Biden suspended the “safe third country” agreement that allowed immigrants to be deported from the Northern Triangle

MIAMI – The United States government suspended the Asylum Cooperation Agreement (ACA) with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras signed by the Administration of former President Donald Trump, which allowed the deportation of migrants from these countries, reported this Saturday the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken .

In this way, Blinken said in a statement, The US government takes the “first concrete steps” to achieve greater “partnership and collaboration” in the region, outlined by President Joe Biden , who since he arrived at the White House is dismantling the immigration policy of his predecessor.

“According to In the President’s vision, we have notified the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that the United States is taking this action as efforts begin to establish a cooperative and mutually respectful approach to to manage migration in the region, ” said Blinken.

The Guatemalan government had already reported last Friday that the United States had ended the so-called “safe third country ”, signed in July of 2019 by the Trump government and the local president at that time, Jimmy Morales (2016 – 2020).

Transfers under the agreement between the US and Guatemala were suspended since mid-March of 2020 due to the covid pandemic – 19, and the agreements with El Salvador and Honduras were never implemented, explained the Department of State.

“To be clear, these actions do not mean that the US border is open,” said Blinken, which, indicated that the current US Government believes that there is “ more adequate ways of working ”with these countries to“ manage ”migration throughout the region than that developed by the Trump team, which made harsh immigration policy one of its main hallmarks.

In an executive order signed this week, Biden opted to address the causes of migration, manage migration in the region, and “provide safe and orderly processing” of asylum seekers in the border, says this Saturday’s statement.

Until February 2020, according to official data from Guatemala, approximately 700 Honduran and Salvadoran migrants were deported from the United States to Guatemala under the framework of the ACA.

The agreement was originally initialed on 26 July 2019 and made Guatemala a “safe third country”, a figure through which the US was authorized do to send Salvadoran and Honduran migrants deported to its territory.

The United States has among its plans help the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America c with the goal of promoting opportunities and prosperity for individuals and communities throughout the region.

The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador , revealed a day after his first telephone conversation with Biden since the latter came to power that the US pledged to allocate $ 4, 000 million dollars to promote the development of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and thus curb forced migration.

In recent months there has been a notable increase in the arrival of undocumented immigrants to the US border with Mexico and Republicans suggest that trend will continue now that Biden has reached the White House and has begun to unravel the tangle of Trump’s immigration measures.

The Democratic leader suspended the construction of the border wall with Mexico, ordered the creation of a group of work to reunify minors who were separated from their parents after crossing the border and gave instructions to review the Protocol for the Protection of Migrants, also known as “Stay in Mexico”, by which more than 60, 000 applicants of asylum were returned to that country to wait for their process.