Blog written by Steven Dampf, Colgate Class of 2022

Based on the article: “U.S., El Salvador Reach Deal on Asylum Seekers” by Michelle Hackman, 20 September 2019, The Wall Street Journal

A safe-third-country agreement is when two countries decide they are both safe enough and have strong enough asylum systems so that if an immigrant enters one of the countries first, they must apply for asylum in that country. If an individual passed through a third country on route to the U.S., they are disqualified from applying for asylum. The Supreme Court recently gave the Trump administration permission to move forward with this policy.

The Trump administration reached a deal with the government of El Salvador to send some asylum-seekers deported from the U.S. back to their home of El Salvador. The administration is also planning for El Salvador to become a haven for immigrants seeking asylum. The Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said this deal will help increase El Salvador’s asylum capacity so it can hold more immigrants from third countries there in the future. El Salvador’s asylum capacity is almost nonexistent: Only 48 people have been granted asylum in El Salvador in 2018. On the other hand, the United Nations agency estimates 46,800 have sought asylum in 2018, ranking it the sixth most common origin nation of asylum seekers. This is why it may seem unfitting to consider El Salvador as a destination for asylum-seekers.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, El Salvador has deployed 1,100 troops and immigration officers to its border with Guatemala. The Salvadorian government has been trying to convince the United States to grant the 200,000 people from El Salvador permeant legal status. These 200,000 Salvadorians were currently under Temporary Legal Status, which the Trump administration recently ended.

The Trump administration also struck a safe-third-country agreement with Guatemala, which is ironic because it holds the State Department’s second highest travel-safety warning–the same rating as El Salvador. It advises American citizens not to travel there but considers it acceptable for people seeking asylum to reside there. The only other country the U.S. has a safe-third-country agreement with is Canada. The United States is trying to strike similar agreements with Honduras and Panama. Because President Trump is pushing for asylum seekers to seek refuge in other countries than the U.S., this decreases the United States’ pull factor.

Between 2015 and 2018, El Salvador’s murder rate fell by more than half, to 50.3 homicides per 10,000 people, according to the Igarapé Institute, which is a think tank in Brazil. Interestingly, the Trump administration is pushing to decrease humanitarian aid in Central America. This may backfire, though, because that would in turn increase push factors from Central American countries, encouraging individuals to immigrate to the U.S.