The agreement between the United States and Guatemala that allows the U.S. to send non-Guatemalan asylum seekers to Guatemala places migrants at risk, according to a report from Refugees International.
The U.S.-Guatemala Asylum Cooperative Agreement grants the U.S. the power to quickly move non-Guatemalan migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to Guatemala without giving them the opportunity to submit an asylum claim in the U.S. and leaves them without protections in a country that fails to meet the standards to provide asylum.
U.S. law states that a “safe third country” where migrants seeking asylum can be sent must provide “access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection,” but asylum claims in Guatemala are hindered by a legal system that forces the claims to be approved by a high-ranking government official, creating a tremendous backlog.
“In Guatemala, transferees have an unreasonably short time frame to make a decision whether to apply for asylum in Guatemala, which has a cumbersome and ineffectual asylum system and fails to ensure adequate social support while asylum seekers’ claims are pending,” the report reads. “Given security conditions in Guatemala, many transferees also say they fear they would be subjected to the same harms in Guatemala from which they fled in their home countries.”
It continues, “Given Guatemala’s incapacity to provide effective protection and the risk that some transferees would face the threat of serious harm either in Guatemala itself or after returning to their home countries, the United States violates its domestic and international non-refoulement obligations by not examining the asylum claims of asylum seekers it is forcibly sending to Guatemala.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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