Aid groups are warning that President Trump’s threat to cut off aid to El Salvador would worsen the humanitarian crisis at the border.
“This is a serious problem and not a short-term solution,” said Ken Baker, CEO of Glasswing International, a group that funds community schools and emergency health centers for poor Salvadorans in violent areas.
Most foreign aid funding is allocated to rural areas of the country, ones that lack schools and medical clinics and suffer rampant violence and poverty. Salvadorans often decide to make the grueling, life-threatening trip north to escape those conditions. Humanitarian groups say that by the time they reach the U.S.-Mexico border, the window for problem-solving has closed.
Many groups that provide aid to El Salvador had success in recent years in gaining support from Congress for humanitarian efforts, before Trump said that he’d cut off aid to the Northern Triangle for failing to limit illegal immigration. Now, they are lobbying Congress to stop the administration from carrying out the threat, making the case for lowering migration by strengthening rural areas in El Salvador.
“There is pretty bipartisan support to attack problems at the base,” Baker said. “People who agree with other border policies still don’t agree with this policy, and once the problem is at the border, it’s too late.”
Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president for mission and mobilization at Catholic Relief Services, said the logic of cutting foreign aid is “completely counterproductive.” His organization teaches Salvadoran farmers sustainable techniques, crop diversification, and marketing of the cash crop cacao, as well as providing vocational training and job placement support.
O’Keefe says that the group has been working closely with Congress to find ways to keep Salvadorans in their native country by helping people in rural areas get better education and farm better.
Foreign aid is primarily sent to individual contractors and religious organizations like Catholic Relief Services. The Salvadoran government has little say in how these funds are allocated, because aid is meant to help the citizens rather than help out politicians. Charitable organizations on the ground decide how to spend money and how it can directly help citizens, whether it is meant to rebuild schools, open medical facilities, or provide job training.
O’Keefe says he is confident that he and other groups working in El Salvador can convince administration officials not to go through with the cut to aid funding. “They’ll develop a more nuanced perspective on this” and find an alternative approach to deal with rising rates of migration, he said.
“No matter how high the wall is, how deep the sea is, you cannot underestimate the desperation and the ingenuity of people to get to where they need to go,” O’Keefe said.
From September 2018 to January 2019, 242,667 migrants from El Salvador, as well as Guatemala and Honduras, had crossed the border. In the months leading to the 2018 midterm elections, the GOP worked to highlight the caravan moving toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
Salvadorans sometimes travel in large groups because of a “safety in numbers” philosophy. The journey from El Salvador to El Paso exceeds 1,300 miles, and many do not survive, whether the cause of death is the extreme climate and landscape, the lack of food and water, or violence along the monthlong walk.
Trump made the announcement to cut foreign aid last month, but it has yet to be implemented. The State Department has said that it will work with Congress to carry out Trump’s order.
