Vice President Kamala Harris’s virtual meeting with the president of Guatemala on Monday will represent her highest-profile move to date concerning the Biden administration’s plan to combat soaring migration levels with increased aid to Central America.
But aid has consistently flowed to the Northern Triangle countries — Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador — and has in the past failed to stop surges in the number of people heading north to cross into the United States.
Harris said Thursday that more aid to the Northern Triangle could help people decide against making the journey to the U.S., arguing most don’t want to leave their homes.
“We have to give people a sense of hope, a sense of hope that help is on the way, a sense of hope that if they stay, things will get better,” she said.
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The U.S. has sent billions of dollars to the Northern Triangle over the years, but poverty, violence, and corruption have continued to ravage the countries, and the aid has not stopped Central Americans from crossing the border.
President Joe Biden pledged $861 million to Central America in his 2022 budget proposal, although it is unclear whether that request includes just the Northern Triangle or the aid will be spread out across all countries in the region.
With less aid under former President Donald Trump, migration levels were still lower than the historic ones Biden is overseeing.
In 2017, for example, the U.S. gave roughly $560 million in aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Border Patrol reported apprehending 303,916 people that year.
The following year, the U.S. gave roughly $462 million to those countries and apprehended 396,579 people.
And in 2019, facing a growing migration surge, Trump followed through on a threat to cut aid to the Northern Triangle until the countries’ leaders did more to stop their people from fleeing north, a move Democrats roundly criticized.
However, Customs and Border Protection reported encountering fewer people at the border every month from when the White House slashed the aid in May to Trump’s announcement in the fall that he would reinstate it. Rather than increase migration, cutting aid to the Northern Triangle countries actually appeared to decrease it as leaders worked to meet Trump’s demands.
Border Patrol agents are on track to encounter far more people this year than during individual years under Trump, despite the Biden administration continuing to pour aid into Central America. CBP reported encountering 172,331 people on the border in the month of March alone. Between January and March, CBP encountered more people than it did the entire year in 2017.
“While the U.S. has continued to give foreign aid, the numbers of migrants coming to the U.S. has not gone down,” said Lora Ries, senior research fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation and former Department of Homeland Security acting deputy chief of staff.
“I don’t think just giving money without condition to any country is effective,” Ries said. “We have a long history of giving money to Central American countries that have not necessarily benefited the U.S. or just perpetrated the corruption already existing in some of those governments.”
The programs funded by aid money in the Northern Triangle countries sometimes go beyond helping families put food on the table and stay safe in their neighborhoods.
The U.S. spent $25 million, for example, on a climate change program in Guatemala that the U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general found was riddled with problems.
Significant sums of money have gone toward environmental aid in recent years; in Guatemala, $8.8 million went to “general environmental protection” in 2016, as did $8 million in 2015 and $8.4 million in 2014. In El Salvador, nearly $3 million went to “general environmental protection” in 2016, $1.6 million in 2015, and $1.2 million in 2014.
The bulk of the aid is used for education, agriculture, and civil service programs meant to improve the lives of Central Americans directly.
Critics, however, say rampant corruption in Northern Triangle countries often prevents foreign aid from actually benefiting those it intends to help.
“We need the U.S. to buy more things from us, not amorphous grants of money to ‘strengthen democratic institutions,’ which just means more money into corrupt politicians’ hands,” an adviser to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador told the Washington Examiner.
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Harris has unveiled plans to travel to Central America in June, but the White House has not yet said whom she will meet or which countries she will visit specifically.
At her meeting Monday with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, the vice president is expected to “discuss working together to address immediate relief needs of the Guatemalan people as well as deepening cooperation on migration,” according to Harris’s senior adviser and chief spokeswoman Symone Sanders.
