July 26th, Guatemala signed what is known as the “Safe Third Country” agreement with the United States. It came just days after Trump threatened tariffs on goods and remittences after the Guatemalan Constitutional Court claimed the deal needed legislative approval. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan signed the agreement with Guatemalan Foreign Minister Enrique Antonio Degenhart, as President Trump looked on in the Oval Office.

The agreement has the goal of reducing the numbers of Salvadorans and Hondurans who reach the U.S. border to claim asylum. It would require that citizens of those two countries apply for asylum in Guatemala, which they must pass through on their way north. Not much has been discussed how the agreement will be carried out and Guatemala does not appear to have the resources to process potentially tens of thousands of migrants form neighboring countries.

The U.S. pushed hard for the agreement because Customs and Border Protection officials are overwhelmed with the numbers of asylum seekers. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants are trying to cross the Mexican border into the U.S. not just from Central America, but also far flung places such as Bangladesh, Syria, and Ghana. Asian and African Migrants are increasingly flying to South American countries such as Ecuador from Europe. They then move north through Central America over land by bus, train, and even walking. U.S. officials can barely handle the onslaught. U.S. officials plant to start implementing the new agreement with Guatemala in August.

Many officials in the Guatemalan government were against the deal. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court had granted three injunctions ordering the government not to enter into a deal without Congressional approval. The administration of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales ultimately ignored the injunctions.

Trump meets with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales earlier this year.

When it looked as if the deal was off due to the opposition from the Constitutional Court, Trump angrily tweeted that “Now we are looking at the ‘BAN,’ Tariffs, Remittance Fees, or all of the above.”

A travel ban on Guatemalans entering the U.S. would be extremely harsh for a country that is a traditional ally. And charging fees on remittences would definitely hurt individual families as well as the Guatemalan economy. Remittances from Guatemalans working in the U.S. accounted for 11% of the country’s GDP in 2017 and totaled $8.2 billion dollars. Tariffs on exported goods would be even more painful as the U.S. is Guatemala’s main trading partner and receives 40% of it’s exports.

President Morales said via social media that the agreement was signed so that Guatemala could avoid “drastic sanctions … to strongly punish our economy, such as taxes on remittances that our brothers send daily, as well as the imposition of tariffs on our export goods and migratory restrictions.”

Trump believes that migrants are abusing the asylum system. He tweeted that the agreement would protect “the rights of those with legitimate claims,” end “abuse” of the asylum system and curtail the crisis on the U.S. southern border. He also said that the U.S. would increase access to the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers from Guatemala as part of the agreement.

According to the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, any foreign citizen that has made it to U.S. territory has the right to apply for asylum. The law goes on to say that if an asylee can be removed to a third country under an international agreement, it must be a a place “in which the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection.” It is doubtful that Guatemala could provide these protections.

While it may be better off than its neighbors, Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala is not a safe country and suffers from similar conditions of poverty and crime. In 2018 the country had a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 residents. Even though murders have fallen in recent years, Guatemala is still one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. Thousands of its own residents are currently waiting for asylum in the U.S. and 236,000 were apprehended at the U.S. border in first nine months of 2019. From October to June of this year, Guatemalans accounted for 34% of Border Patrol arrests on the Mexican border which is more than any other nationality. Hondurans were second at 30%, followed by Mexicans at 18% and Salvadorans at 10%.

The Guatemalan government also does not currently have the infrastructure in place to handle large numbers of asylum seekers. It would be overwhelmed by processing asylum claims of a few thousand migrants, not to mention tens of thousands. While Guatemala is willing to accept asylum seekers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that “since 2014, 178 people have been recognized as refugees here, with 97 per cent of claims by Salvadorans, and 83 per cent by Hondurans, proving successful.” The numbers are minuscule and Guatemala would need heavy funding and support to boost the Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración (IGM) to have the resources needed to handle an influx of migrants.

On Monday, Jordán Rodas, a Human Rights prosecutor asked the Guatemalan Constitutional Court to rescind the agreement, arguing that the agreement was signed under duress due to the economic and travel ban threats from President Trump.

Rodas stated that “we presented an appeal for what was signed to be declared null and not take effect,” He also cited Article 52 of the Vienna Convention that states that “any treaty or agreement … that has been obtained under threats is null.”

 

Link to U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act:

https://www.uscis.gov/legal-resources/immigration-and-nationality-act

 

To read more:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-threat-guatemala-signs-immigration-200726426.html

https://time.com/5636674/guatemala-deal-restrict-asylum/

https://apnews.com/c747e521adaf46f98a06191cedb0264f

 

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