Trump halts financial aid to Central American states over migration flow

US President Donald Trump speaks at an event in Florida, on March 29, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump has ordered all direct financial assistance to three Central American countries to be cut over the flow of their migrants toward the US-Mexico border.

Citing a State Department spokesperson, US media reported on Saturday that Trump had ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to halt all aid programs for the Northern Triangle countries, namely El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.  

“At the secretary’s instruction, we are carrying out the president’s direction and ending FY [fiscal year] 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” a State Department spokesperson told the ABC News. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”

Politico reported that the Congress allocated about $627 million for Central America last year.

Earlier in the day, Trump himself told journalists that he had “ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras, and to El Salvador. No money goes there anymore.” The US president also accused the three Central American countries, along with Mexico, of not doing “a thing” to stop migration flows into the United States.

Trump also threatened to close his country’s southern border with Mexico or at least a “large section of the border” next week.

The Friday move seems to be a sudden about-face in Trump’s policy about central American migrants.

Earlier this week, US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited Mexico and Honduras to sign a regional partnership pact with the Northern Triangle nations, which have been the major countries from where migrants are arriving into the United States.

The US Customs and Border Protection announced earlier this week that more than 76,000 undocumented immigrants had crossed into the United States in February, which is an 11-year high.

Meanwhile, Mexican Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said on Thursday that his country was preparing to receive a huge 20,000-strong caravan of migrants heading to the United States from Honduras in the coming weeks.

Over the past year, a series of migrant caravans from Central American countries have journeyed north to seek asylum in the US, drawing the ire of the administration in Washington, which is opposed to such migration.

Trump has long promised to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to physically stop the inflow of the migrants but has failed to fulfill that pledge so far.

The US president had initially promised that Mexico would pay for his wall. When he failed to secure funding from Mexico, Trump turned to US Congress, which also refused. To bypass Congress, the US president last month declared a “national emergency” to corral funds allocated to other US organizations and funnel them to his wall project.

Trump has called the entry of the caravans an “invasion” by “thugs” and “criminals” and warned them to turn back or his administration would separate families at the border with Mexico, a policy condemned by Amnesty International and other rights groups as “disgraceful, mean-spirited and unlawful.”

Most of the migrants say they are fleeing the corruption of the their US-backed governments as well as persecution, violence, and poverty in their home countries.


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