SAN ANTONIO — Trump administration officials announced Thursday the signing of a deal with Central American leaders it says will “stem irregular migration at the source” and prevent future caravans from embarking on journeys to the U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and her security counterparts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras signed a first-ever multilateral agreement in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, this week, vowing to jointly address the underlying issues behind the mass exodus of tens of thousands of citizens of Northern Triangle countries.
“America shares common cause with the countries of Central America in confronting these challenges,” Nielsen said in a statement. “We all want to enforce our laws, ensure a safe and orderly migrant flow, protect our communities, facilitate legal trade and travel, support vulnerable populations, interdict dangerous and illicit drug flow, and secure our borders.”
Nielsen, Guatemalan Minister of Government Enrique Degenhart, Honduran Security Minister Julian Pacheco, and Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Public Security Mauricio Landaverde vowed in the Memorandum of Cooperation to come up with a regional approach to respond to humanitarian and security emergencies affecting the U.S.-Mexico border.
The agreement states the four countries will work together more on issues, including human trafficking, human smuggling, transnational criminal activity, intelligence sharing, and boosting security operations in the air and sea.
The compact was not publicly released, but DHS said specific initiatives related to those issues have been created and working groups of representatives from each country will begin meeting and monitoring those problems and working on long-term solutions.
This month, Border Patrol agents expect to apprehend and encounter 100,000 people. That’s up from less than 17,000 from March 2017, when it hit a 17-year low.
In the first five months of fiscal 2019, 306,000 people have been arrested for illegally crossing from Mexico into the U.S. or stopped at a port of entry, according to CBP data. Just more than 521,000 people were encountered in all of 2018.
[Also read: Some 700 Cuban migrants join Central American caravan traveling on foot to US-Mexico border]
