Group to tackle Trump
SOLIDARITY: El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala to forge strategy with Mexico
HONDURAS, Guatemala and El Salvador have agreed to join forces and seek support from Mexico to forge a joint strategy in response to Donald Trump winning the United States presidency, El Salvador’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Trump’s election upset has sent shockwaves through Mexico and Central America, which rely heavily on US remittances and bilateral trade.
President-elect Trump romped to victory in the Nov 8 election by winning over voters with vows to end illegal immigration and reexamine trade treaties that he said had led US firms to ship jobs south to lower-wage economies.
Many of the migrants bound for the US hail from the poor nations of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and there are concerns that Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants would have grave repercussions in Central American countries with few jobs and shaky security.
On Wednesday, a day after a regional meeting in Honduras, the three countries asked their respective foreign ministries to join forces and formulate positions on jobs, investment and migration to deal with the new US administration together, though the statement did not refer to Mexico.
But Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, Guatemala’s Jimmy Morales and El Salvador’s leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren, had agreed to seek support from Mexico, said Hugo Martinez, El Salvador’s foreign minister.
“What the presidents told us was that aside from this group... we could expand to look for contact with Mexico, at first, and then also with the other Latin American countries,” Martinez said.
In an interview last week, Humberto Roque Villanueva, Mexico’s deputy interior minister for migration, said he expected deportations of undocumented Mexican migrants in the US to start rising when Trump took office on Jan 20.
Trump has repeatedly said he plans to build a wall along the USMexican border, insisting that Mexico will pay for it.
The first meeting between the Central American foreign ministers was to take place yesterday in San Salvador, sources said.
The Central American foreign ministries said they were looking to strengthen their consular services in the US and preparing a network of activists, lawyers, non-profit organisations and church leaders to help safeguard against any possible deportation wave.
Maria Andrea Matamoros, Honduras’ deputy foreign minister, said she expected the number of migrants bound for the US to rise before Trump took office.
“(The wall) is the perfect advertising campaign for a human trafficker, and now, with the election of Trump, that has magnified, and we’re already seeing — incredibly — a rise in the flow of migrants,” she said.
On Tuesday, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador launched a joint security system to combat gangs and drug smugglers, as well as curtail migration and lower murders in one of the world’s most violent regions.
The joint security force is part of the so-called “Alliance for Prosperity” plan, which aims to regenerate the region with support from Washington, creating jobs and infrastructure. Reuters