Regional governments avoid focus on immigration

TECUN UMAN, Guatemala — From the steps of his church in this Guatemalan border town, the Rev. Fernando Cuevas has watched the flow of migrants evolve from massive caravans that filled the nearby plaza to small groups of families arriving by bus to scramble aboard rafts waiting to carry them to Mexico.

What hasn’t changed is the Guatemalan government’s attitude toward migrants. In Tecun Uman recently, there was no sign of authorities even making a show of trying to dissuade people from crossing into Mexico illegally aboard rafts.

“Having no immigration policy is also a policy,” Cuevas said. “There are too many conflicts of interest to stop migration.”

The governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were conspicuously silent as Mexico twisted in the wind last month under the threat of crippling tariffs from President Trump. It was their citizens, not Mexico’s, who had drawn Trump’s ire by arriving in huge numbers at the U.S. southern border, yet Mexico was facing the brunt of the potential consequences.

A major reason for their silence: The countries of the socalled Northern Triangle rely heavily on the money their citizens send home from abroad. In Honduras, remittances totaled more than $4.8 billion last year — more than 20% of gross domestic product, according to its Central Bank. In Guatemala it was more than $9 billion, and in El Salvador some $5.5 billion.

Through negotiation Mexico has bought itself a reprieve for now on the threatened U.S. tariffs. But it faces a September deadline to get the flow of migrants under control and is now scrambling to win the cooperation of its Central American neighbors. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is betting on a U.N.backed development plan for the region and southern Mexico.

Last month, he offered El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, a $30 million donation for a reforestation and jobs program.

Mexico has also deployed thousands of National Guard troops across its territory to help rein in migration.

It has yet to be seen whether the Northern Triangle governments have the political will or the resources to attack the deeprooted poverty, crime and violence that are the main drivers of their emigration.