In a press release, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken mentioned the United States had “suspended and initiated the method to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the primary concrete steps on the trail to better partnership and collaboration within the area laid out by President Biden.”
The so-called “secure third nation” agreements, inked in 2019 by the Trump administration and the Central American nations, drive asylum seekers from the area to first search refuge in these nations earlier than making use of within the United States.
Part of a controversial bid by Trump to crack down on unlawful immigrants from Central America who make up a big a part of migrants apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border, the insurance policies had been by no means applied with El Salvador and Honduras, the State Department mentioned on Saturday.
Transfers underneath the U.S.-Guatemala settlement have been paused since mid-March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, the assertion added.
The strikes introduced Saturday got here after Biden unveiled a bunch of measures final week aimed toward revamping the U.S. immigration system, together with a job drive to reunite households separated on the United States-Mexico border and one other to extend an annual cap on refugees.
One of the orders known as for Blinken to “promptly contemplate” whether or not to inform the governments of the three nations that the United States supposed to droop and terminate the secure third nation deals. It additionally known as on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to find out whether or not to rescind a rule implementing the agreements.
