An inhumane Trump administration plan to deport some Mexican nationals who are seeking asylum in the United States to Guatemala appears to have been halted for now. BuzzFeed News reports that the plan—which seeks to send Mexican asylum-seekers to Guatemala under a so-called safe-third-country agreement that really offers no safety at all—“was met with criticism and anger from immigrant advocates and politicians earlier this week. Both Mexican and Guatemalan officials also criticized the decision in recent days and called into question its legitimacy.”
Reuters reports that Guatemala’s outgoing president, Jimmy Morales, in fact denied the existence of any agreement with the U.S. government to receive Mexican asylum-seekers in the country, saying that it’s "completely untrue that we agreed a deal for Mexicans to come." It wouldn’t be the first time Trump administration officials have tried to implement something not yet finalized, last year moving forward with this plan to throw asylum-seekers to Guatemala with no idea what would happen to them once they get there.
BuzzFeed News reports that it’s unclear how long the plan to send Mexican asylum-seekers to Guatemala will be halted, but some people who were going to be sent to Guatemala were instead put into a program that tries to speed up a decision on asylum cases (likely in the negative, of course). Nor is it clear why the plan was halted for Mexicans but not also for Honduran and Salvadoran asylum-seekers, who are still getting sent to Guatemala under that third-country agreement.
What’s clear is that none of these asylum-seekers should be sent to Guatemala, period; Guatemala itself produces thousands of asylum-seekers every year. Trump officials know the dangers of this plan, having distributed materials to asylum officers that included “information on pervasive violence against women in the country, killings of indigenous activists, prevalence of the notorious gang MS-13, and a link to a research paper that states ‘a culture of violence and impunity pervades all of Guatemalan society today,’” according to BuzzFeed News. They know it, and they’re still doing it.