Image credit: White House
By Amadeus Narbutt
The Trump Administration has taken several measures to push back against the influx of asylum seekers along the United States’ southern border. In June 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions authored an opinion, which reversed precedent that had previously categorized the threat of violence from gangs and other non-state actors as a valid reason to claim asylum. These threats are no longer valid during asylum claims processes in the United States. In January 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented the ‘Migrant Protection Protocol’ (MPP), commonly referred to as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. Since this time, asylum-seekers must wait in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, with the DHS claiming that “Mexico will provide them with all appropriate humanitarian protection for the duration of their stay,” despite DHS employees stating that the MPP violates international and domestic law and puts lives at risk. The tactic most in the public spotlight is of course the child separation policy that Trump has implemented via the administrative technicalities of 8 U.S.C. §1325(a).
Now, President Trump is pushing for a new and more permanent measure: the signing of a Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) with Mexico. An STCA with Guatemala already fell through last week, but Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has recently caved to pressures from the Trump Administration and has begun walking back his previous ‘welcoming’ and ‘humanitarian’ policy of migration. Further, AMLO signed an agreement with Trump in June which stipulated that Mexico would agree to sign an STCA if they could not significantly reduce the number of migrants arriving at the Mexican-American border. The first of two assessment deadlines for this progress is July 25, 2019. Thus, time is running out for AMLO to either further crackdown and militarize his immigration policy or follow through with the terms of the agreement and sign onto an STCA.
In simple terms, STCA would essentially create a buffer zone out of Mexico between the United States and the rest of Central America. Under such an agreement, migrants would be required to claim asylum in the first country they enter. Due to the necessity of traversing through Mexico in order to reach the United States, this would mean that any migrant would necessarily have to do so in Mexico, leaving the Mexican government bearing the brunt of the Central American migrant crisis. While such an arrangement would appeal to Trump, many have drawn attention to both the lack of humanitarian resources and the threats of violence that migrants would face in Mexico.
As such, the human rights consequences are likely to be dire. Further, militarization of the Mexican-Guatemalan border by AMLO, which would be a logical step in order to stem the flow of migrants that would invariably end up under Mexican jurisdiction as per a future STCA, could have disruptive security implications for Central America.
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