Shifting asylum ‘burden,’ U.S. sends Guatemala first Honduran migrant

GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) - A Honduran man flew from El Paso, Texas, to Guatemala City on a nearly empty Boeing 737 yesterday, the first foreign asylum seeker sent back under a U.S. agreement designating Guatemala as a so-called safe third country for people fleeing persecution.

The program, similar to those in Europe that push asylum seekers to Turkey, is a policy achievement for U.S. President Donald Trump. He has made cracking down on immigration a central plank of his 2020 re-election campaign.

The arrival of the Honduran man, Erwin Ardon, in the Guatemalan capital marks a historic shift in how the United States treats people seeking asylum protections away from its embrace of refugees.

Guatemalan foreign ministry spokeswoman Marta Larra said Ardon was accompanied by only a few employees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the cavernous plane.

“Imagine sending back one person - the remedy proves to be more expensive than the disease,” Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei said at an event Thursday afternoon.

Democrats and activists say it is irresponsible to send vulnerable people to seek shelter in Guatemala, with its high murder rates, tiny asylum system and weak rule of law.

Guatemalan Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart said his government would process anybody who wanted to apply for asylum, but noted that United Nations immigration and asylum agencies would be responsible for providing shelter during their stay.

Degenhart previously told Reuters he expected some of the returnees would go home to El Salvador and Honduras. The U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) said this week the United States had provided it with $10 million to help migrants voluntarily return from Guatemala to their homelands.