President Donald Trump’s tweets are reflective of his stream of consciousness — conspiratorial, overly dramatic, filled with rage and timed with Fox News. While I don’t typically believe it is worthwhile discussing anything he says on Twitter, a presidential statement from Trump on foreign policy tends to be in the form of a tweet. With the midterm elections coming up, his racism-infused doctrine has spilled out over the past week regarding Central American refugees in the following tweets:
“We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!”
“Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther[n] Border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!”
This migrant caravan is made up of an estimated 5,000 people who are making their way on foot across Central America to Mexico and the United States. This is not an anomaly, either. Apprehensions — at the U.S. border — of Guatemalan and Honduran families increased 61 percent between October 2017 and August 2018.
In the first seven months of 2018, Mexico deported 57,000 Central Americans, and over 300,000 people were stopped at the U.S. border, according to ABC News. This has caused the Trump administration to move forward with a plan to pay Mexico $20 million to deport migrants before reaching the United States. However, that plan is unlikely to unfold given Democratic opposition (60 votes needed in the Senate) along with the refusal by the Mexican government.
“People are leaving because they are suffering from high levels of violence from gangs and other organized criminal groups. These gangs want to recruit minors, they carry out extortion, kidnapping, sexually abusing girls,” Francesca Fontanini, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Americas, said in an interview with Time magazine.
Calling these people refugees rather than migrants is controversial and has significant impacts on the international laws of asylum. A refugee is defined as a person fleeing war, persecution or natural disaster. For the United States to admit these people are refugees is to admit that the governments of Central America are complicit or negligent in the gang violence which is affecting their residents. It is much easier to call them economic migrants and refuse their asylum claims. However, it is accurate to argue that economic motivations play an integral role in why most of these “refugees” flee.
The United States gave about $2.6 billion to countries of Central America’s Northern Triangle from 2015 to 2018, according to the New York Times. However, funding for security, the justice sector and violence prevention in Honduras received more aid than anything else.
The current administrations in Central America are kept afloat in part by the United States’ support of their governance. But economic growth in these low-income countries is still lacking compared to countries of similar GDP per capita with effective governments. If these governments were able to provide the environment for jobs, fewer people would flee.
There is no doubt that many of the people who are part of the caravan are refugees, but are they economic migrants or peace-seeking refugees? Trump threatening to cut off aid will hurt the local population less in the short term than it will the governments of Central America. Trump acts as though these governments are in complete control of who leaves their countries when they do not even have control of the violence (because of gangs and cartels) occurring in their nations.
The best way to stop the flow of migrants and refugees is to reevaluate American foreign policy in the region to promote better governance. Spending billions on deportation is like using gold leaf as a Band-Aid. It does not address the root cause nor is it fully effective, but it sure is expensive.
