The Biden Administration has suspended the controversial Asylum Cooperation Agreements signed between the Trump Administration and the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The move is part of the administration’s rejection of Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies.
By the time that the agreement was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Administration had deported 939 Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala.
“The United States has suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press statement on February 6.
The day before, the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Relations announced that the agreement was officially annulled.
The first Asylum Cooperation Agreement was signed with Guatemala on July 27, 2019, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the administration of President Jimmy Morales with ending financial aid to Guatemala. The agreement required asylum seekers to apply in Guatemala.
But Father Juan Carbajal, the director of the Pastoral of Human Mobility, told The Progressive in an interview in early 2020 that Guatemala was incapable of responsibility for asylum seekers. “Guatemala does not have the capacity, the will, the structures, or resources for presenting itself as a ‘safe third country,’” Carbajal said. “This is a lie.”
Guatemala continues to suffer from extreme inequalities, poverty, the highest rate of malnutrition in Latin America, violence, and rampant corruption, all of which cause tens of thousands of Guatemalans to seek to migrate to the United States. Still, the agreement was signed and implemented by Guatemala.
In September 2020, the governments of Honduras and El Salvador signed similar agreements to accept asylum seekers. But these agreements were never implemented.
On November 21, 2019, the first asylum seeker was deported to Guatemala alone on a flight chartered by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. After less than twenty-four hours, he returned to his home in Honduras.
By the time that the agreement was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Administration had deported 939 Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala. Many of whom chose to return to the migrant trail in the hopes of reaching the United States rather than remaining in Guatemala.
“The majority of those are returning to the [north],” Father Mauro Verzeletti, director of the Catholic Church-sponsored Migrant Shelter in Guatemala City, told The Progressive in February 2020 as the United States continued to deport Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemala. “They know the solution to their problems is not in Guatemala.”
Santos Pacheco, his wife Kenia, and their two sons, ages eight and five, were deported from the United States in March 2020. The family had fled Honduras in 2019 after gangs threatened to kill Pacheco, who worked as a security guard, after he refused to pay extortion money. The family initially went to Mexico, where they applied for asylum. After being granted asylum there, they had tried to reach the United States in hope of better opportunities and security but were detained at the border.
“It made me very sad, I didn’t want to come to Guatemala,” Kenia, twenty-eight, told The Progressive. “It is the same to be here as it is to be in Honduras.” Added Santos, thirty-one, “It is not a safe country.”
They did not stay in Guatemala.
Of the more than 900 migrants deported to Guatemala between November 2019 to March 2020, only fifty-seven requested asylum in Guatemala, according to data from the Guatemalan Migration Institute. But of those fifty-seven migrants, only twenty formalized their requests. Their petitions continue to remain in process due to recent increases in asylum claims within Guatemala’s understaffed agency.
For those who requested asylum, their fear remained.
“I do not feel safe here,” said Carol, a twenty-six-year-old Salvadoran mother of two who used a pseudonym due to concerns for her safety, who was among the few who requested asylum. “I do not want to be in Guatemala,” she told The Progressive in February 2020, shortly after she was deported.
While the agreement tasked the Guatemalan government to process and respond to the needs of deported asylum seekers, in practice this burden has fallen on non-governmental organizations, including the Youth Refuge and the Catholic Church-backed Migrant Shelter.
The agreement faced challenges in Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, but in September 2019, after an initial order against the agreement, the court permitted it to advance. The court was preparing to issue a final decision on the constitutionality of the agreement when Biden signed his executive order to end it.
Now the Biden Administration has stated that it will restore the U.S. asylum system, and seek to address what the administration views as the causes of migration.
“We look to work with partners in the region to address root causes that compel individuals to migrate,” Blinken wrote in a press statement on February 2. “The suspension of these agreements reflects our obligations under U.S. and international laws to protect refugees, and is consistent with our commitments to providing humanitarian assistance, supporting protection efforts, and building asylum capacity in these countries.”
Following the announcement of the termination of the Asylum Cooperation Agreements, Guatemala announced it would be expanding the country’s asylum system. In 2020, the country saw an increase in asylum requests, receiving 487 requests for asylum, according to the Guatemalan Migration Institute. The United Nations’ Refugee Agency noted that the asylum requests marked an 85 percent increase when compared with 2018.
But Guatemala continues to be a country that sends migrants north. Addressing the causes of migration remains daunting, reflecting historic discrimination and the government’s abandonment of Indigenous communities.