Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that 10 new companies have pledged to pour more than $1.9 billion in investments into El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Companies and nonprofit organizations, including Gap, Visa, Coatl, and AgroAmerica, were among the newest batch of government partners.

“These, we think, are pretty sizable direct investments in economies the size of the three countries in question, and they will be responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs,” a senior administration official said in a call with reporters Monday evening.

Clothing company Gap will increase its sourcing of materials from Central America to $50 million per year with an intention to surpass $150 million by 2025, according to a White House statement. It estimated that 5,000 additional jobs will be created in the region. Financial service company Visa will pour in $270 million over the next five years toward bringing people and small- and medium-sized businesses into the global financial system.

MIGRATION CRISIS TO US HAS WORSENED DESPITE BIDEN’S PLEDGE TO ADDRESS ‘ROOT CAUSES’

Family-owned sustainable food corporation AgroAmerica will invest $100 million across six projects that will create 1,000 permanent, living-wage jobs over the next five years. Projects include a food ingredients refinery, banana plantation, and an avocado plantation and processing plant. Digital service firm Coatl will expand access to high-speed internet in rural parts of El Salvador.

President Joe Biden pledged to interrupt the migration crisis by addressing the root causes that have led millions to flee Central America for the southern border in recent years. As a presidential candidate, Biden said that rather than focus on measures to stop migrants at the border, he would resolve the factors that prompt people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to abandon their home countries — namely, widespread poverty and the threat of violent crime. The three countries sit at the northern end of Central America, directly south of Mexico.

In early 2021, the White House announced $310 million in aid to Central America and the appointment of Harris as the leader of diplomatic talks with regional leaders. It also released its “Strategies to Address the Root Causes of Migration in Central America.” The document laid out, in general terms, plans for improving business conditions, addressing corruption within governments, bolstering human rights, countering gangs and cartels, and combating domestic violence.

Sixteen months into Biden’s tenure, though, the situation at the border with Mexico is far worse, and the administration’s efforts to improve conditions in migrants’ home countries have not amounted to much. The senior administration official pushed back.

“We’ve acknowledged all along that the drivers of migration from Central America and elsewhere are long-term issues that can’t be resolved quickly,” the official said. “But we think that we have been tackling them and are seeing real progress in our efforts.”

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have a combined population of 33 million. Over the past 18 months, more than 1 million people from those three countries were encountered attempting to enter the U.S. at the southern border.

The overarching problem, according to one immigration analyst, is that the Biden administration’s efforts to get U.S. companies to create jobs in the Northern Triangle cannot compete with the amount of money that people in America earn, giving people little reason to stay.

“The pay differential at the lowest end of the scale in the United States and those countries is about 10 to 1,” said Andrew Arthur, a former federal immigration judge and now a resident fellow at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, in a May interview. “If you’re not going to pay people comparable wages in that country, you will actually increase their GDP, but you’re not going to do much.”

GDP per capita was about $63,000 in the U.S. in 2020, according to World Bank data. In comparison, GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, was $8,853.7 in Guatemala, $8,420 in El Salvador, and $5,420 in Honduras.

A major challenge for the Biden administration is that its focus on Central America ignores a new phenomenon that has unfolded over the past year. Migrants from more than 150 countries are arriving at the southern border annually, and more people are coming from all over the world, illustrating the limits of a regional strategy focused on addressing the factors that lead people to leave home.

The number of people encountered at the southern border from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras made up 40% of all encounters at the border between September 2021 and March 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection data.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/immigration/kamala-harris-announces-2-billion-central-america-investment-amid-migration-crisis

The post Kamala Harris announces $2 billion Central America investment amid migration crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Why Biden’s plan to slow migration through international aid is unlikely to succeed first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iota left a trail of devastation in its wake as it tore across parts of Nicaragua and Honduras earlier this week. The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Nicaragua’s northeastern coast late Monday, hitting almost exactly the same stretch of the Caribbean coast that was devastated by Hurricane Eta two weeks ago.

Nicaragua Vice President and first lady Rosario Murillo on Wednesday raised the nation’s death toll to 16. The victims were spread across the country, swept away by swollen rivers or buried in landslides.

Rescuers searched at the site of a landslide in northern Nicaragua, where the local government confirmed four deaths and neighbors spoke of at least 16.

HURRICANE IOTA HITS NICARAGUA, SPARKS WARNING OF FLASH FLOODS AND LANDSLIDES IN PARTS OF CENTRAL AMERICA

A fallen tree lies on the road after the passage of Hurricane Iota in Siuna, Nicaragua, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. Hurricane Iota tore across Nicaragua on Tuesday, hours after roaring ashore as a Category 4 storm along almost exactly the same stretch of the Caribbean coast that was recently devastated by an equally powerful hurricane. (AP Photo/Carlos Herrera)

On Wednesday, CD-SINAPRED, which is Nicaragua’s emergency management agency, tweeted footage of the area where the landslide occurred at Macizo de Peñas Blancas, a mountain in Matagalpa province.

There were seven confirmed dead at the mountain, and the search continued, Murillo said.

Nicaragua’s army said it was sending 100 rescuers to the site. Access was complicated by downed trees blocking roads.

Monsignor Rolando José Alvarez, the Roman Catholic bishop of Matagalpa, tweeted Wednesday that priests are being sent to the Macizo de Peñas Blancas.

“At this moment our priests are mobilizing to that area and we are making ourselves available to all who are affected,” he wrote, in a translated tweet.

HURRICANE IOTA COULD SPARK HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN STORM-RAVAGED REGION, AID ORGANIZATIONS WARN

On Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said the storm was dissipating over Central America but warned that a threat from heavy rains continues.

The post Iota death toll in Nicaragua rises as rescuers search for survivors first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Immigration advocates and even some Central Americans mulling entering the U.S. are reportedly rooting hard for a Joe Biden victory in November, encouraged by the Democratic nominee’s pledge to dismantle President Trump’s border policies.

Biden has said he plans on “modernizing” the U.S. immigration system by working with the international community and tackling “irregular immigration.” He further plans on re-establishing the nation’s “commitment to asylum seekers and refugees,” according to his campaign website.

That has buoyed the hopes of some who oppose Trump’s hard line on illegal immigration.

“I want Trump out,” a Honduran woman reportedly told the Center for Immigration Studies during a January fact-finding mission in Mexico, the Washington Times reported Thursday.

“I’ll wait for that because it would make things easier to get it,” she said while reportedly holding a child.

ORGANIZERS SCRAP NEXT PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AFTER TRUMP SAID HE WOULDN’T AGREE TO VIRTUAL FORMAT

A cornerstone of President Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, when chants of “Build that wall!” echoed at his rallies, the illegal immigration issue has been almost absent from the debate stage so far this year.

Once he took office in 2017, Trump followed through with a massive immigration overhaul that included more than 400 executive actions on immigration, according to the Migration Policy Institute. His administration has also increased border regulations and asylum restrictions, created its Remain in Mexico program and attempted to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

ELECTION 2020 VOTER TURNOUT COULD BREAK RECORD WITH MORE THAN 8M BALLOTS ALREADY CAST

Biden has acknowledged “the pain” that was started under the Obama-Biden administration with the practice of family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border, and released a broad proposal he would try to implement if elected president on Nov.  3.

The former vice president has said he would prioritize restoring the asylum system while working toward new methods for immigration detention.

“If I’m elected president, we’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,” Biden said in August during the Democratic National Convention. “We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump has not yet released any details on his second-term immigration policy plans.

But the president is likely to pursue continued work on the southern border wall and further attempts to dismantle DACA, while introducing a “merit-based” immigration system to replace the current system.

Trump has not yet released any details that spell out what the “merit based” system would entail.

Source:  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-immigrants-advocates-hoping-for-reversal-of-trumps-border-policies

The post Biden has immigrants, advocates hoping for reversal of Trump’s border policies first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Migrants at a bridge on the Mexico-United States border wait to reschedule their immigration hearings.Credit…Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

The post As World Comes to Halt Amid Pandemic, So Do Migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

MEXICO CITY — For generations, Mexico served as a relatively open thruway for undocumented migrants traveling to the United States. Tens of thousands crossed the country every year, mostly unimpeded by the Mexican authorities.

But the Mexican government’s new hard-line posture on migration entered a new phase this week with its iron-fisted response to a large migrant caravan of Central Americans who sought to enter Mexico.

The Mexican government effectively dismantled the caravan at the nation’s southern border in recent days, using a combination of carrots and sticks — the lure of possible employment for those who chose to enter legally, and pepper spray, detention, and deportation for those who did not.

By Friday, a caravan that had numbered as many as 4,000 a week ago had dwindled to several dozen, most of them languishing in Ciudad Tecún Umán in Guatemala, where they were considering their dashed hopes and next moves. More than 1,000 were sent back to Honduras and another 800 or so remained in detention in Mexico, government authorities said.

“I didn’t cross because I saw the difficulties,” said Rony Benitez, 49, a bus driver from Honduras, who was sitting on a sidewalk in Tecún Umán on Friday morning. “I’m done with the caravan.”

Mexican security forces dressed in riot gear massed at the border with Guatemala on Monday.Credit…Johan Ordonez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The caravan was perhaps the biggest and most dramatic test to date of Mexico’s new resolve to get tough on illegal migration. The policy shift began last year under pressure from President Trump, who threatened to close the border and impose tariffs, demanding that the Mexican government do more to curb the flow of migrants passing through its territory on their way to the United States.

The crackdown led to intense scenes this week of Mexican security forces dressed in riot gear repelling or rounding up Central American migrants who tried to cross Mexico’s southern border en masse.

The tactics drew the criticism of immigrants’ advocates and even some Mexican officials who accused the authorities of committing human rights violations by using excessive force. But the Trump administration applauded the efforts, congratulating the Mexican government for its tougher line on migration.

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy Homeland Security secretary, told reporters on Friday that the Trump administration had seen more cooperation from Mexico, as well as from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, “than anyone thought was possible.”

He said the enforcement was partly the result of the diversion of dozens of Homeland Security agents to the region to train local authorities to stop migration to the United States. He added that next week the administration would begin carrying out a deal with Honduras to deport asylum-seekers back to Honduras.

For his part, President   of Mexico defended his government’s response to the caravan and said its security forces had respected human rights and acted with professionalism.

“The problem has been resolved well,” he said during a news conference on Friday. “Fortunately, human rights have been respected.”

The Mexican administration’s response to the caravan was a sharp departure from its approach to similar mass migrations just a year ago.

Mr. López Obrador took office in December 2018 amid a surge in migration from Central America, as thousands fled poverty, violence and government dysfunction and sought to reach the southwest border of the United States.

But instead of impeding that flow, Mr. López Obrador, a lifelong populist, and champion of the poor, opened the door even wider, promising work opportunities in Mexico and distributing yearlong humanitarian visas to just about anyone who applied.

As he rejected what he called the enforcement-first approach of his predecessors, deportations from Mexico plummeted.

But the permissiveness seemed to encourage even more migration, angering Mr. Trump, who threatened Mexico with crippling tariffs and the closure of the United States-Mexico border. In response, Mexico began cracking down on illegal migration, sharply increasing the detentions of undocumented migrants.

At the same time, Mr. Trump also compelled his counterparts in Central America to step up their enforcement efforts and pressured the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — to sign agreements requiring migrants who passed through one of those countries to first seek asylum there before applying in the United States.

Migrants in a caravan carried banners and an American flag after crossing the Suchiate River from Ciudad Tecún Umán, Guatemala, to Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.Credit…Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As a result of these measures, northbound migration through Mexico to the United States border has ebbed considerably in recent months.

But this wave of increasingly restrictive policies throughout the region did not discourage the latest migrant caravan from forming.

Its members, traveling on foot and hitchhiking, set off early last week from the city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras. The group grew in size as it headed north through Guatemala.

As the caravan approached the Mexican border, the Mexican authorities issued warnings that illegal crossings would not be tolerated and urged the migrants to register at official border crossings. Mr. López Obrador also dangled the possibility of employment for those who seek to enter legally, saying that there were 4,000 jobs in Mexico’s southern region that needed to be filled.

While some of the caravan’s participants presented themselves at legal border crossings, thousands more grew frustrated with the bottlenecks and sought to cross by other means, setting up a series of confrontations with the Mexican authorities.

On Jan. 18, hundreds of migrants in the vanguard of the caravan surged across a bridge linking the Guatemalan city of Tecún Umán with the Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo and came face to face with troops from Mexico’s National Guard, who blocked their path.

A full-blown melee erupted as the migrants tried to break through the Mexican defenses and the National Guard forces pushed back with riot shields and pepper spray.

Migrants charged at Mexican security forces at the border crossing last weekend.Credit…Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

As tensions settled, 20 migrants at a time were permitted to enter and register with the Mexican migration authorities. But some became angry, and others despaired when they found out that the Mexican government intended to send most of those who registered back to their countries of origin.

Two days later, more than 1,000 migrants tried to force their way from Guatemala into Mexico by fording a river that separates the two countries and storming up a steep riverbank before being repelled by Mexican security forces wielding riot shields and truncheons.

Though some of the migrants sneaked through the security phalanx, most scrambled back into Guatemala.

A third showdown — and perhaps the final blow for the migrant caravan — came on Thursday, when about 1,000 migrants crossed the border illegally and started walking toward the city of Tapachula. Hours later, they were cut off and surrounded by roughly 200 members of Mexico’s security forces, who used pepper spray to subdue those who resisted or tried to flee.

Migrants scuffled with Mexican security forces on Thursday at the border with Guatemala.Credit…Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The migrants were eventually forced onto buses and taken to detention centers.

The Mexican authorities said that the more than 1,000 migrants who have been returned to Honduras had gone voluntarily. It was unclear whether the roughly 800 who were in detention were facing deportation, or whether they would be allowed to stay while they petitioned for asylum or another kind of immigration relief.

At least 1,800 members of the caravan had registered at official border crossings, government officials said, while hundreds of others were thought to have made it into Mexico’s interior. Some who were part of the caravan never left Guatemala and instead turned around and went home, officials said.

Mr. López Obrador said Friday that many in the caravan had been “tricked” into believing that passage into Mexico was going to be easier.

“They were told that they were going to pass through the national territory without a problem,” he said.

Kirk Semple reported from Mexico City, and Brent McDonald from Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, and Ciudad Tecún Umán, Guatemala. Sofía Menchú contributed reporting from Ciudad Tecún Umán, Guatemala, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/world/americas/migrant-caravan-mexico.html

The post Mexico Breaks Up a Migrant Caravan, Pleasing White House first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Central American refugees ride a cargo truck in Mexico. Photographer: Alejandro Cegarra/Bloomberg

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are, by all accounts, countries ravaged by gang violence, drug trafficking and extreme poverty. It’s these elements that have driven wave after wave of illegal immigration to the U.S., drawing the ire of President Donald Trump.

And yet the bond market views the nations — especially the first two — as stable, almost safe, investments. In some cases, they can borrow at similar rates to regional powerhouses Brazil and Mexico.

It’s an odd thing, almost improbable sounding. And it reveals a surprising truth about these countries: They all have rock-solid fiscal accounts.

How’s that possible in such destitute places? Because it turns out, they earmark precious little money to basic social programs. Not only does this save them cash, allowing them to hold down their budget deficits, but it has the effect of encouraging the poor — those who would benefit the most from greater outlays for healthcare or housing — to emigrate.

This, in turn, has an added advantage for these nations: The migrants send growing quantities of dollars to their families back home, generating a steady flow of hard currency that is a central pillar of their economies. (For some perspective, their value is roughly 30 times greater than the aid money that a frustrated Trump pulled from the countries this week.)

When all of these elements are stitched together and viewed holistically, it can appear as if the economic model these governments have adopted is one based on exporting people. That might be an over-simplification — and it may not be the governments’ intent — but it is the net effect of the policy mix, according to longtime observers of the region.

“Migration is part of the model,” said Seynabou Sakho, the World Bank’s director for Central America. “A country may not have a big deficit, but at the same time, the needs of its people aren’t being met.”

Officials in the finance ministries and presidential offices of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Sakho’s colleagues at the World Bank run what they call social-protection studies. They try to measure how much support governments provide for the poor and the vulnerable, and they break their work down into several key indicators: poverty reduction, access to government assistance and the impact of that assistance. The three Central American nations, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, rank toward the bottom in each of those categories.

The World Bank also tracks social spending on a per-capita basis. In El Salvador, the number came to $562. It was even lower in Honduras, $278, and Guatemala, $258. That’s a fraction of the $2,193 spent in Costa Rica or the $2,269 in Brazil. The World Bank hasn’t updated that data set since 2012, but analysts say there have been few signs of improvement in recent years. Patronage and corruption, they say, is compounding the shortfall, siphoning off funds earmarked for the poor. Transparency International ranks the three nations in the bottom half of its Corruption Perceptions Index, with Guatemala in the lowest quartile.

Lucrecia Mack said she was astonished by how rampant graft was when she took the top job at Guatemala’s Health Ministry in 2016. It’s “everywhere,” she said. Documents are falsified, signatures are forged, invoices are made up. She remembers one scheme where officials bought new tires for ambulances, re-sold them to pocket the cash and left the old ones on the vehicles.

“The little money that the Health Ministry has winds up in the wrong hands,” said Mack, the daughter of a renowned human rights activist who was slain in 1990.

According to her calculations, Guatemala only spends about one-fifth of what it should annually on health care. “The budget has always been extremely tight.” As a result, she said, the ministry only has enough public clinics and hospitals to attend to about 6.5 million people. That was the population in 1975. It’s more than doubled since.

Poor infrastructure, like lack of running water and proper sewage in many places, exacerbates the effects of the funding shortfall. Maternal mortality rates, for example, are highest in the rural communities where there are the fewest highways, Mack said. She reeled off a litany of other health problems plaguing the nation: pneumonia, diarrhea, diabetes, cirrhosis, infant mortality, chronic malnutrition.

Mack lasted just 13 months in her post. When the president, Jimmy Morales, expelled a UN-backed body that had begun looking into his government as part of an investigation into organized crime in the country, she resigned in protest.

Hugo Noe Pino paints a similarly bleak picture in Honduras. The former central bank chief says the lack of funding is so extreme that some patients have been left to bring their own screws for surgeries on broken bones in public hospitals.

That’s the sort of horror story that’s often heard nowadays in crisis-torn Venezuela. But Venezuela is broke, having blown through almost its entire stash of hard currency and defaulted on its foreign debt.

Honduras, on the other hand, could easily tap the bond market for additional financing, especially at a time when rock-bottom rates in developed countries are pushing investors to seek better returns elsewhere. So too could Guatemala. Even El Salvador can sell debt at rates roughly in line with those paid by Costa Rica, the playground for American tourists that has been the region’s longtime oasis of stability. But they rarely do. The three countries went two years without selling a single foreign bond among them until Guatemala broke that drought last month.

Fiscal austerity has become such a single-minded priority in these countries — as a means to keep inflation in check and their currencies stable — that even the International Monetary Fund, an institution that’s been pilloried for years for pushing draconian budget cuts, has urged Guatemala to spend more. “There’s an obsession with this issue,” said Ricardo Castaneda, an economist with ICEFI, a Guatemala City-based think tank that focuses on fiscal policy.

Pino, who has also served as Honduras’s finance minister, acknowledged that the government has ramped up spending on security some in a bid to tame the violence but said that it came at the expense of health and education programs. Meantime, housing and transportation projects are often under the condition of political support. “They are done selectively and don’t have a significant impact on levels of poverty,” he said.

Even after the increase in security spending, Honduras still doesn’t rank particularly high on a global scale in this category. None of the three countries do. Where they do top the charts is on homicide rates. A World Bank report places El Salvador first, Honduras second and Guatemala 13th.

“Immigration is a symptom of the diseases we have: violence, lack of economic growth, lack of investments in all of the rural areas,” Nayib Bukele said at a conference in Washington a few weeks before being sworn in as president of El Salvador this month. “People don’t leave their families and country to cross three frontiers and a desert because things are fine.”

Bukele’s predecessor, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, did seek to boost social spending during his five-year term. Congress balked at the idea of taking on additional debt, though, and the legislation died. Morales also made a brief attempt to ratchet up expenditures in Guatemala. He was going to fund it by raising the country’s tax rates, which are among the world’s lowest. But the business community mobilized to quickly kill the plan. The two candidates vying to succeed Morales have pledged to try again to boost spending.

The post Central America Encourages Migrants to Leave—And Then Rakes in U.S. Dollars first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Agents encountered 1,036 people, primarily from Central America, near El Paso, Texas, early Wednesday morning. The arrest marks the largest group of unauthorized immigrants that Border Patrol has ever taken into custody at once.

The group included 63 children traveling without a parent or guardian. Another 39 people were single adults, and the remaining 934 claimed to be traveling with a family member, according to a report. Guatemalan citizens made up just over half the detainees. The rest are primarily from other Central American countries, including Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s not clear if the group came from Northern Triangle countries as part of a caravan, though it’s not likely, given no news of a convoy traveling through Mexico. Border Patrol has said human smugglers often oversee the movement of migrants at the border and use the groups to distract federal law enforcement while they move narcotics or people hoping to avoid arrest over unmanned parts of the border. Smugglers charge migrants an average of $5,000 to $8,000 each to get to the United States.

Border Patrol said in late March its agents on the southern border had since October apprehended 100 groups that contained 100 or more people. In its 2017 fiscal year, CBP documented two groups of 100 people or more. That jumped to 13 groups in 2018.

Until Wednesday, the biggest group of people to arrive at once consisted of more than 430 individuals. That apprehension took place Monday in the same region of the southern border. Memorial Day marked the busiest day in history for Border Patrol’s El Paso region as 2,200 people were taken into custody.

President Trump told reporters at the White House earlier Thursday to expect a major statement about the border in the next day or two. Wednesday’s apprehension has not been publicly shared by Customs and Border Protection or its parent, the Department of Homeland Security.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

The post 1,036 migrants, with 63 unaccompanied children, become largest single group ever taken into custody at southern border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The plan was developed over many months and included a request from Mexico that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees establish shelters along its border with Central American, a senior administration official told Fox News. The goal is to provide humanitarian aid to members of the caravan, and either prevent them from entering Mexico, or process them individually as refugees or as legal entrants.

Mexico has also agreed to take back any migrant who evades their processing system and makes it to the United States. In the past, the U.S. has been required to house those who crossed the border illegally until their cases could be heard, and only after could they return them to their country.

“Just today, the Mexican government, and this is a very important step, requested the intervention of the U.N., the Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees, to help Mexico review any asylum claims from the members of the caravan,” Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Geronimo Gutierrez told Fox Thursday night as he explained the situation.

Gutierrez said the request will allow for those arriving at Mexico’s border with Guatemala, where the first members of the Honduran caravan arrived Thursday, to make claims they are seeking asylum. The ambassador also said it would ensure Mexico was respecting international law.

U.N. officials will assess refugees while they are staying at the shelters at Mexico’s southern border, and then decide which ones have legitimate claims to refugee status.

Once a person is deemed to have a legitimate claim, they could be placed in the U.S., or any other host country that has an agreement with the UNHCR.

President Trump warned Thursday that he would shut down the southern border if the Mexican government allowed the 4,000-strong caravan to reach its border with the U.S.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/us-mexico-reach-deal-to-stop-honduran-caravan-at-mexicos-southern-border

The post US, Mexico reach deal to stop Honduran caravan at Mexico’s southern border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.