The Trump administration is preparing to send asylum-seekers to Guatemala under a new rule set to be published this week that is being rolled out with little to no concern about what happens to them once they land—and despite the fact that thousands of families have already been fleeing violence and other instability in the region.
BuzzFeed reports that officials were still scrambling to figure out details of how people would access shelter and other services after being deported following “a complicated proposal to send asylum-seekers arriving at the US border to Guatemala as part of a safe-third country-like deal.” That’s because the administration doesn’t care about the details—it just wants them out, and it’s seeking to do it by means of a plan that will deport people to their deaths: The region has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Experts believe that the administration is accomplishing this policy goal through a trademark Trumpian tactic: bullying. “Neither the outgoing or incoming Guatemalan governments actually want ... to accept these asylum seekers,” tweeted reporter Jack Herrera, saying that Trump “has strong-armed” Guatemala “by withholding aid and threatening tariffs.” The U.S. “has bullied the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras into signing agreements that will be deadly for people seeking asylum and is now carrying out their fatal application,” said Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA.
This agreement will join other Trump administration policies, such as Remain in Mexico, that have sought to kill U.S. asylum law by fiat, since the administration can’t do it in Congress. “Initially, the administration will only send relatively low numbers of single adults to Guatemala in order to test out the policy,” officials claimed. Initially. Remain in Mexico also started out as a trickle that has now surged to over 50,000 families kicked out of the U.S. to wait their cases.
“The Tahirih Justice Center, which already pledged on Monday to challenge the rule, is one of many immigrant advocacy groups arguing that none of the Northern Triangle countries are able to guarantee ‘full and fair’ immigration proceedings, and that to send asylum seekers back to those countries would violate bedrock human rights principles,” Vox reported.
“The rule flatly violates federal law and makes a mockery of our national obligation not to return asylum seekers to violence and persecution,” said the center’s litigation counsel, Richard Calderone. “And if fully implemented, it will effectively end asylum and related protections in the United States for everyone except unaccompanied children.” And that’s the administration’s goal.
