El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala Granted Fewer than 200 Asylum Claims Each Year. Yet Now They Are Supposed to Handle Tens of Thousands?
The Administration wants asylum-seekers to play bizzaro musical chairs, fleeing gang violence in one country to claim asylum in another country suffering from record levels of gang violence. But hypothetically speaking, are any of these countries even ready to take over the asylum duties of the United States?
- Update: According to the New Yorker, the Trump administration has floated a plan to increase funding for asylum support in Central American transit countries. Of course, this raises the question of why we should be spending money to improve other countries’ asylum offices when our own system is “close to the breaking point.”
- Update: Immigration Impact has obtained and published a report with accurate statistics on the asylum capabilities of the countries who have signed “deals” on Safe Third Country. “Guatemala has just 8 employees in the agency responsible for hearing asylum applications. El Salvador has just a single employee processing asylum applications right now, and in many years the agency has received zero applications.”
Today, WaPo reports that the Trump administration has signed another “agreement,” or “memo” with a Central American country, this time Honduras, to take over the US’s asylum claims from the region. It’s unlikely that any of these agreements, or memos, or whatever they are, will ever be implemented. But what the media never asks is whether or not any of these countries, including Mexico (who, to their credit, has not signed an agreement but who is being sent asylum-seekers anyways), are ready to take over even a fraction of the US asylum system? Of course, the administration doesn’t care. They only care about optics. But we should care. Because we have to live in the world the Trump Administration’s optics creates.
Where Do I Start?
Imagine that you belong to a small, local gym. Your gym currently has about 50 members, but honestly, this is about all they can handle. The gym is new, and there are a lot of bugs in the signup process, the locker rooms are too small and there are never enough towels. But it’s sort of working, with help from an international organization dedicated to assisting with gym logistics. Now imagine that every single other gym in the United States suddenly closes simultaneously and all their clients are sent to work out at your gym. How would that go, do you think?
The administration is trying to apply the Turkey model to central America, but Turkey has years of experience dealing with millions of refugees. They already had a considerable infrastructure in place, even before the EU-Turkey agreement. Other countries are not all the same, but no one in the Trump Administration seems to care.
All of the Central American countries are new to the international refugee law regime and all are in the process of setting up asylum offices with UNHCR’s help. To date, Mexico has the most experience with adjudicating asylum claims, having received their own uptick in claims from other Central American countries beginning in 2016. El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have each only granted fewer than 100 cases per year. Assuming a 50% acceptance rate, that would still only mean they have received 200 asylum-seeker cases during the year. Each case must be processed and reviewed according to the strict rules and procedures developed over decades by international law and UNHCR. These agencies likely severely lack both capacity and funding to handle a sharp increase of cases.
Asking the Right Questions
In addition to the multitude of other pitfalls to this outsourcing plan, the Administration seems to breezily assume that the lack of an and all preparation is irrelevant to their plans. Yet without a massive influx of US aid and support, none of these countries is ready to handle even a fraction of the responsibility being put upon them, which means that asylum adjudications simply won’t happen. People will be dumped in these countries with no access to asylum at all.
I know that the administration believes, naively, that when asylum-seekers hear they will be sent to a neighboring country, rather than the US, they will simply give up and go home. The Trump Administration should ask how that “wait and see” approach has worked out in Turkey, which currently hosts the most refugees in the world.
I really hope this fact is taken into account by US Courts when they weigh the legality of these “agreements,” or “memos,” or “policies.” If asylum in neighboring countries simply isn’t taking place at all, then the Trump Administration isn’t outsourcing our asylum duties, they are illegally abdicating them.
