EL SALVADOR TO ACCEPT ASYLUM SEEKERS SENT FROM U.S. BORDER

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it has finalized an agreement reached last year with El Salvador that will enable the Department of Homeland Security to send asylum seekers from the U.S.Mexico border to the Central American nation instead of allowing them to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele assented to the accord in September 2019, but the deal has yet to result in any actual transfer of asylum seekers. The Trump administration reached similar deals last year with Guatemala and Honduras after a record surge of Central American families crossed the U.S. southern border seeking protection, overwhelming U.S. courts and processing capacity.

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, traveled to El Salvador this week to finalize implementation plans for the agreement. Under the accord, “certain migrants requesting asylum or similar humanitarian protection at the U.S. border will be transferred to El Salvador to seek protection in El Salvador,” the DHS said in a statement.

Homeland Security Department officials have insisted that their intent is not to use the agreements to discourage vulnerable migrants from coming to the United States to find a safe place, but to allow them to reach safety closer to their home countries. In a statement, Wolf called the agreement “a critical step in the establishment of a truly regional approach to migration, and, more specifically, to the offer of protection to those migrants who are victims of persecution.”

El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have some of the highest homicide rates in the world, and transnational gangs and criminal groups that operate in all three countries practice extortion, forced recruitment of minors and human trafficking to terrorize local populations, sending victims f leeing for their lives.

Under Bukele, El Salvador’s homicide rate has dropped, but his government’s crackdown on dissent has raised concerns about potential authoritarian rule.

“Implementation of the ACA [asylum agreement] will involve and facilitate cooperation between the two governments to expand El Salvador’s systems for offering humanitarian protections,” the DHS said.

A report by Refugees International found problems with the implementation of the agreement in Guatemala, where the United States sent nearly 1,000 asylum seekers between November 2019 and March 2020. Two percent of the migrants who were returned to Guatemala applied to seek asylum there, with the rest apparently giving up and going home, according to the report.