U.S., El Salvador sign asylum deal

WASHINGTON —The U.S. signed an asylum agreement Friday with El Salvador, one of the world’s most violent countries. American and Salvadoran officials described the deal as shoring up El Salvador’s own asylum system and its capacity to provide for its citizens, in turn discouraging them from migrating.

While the specifics of the agreement remain unknown, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said in a news conference Friday “one potential use” is to limit asylum-seekers passing through El Salvador from claiming asylum in the United States. He offered no timeline.

But with most asylumseekers traveling north to the U.S. border going around El Salvador — seeking to avoid the small country where gang violence, poverty and corruption are pervasive — any asylum deal could have a limited impact on reducing overall migration to the United States.

In the last five years, El Salvador’s homicide rate has ranked among the highest in the world, though it has recently trended down. U.S. officials and experts, as well as newly elected Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, have credited the reduction in violence in El Salvador for contributing to a drop in the numbers of Salvadoran migrants stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border or claiming asylum in the U.S. In recent years, more migrants have come from Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador’s Northern Triangle neighbors.

As of August, U.S. border officials this year have apprehended 86,312 Salvadorans at the U.S. southern border, compared with 258,635 Guatemalans and 244,928 Hondurans.

McAleenan praised Bukele’s administration Friday, saying the number of Salvadoran migrants reaching the U.S. southern border has dropped more than 62% since Bukele took office in June.

“Bukele has stated he intends to end forced migration his term,” McAleenan said. “El Salvador has stepped forward and made good on those efforts.”

Salvadoran official Alexandra Hill Tinoco, who signed the agreement sitting next to McAleenan and behind flags of El Salvador and the U.S., stressed that El Salvador is responsible for outward migration. An official statement from the Salvadoran government remained vague on what the deal would do.

“El Salvador has not been able to give our people enough security or opportunity so they can stay and thrive in El Salvador,” Hill Tinoco said.

Later, seeming to indirectly address the heated rhetoric that President Donald Trump has used toward migrants, she added, “sometimes we lose the concept that there are human beings behind this.”

The agreement is the latest in a long-running effort by the Trump administration to restrict migrants’ access to asylum in the United States and force Central Americans in particular to seek refuge elsewhere.

The deal is likely to be modeled on others either signed or sought with Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and other countries in Central or South America that serve as the primary countries of origin or transit for migrants from around the world seeking asylum in the U.S.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations, with a huge presence in Venezuela, Colombia and Central America, said Thursday ahead of a trip to El Salvador and Honduras that the Trump administration’s approach “defies logic.” The council is planning on setting up a series of shelters along the primary migration routes north to the U.S.