Trump is meeting with ‘Northern Triangle’ countries to resolve migrant crisis. July 22nd was the due date to the allegedly ‘Refugee Agreement’ President Trump had set with Mexico, regarding migrants currently held in “Concentration Camps” by the border between both countries.
A couple of weeks ago, Trump held a folded piece of paper during an interview claiming that was one of the pages in the contract he had already signed with Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador. The agreement was to determine how the migrant situation would playoff between Mexico & Central America. Meanwhile, the situation at the border hasn’t improved, detention centers continue to be overwhelmed with refugees & asylum seekers from the ‘Northern Triangle‘ Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
So far Mexico hasn’t signed nor confirmed the “agreement” Trump supposedly positioned with Mexico. Getting Mexico to sign this accord will be particularly complicated since just around mid-July a similar deal with Guatemala called the “Safe Third Country Agreement” was questioned. Such contracts between both countries required for Guatemala to assume responsibility for asylum seekers traveling from and through this country.
“If Mexico sees Guatemala is no longer being a player in this regional asylum burden-sharing agreement, Mexico might be much more hesitant to jump in,” Sarah Pierce policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute told TIME.
The goal of the “Safe Third Country Agreement” or ‘STCA’ is for refugees to avoid traveling across multiple nations in order to apply for a visa, with the main objective to allow travelers the opportunity to gain knowledge of their visa status in another passing country instead of traveling all the way to the south of USA and avoid illegal crossing.
A week later after the deal with Mexico was to happen, President Trump received a big win when he finally signed the “STCA” with Guatemala’s Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart backed by President Jimmy Morales. From now on, those who travel to the U.S. without previously applying for protection in their own nation will be immediately sent back to their country of origin. Guatemalans must make their claims for protection in their country first. However, opposing Guatemalan government officials are claiming Guatemala has no resources or capacity – the reason Guatemalans are fleeing in the first place. The deal is said to be ‘cruel and illegal’
Trump’s administration hopes to sign this agreement with Honduras and El Salvador as well, seeing a majority of asylum seekers originate from all three countries of the Northern Triangle and not just Guatemala.
Since the deal is now signed with Guatemala, where does Mexico stand in this situation, will they continue to decline the treaty? Will it take in the refugees/migrants, send them to their home countries or sign a deal with Trump’s Administration? And what will happen to the migrant families that are currently stuck at the border waiting for their asylum-seeking process to continue?
