Caribbean & Central America - August 2020

The US government led by President Donald Trump has already drawn criticism from local and international human rights groups over its increasingly hard-line on migration - evident in moves such as the inking last year of three bilateral migration accords known as Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras [SSR-20-01]. These concerns have intensified over its determination to press ahead with the deportation of illegal migrants to Central America during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic amid fears that this risks further spreading the virus.

International institutions such as the United Nations (UN) Network on Migration, which includes the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Refugee Agency, have more generally called on governments around the world to “suspend forced returns during the pandemic, to protect the health of migrants and communities”. However, human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and Refugees International (RI) have all highlighted the particular vulnerability facing Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, urging the US to halt deportations which have already been on the rise (see sidebar).

In a statement dated 4 May, MSF warns that this process is moving people from the epicentre of the pandemic in the US to lower transmission countries and will exacerbate the public health emergency in the region, particularly given people awaiting deportation from the US “are often held in detention centres for weeks or even months…[which] have become ideal breeding grounds for the massive spread” of the virus. In a press release dated 4 June, HRW said that as of 1 June, over 1,406 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the US had tested positive for Covid-19, adding that the number of detainees who have fallen ill is likely to be much higher given ICE has tested fewer than 12% of detainees. Meanwhile an RI report released on 23 June noted that a 34-year-old Guatemalan man was the second detainee to die from Covid-19 in ICE custody.

According to figures cited by MSF in total, the US and Mexico returned at least 6,500 Guatemalans, 5,000 Hondurans, and 1,600 Salvadorans between March and mid-April while the RI report highlights that at the end of April, deportees from the US made up nearly 20% of the 500 Covid-19 cases in Guatemala. This led Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei to suspend deportations on 15 May while in a video conference organised by US think-tank, the Atlantic Council, on 21 May, he complained that “Guatemala is an ally of the US, but I don’t believe that the US is an ally of Guatemala, they don’t treat us like an ally”. Giammattei said the US has left Guatemala with imported Covid-19 cases, serving as a strain on the country’s health system. However, flights resumed on 9 June and according to RI, deportees continued to test positive for Covid-19 upon arrival in Guatemala despite having clean bill of health documents from the US.

• Ruling against ACAs

The Trump administration received a setback over the ACAs after a panel at the US appeals court for the Ninth Circuit ruled on 6 July that the controversial Interim Final Rule (IFR), established by the US government last year which set out the framework for the implementation and background for the ACAs, was unlawful. The appeal was lodged by a group of non-profit organisations representing asylum seekers. While the US government argued that IFR was consistent with an existent rule that bars a migrant who can be removed to a ‘safe third country’ from applying for asylum, the panel concluded that the IFR “does virtually nothing to ensure that a third country is a safe option”. 

• Deportations

In FY 2019 the US deported 54,919 Guatemalans compared with 50,390 in FY2018 according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures. The figures show a significant increase in the number of Hondurans deported (from 28,894 in FY2018 to 41,800 in FY2019) while 18,981 Salvadorans were deported in FY2019 compared with 15,445 in FY 2018.