Trump touts deal with Guatemala to stem flow of migrants.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday said he has struck a deal that would designate Guatemala as a safe third country for those seeking asylum in the United States — a concept that is facing significant legal hurdles in the Central American nation as the Trump administration continues to struggle with the high number of migrants arriving at the U.S-Mexico border.
The White House did not immediately release details of the agreement, and it is unclear how it would be implemented, considering that Guatemala’s constitutional court has ruled that any safe third country agreement would require legislative approval and that the proposal has been widely criticized there.
Trump announced the arrangement in a previously unscheduled appearance in the Oval Office with Enrique Degenhart, the Guatemalan minister of government, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.
“We’ve long been working with Guatemala, and now we can do it the right way,” Trump said. The agreement will put “coyotes and the smugglers out of business. These are bad people,” he said.
Trump said the agreement will offer safe harbor for asylum applicants deemed legitimate and that he plans to sign other safe third country agreements with other nations soon.
The announcement comes just days after Trump threatened retaliation against Guatemala as discussions stalled over designating it as a safe third country, which means that a migrant traveling through the country on their journey to the U.S. would be directed to first seek protection there.
On a conference call with reporters Friday, McAleenan said the agreement with Guatemala would “be up and running in August,” after the two governments had completed several steps to ratify the deal.
He said that under the agreement, Salvadorans and Hondurans would need to seek asylum in Guatemala. “If you have, say, a Honduran family coming across through Guatemala to the U.S. border, we want them to feel safe to make an asylum claim at the earliest possible point,” he said. “If they do instead, in the hands of smugglers, make the journey all the way to the U.S. border, (they would) be removable back to Guatemala.”
The deal would force thousands of Hondurans and Salvadorans to apply for asylum in Guatemala, one of the region’s poorest countries, which has in some cities struggled to defeat transnational gangs, including MS-13.
When read the State Department’s description of the security situation in Guatemala, which includes notations that murder is “common,” gang activity is “widespread” and police are ineffective, McAleenan said one shouldn’t “label an entire country as unsafe,” and he likened Guatemala to parts of the U.S.
Guatemala’s only public statement about the agreement did not explicitly say that it would serve as a safe third country but alluded vaguely to “a plan that will be applied to Salvadorans and Hondurans.”
The statement said the U.S. would allocate temporary agricultural work visas to Guatemalans, adding that the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, negotiated the deal “to counter grave economic and social repercussions.”