Caravan in Honduras: why Trump threatens to cut the help of Central America

The Trump administration threatens to cut aid to the Honduran government – and possibly Guatemala and El Salvador as well – if a caravan of 4,000 Honduran migrants, who have already arrived in Guatemala, is not arrested before to reach the United States.

The threat initially came from President Trump's Twitter account on Tuesday morning, making it hard to know how bad it is; The president is tweeting a lot of threats that go nowhere and have actually threatened the Honduran government in the same way compared to a previous caravan of migrants this spring. But Vice President Mike Pence tweeted something similar later Tuesday morning after a conversation with the President of Honduras.

Tuesday night, Trump had extended the threat to the other two countries of the "North Triangle" of Central America:

Mexico is preparing to stop the caravan. The Mexican government has already announced that members of the caravan who entered Mexico illegally would be "saved" and deported, and that caravan members could seek asylum in Mexico but could be detained until 90 days they were doing it. (In April, Mexico allowed a caravan of more than 1,000 migrants to enter the country, but then forcibly dispersed it by proposing a similar choice.)

According to NBC News, the Mexican government sent 500 federal police on the border between Mexico and Guatemala on Wednesday in anticipation of the arrival of the caravan. A video posted by Karla Zabludovsky from BuzzFeed News shows two police officers armed with riot gear landing near the border with Guatemala.

But the Trump administration does not seem optimistic about this possibility. As it was in April, the president is again obsessed with the idea of ​​a large group of people seeking to emigrate to the United States. And just as the caravan of April has contributed to the ongoing crackdown on the border, the current fixation by the president should drive US policy to the US-Mexico border and beyond.

Trump's simplistic view on migration – in which people immigrate because their government "sends" them, and governments must try to prevent people from leaving so that they can "make their country even more big "- not suitable for migration from Central America to the United States. . The continued influx of people, often children and families, often asylum-seekers, from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to the United States and via Mexico is both a complex political problem (in which the issues of economic and humanitarian migration are intermingled) a very sensitive issue of diplomatic dynamics.

To achieve Trump's goal of preventing people from even reaching the US-Mexico border, let alone being able to seek asylum in the United States, the government needs all the help that he can get from Mexico and Guatemala. Trump's intimidation makes it difficult for his government to ask for this help. But when other governments make helping the United States to "secure their borders", it is often the asylum seekers themselves who are losers.

Trump and Pence see a caravan of 1,600 Hondurans who have not even managed to get to Mexico as a threat to the US border

In recent years, the majority of people who illegally left Mexico to travel illegally to the United States were in fact non-Mexican – an increasing proportion of them were Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans. Central American migrants are facing a dangerous journey through Mexico, not least because Mexican immigration officials, acting at the request of the United States, have aggressively detained and deported (or worse) near the border. one million Central American migrants in recent years.

"Caravans" have become a way for activist groups to draw attention to the plight of migrants and to strengthen their numbers.

Last Friday, a group of about 160 Hondurans left San Pedro Sula, often referred to as the murder capital. According to the Associated Press, the Honduran caravan has strengthened as it headed for Guatemala – migrants have chosen to free themselves from economic desperation for fear of their safety. , or both at once – was 1,600 upon arrival at the Guatemalan border. .

The Guatemalan authorities had not allowed the caravan to enter, but after a deadlock of several hours, they gave in.

In other words, while the Trump administration threatens to punish Honduras if the caravan does not return, the Honduran government can not really bring back migrants (at least not without invading Guatemala). The Guatemalan government, or more likely the Mexican government, must now stop the caravan.

Mexico's reaction to the spring caravan has brought the group of people heading to the United States from over 1,000 to around 300. But Mexico has also reacted to this caravan by offering migrants the opportunity to get away from it. obtain humanitarian visas to stay in Mexico. seems to take a harder line with the current group.

But although the caravan is several weeks away from the US-Mexico border – and will almost certainly be apprehended before that – Trump and Pence view its existence as a violation of US law. "Frontier and sovereignty."

This corresponds to Donald Trump's understanding of immigration policy, at least as described in his own comments and reports inside the White House.

Trump does not seem to understand that the United States can not just close the US-Mexico border; that people who arrive in the United States without papers can not simply be rejected or expelled (because they may have valid reasons for seeking asylum).

He also does not seem to understand that people are applying for visas to come to the United States rather than being shortlisted and "sent" by the original countries that are trying to get rid of them. Given all of this, it makes perfect sense for Trump to blame the Central American countries for not stopping people from leaving – and to see an insult to the United States, which they have not done.

However, other members of the Trump administration – including the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who was director of the US Army's Southern Command (including Central America) before to become Trump's first Secretary of Homeland Security – understand that it's a lot more complicated than that.

Trump intimidates the very people he needs to help him

For anyone who is not Donald Trump, it is obvious that simply preventing people from leaving a country is both a violation of human rights (insofar as they are fleeing persecution, including government persecution) and an inapplicable solution. If the United States can not literally stop everyone from illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, it's odd to think that a much poorer and less well-governed country could do a better job with theirs.

The American line on the current wave of migration in the Northern Triangle, under the Obama administration and the first months of Trump (when Kelly was running DHS), stipulated that she had to tackle the "root causes": to prevent people to want go. In general, this involved encouraging investments in the economies of these countries and the "rule of law" of their governments.

This attitude – adopted by both the Obama administration and Kelly's DHS – justifies denying asylum to Central American migrants because they describe them as economic migrants rather than refugees fleeing violence. It also gives the impression that migration seems more "solvable" than it actually is, as learned border and customs commissioner Kevin McAleenan has learned. during a recent trip to Guatemala. (Alicia Caldwell's article on McAleenan's trip to the Wall Street Journal is worth reading to understand how complex the issue is.)

But it's good for relations with Mexico and the countries of the North Triangle, who will happily agree that the problem with their country is not violence or violations of human rights, but simply that not enough people give them money.

Under Trump, however, and once the fears between the United States and Mexico returned to normal after a trough in early 2017, the attitude has changed. Trump qualifies Central America's problem of gang-related violence, but uses it as a reason for the United States not to accept Central American migrants, rather than as a reason to grant them asylum.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has led the lawsuit to reduce the number of asylum applications so that it is more difficult for Central American gang victims to qualify for legal status in the United States. United States, made it clear that he did not believe that gang violence was a type of persecution covered by the US Asylum Act.

This is essentially the vision of "null countries". Central American countries are poor and crime-ridden, and instead of being a reason for the United States to help them, this is a reason for the United States to erect barriers.

The problem is that harshness and intimidation make the governments of these countries less inclined to do what the United States wants – as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto kindly scolded Trump during the last caravan crisis.

As long as the Trump administration wants to prevent people from even going near the US-Mexico border, it desperately needs the cooperation of Mexico and all the countries of the Northern Triangle to apprehend the migrants en route. After all, the millions of dollars that the United States is sending to Honduras today is an aid to military security and border security.

In other words, the United States already has significant control over how the North Triangle countries and (in particular) Mexico commit to enforcing immigration rules – it simply does with carrots for foreign governments, so that they give the applicants.

The lesson of the last caravan: when other countries meet the expectations of the United States, asylum seekers lose

The crackdown at the US-Mexico border goes back to Trump's fixation of the caravan this spring: when 300 members of the caravan arrived at the San Ysidro entry point (near San Diego), the administration Trump had set the zero – a lawsuit against tolerance that would lead to a widespread separation of the family and would have increased the restriction on asylum seekers legally entering the official entry points.

The administration considers that the last caravan is further evidence of the need for stricter enforcement; "Current reports on the" caravan "of migrants from Honduras correspond to what we see day and night at the border, a result of well-known and well-known communication failures," said DHS spokeswoman Katie. Waldman. On Monday.

It is already an international effort. In some entry points, Mexican immigration officers are responsible for organizing a queue of asylum seekers extending over several weeks and waiting for their turn to be allowed to enter. legally in the United States.

But human rights observers say the Mexican government is not primarily interested in protecting an orderly asylum process, but rather in helping the United States prevent people from moving, legally or otherwise.

Lawyers tell accounts of asylum seekers from officials on both sides telling them that they are not allowed to seek asylum in the United States, or Mexican officials arresting them or threatening them. Expulsion after attempting to report to an American port.

When the caravan arrived in San Ysidro this spring, the United States did not allow any of its members to enter initially because of the restrictions imposed at the point of entry. It has gradually allowed a few people at a time to legally enter over the next few days and weeks.

At the same time, a Human Rights Watch report released last week claims that Mexican police arrested two of the asylum seekers and beat one, and that a group of armed men was arrested. attempted to burn the shelter where another group of asylum seekers were staying. .

A Mexican official told Human Rights Watch that the United States had asked the Mexican government to clear the spot where asylum seekers were waiting – with the implicit understanding that anyone whose Mexican travel visa had expired would be deported . If Mexico had complied, it would have essentially expelled Mexican nationals because they had to wait in Mexico before being allowed to legally enter the United States.

It would have been an act of "enforcement at the border" without the participation of the United States. That's exactly what Trump and Pence are calling for now. The goal is to stop people from coming in – how it is and what is happening to the people does not seem to be the concern of the US government.