U.S.’ border solution lies in cleansing graft
Vice President Kamala Harris, who last week took charge of the Biden administration’s effort to stem the flow of migrants across the southwestern border, rightly said her initiative “must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek.” The magnitude of that challenge was illuminated not long before she spoke — in a federal court in New York, where a Honduran drug trafficker was on trial. Witnesses testified to large bribes taken by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández from narcotics dealers; one quoted him as saying, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”
Hernández may soon be indicted by federal prosecutors, and he is due to leave office next January. But the candidates to replace him don’t offer much improvement. One just finished a U.S. jail term for money laundering; a second has been charged with money laundering and embezzlement; and the third is the wife of a former president removed from office for illegally seeking to change the constitution.
Honduras is the home country of many of the children and families now crossing the border and seeking asylum. Others come from El Salvador, where the president, Nayib Bukele, is leveraging his personal popularity to move toward autocratic rule. In Guatemala, which most of the migrants pass through on their way north, President Alejandro Giammattei is similarly moving to stack the supreme court and stop independent prosecutors from investigating corruption.
In short, the “root causes” of Central American migration start with crooked governments that can’t be relied upon to implement reforms that would improve the conditions that cause people to depart. President Joe Biden is well aware of that problem; during the Obama administration, he presided over a regional initiative that largely flopped as aid money was wasted or stolen by corrupt governments. President Donald Trump made the problem worse by ignoring corrupt and anti-democratic behavior by Central American leaders in exchange for crackdowns on migrants. He even welcomed Hernández to the White House.
The Biden administration has made it clear that its approach will be different. It has shunned Hernández, and Bukele was denied White House meetings when he visited Washington last month. Senior officials are talking about rebuilding internationally backed anti-corruption bodies that were dismantled in Honduras and Guatemala as the Trump administration looked the other way. They say that $4 billion in new aid Biden has planned for the region will be subject to strict conditions, and where possible channeled through nongovernment organizations.
The administration is nevertheless under pressure to take steps that will curb the flow of migrants in the short term. It is deeply engaged with Giammattei’s government about possible measures, and it will be hard to continue dodging Bukele, who just won a large majority in El Salvador’s Congress. So be it. But Harris must ensure that stopgap measures do not again divert the administration from pressing for deeper reforms. Those can start with some simple principles — such as no more tolerance for drug traffickers in a president’s office.