The White House on Thursday during a background call with reporters announced framework deals with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ecuador that it hopes will bring down the costs of certain groceries.

These deals come after President Donald Trump and some of his top allies promised an announcement on a deal to help alleviate the price increases of bananas, coffee and other agricultural goods, but a senior administration official on the call could not provide any specifics about how much relief this would bring to Americans’ wallets.

According to data from the September 2025 Consumer Price Index, coffee prices have spiked 18.9%, bananas are up 6.9% and beef prices are up 14.7% in the past year.

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Meanwhile, Mexico’s asylum agency has been overwhelmed by the surging number of applicants. Restrictive policies have made applying for asylum in Mexico one of the few routes migrants have to legalize their status and be able to continue traveling north.

Mexico fields record number of refugee petitions in 2021, with Haitians leading the way

The caravan departed just hours before Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he would not be attending the Summit of the Americas because the Biden administration did not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to participate.

Luis García Villagrán, an activist accompanying the migrants in Tapachula, said they wanted to send a message to the region’s leaders that “the migrant women and children, the migrant families are not bargaining chips for ideological and political interests.”

Venezuelan migrant Ruben Medina said he and 12 members of his family found themselves in southern Mexico because of his country’s president Nicolás Maduro.

“(We have) been waiting about two months for the visa and still nothing, so better to start walking in this march,” Medina said.

“They gave us an appointment for August 10 in (the asylum commission), and we don’t have the money to wait,” said Joselyn Ponce of Nicaragua. “We had to walk around hiding from immigration, there were raids, because if they catch us they will lock us up.”

The phenomenon of migrant caravans took off in 2018. Previously, smaller annual caravans moved through Mexico to highlight migrants’ plight, but without the stated goal of reaching the U.S. border.

But then several thousand migrants began walking together, betting on safety in numbers and a greater likelihood that government officials would not try to stop them. It worked at first, but more recently the Guatemalan and Mexican governments have been far more aggressive in moving to dissolve the caravans before they can build momentum.

An October 2021 caravan grew to about 4,000 migrants before it diminished in southern Mexico. Another that was broken up by authorities in Guatemala in January of that year was estimated to be even larger.

While the caravans have garnered media attention, the migrants traveling in them represent a tiny fraction of the migratory flow that carries people to the U.S. border every day, usually with the help of smugglers.

Source: https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/immigration/migrant-caravan-sets-out-for-the-u-s-border-from-southern-mexico/

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Central American migrants who were expelled by U.S. and Mexican officials, eat at a shelter, in El Ceibo, Guatemala August 15, 2021. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Central American migrants stand in line to register at a shelter after they were expelled by U.S. and Mexican officials, in El Ceibo, Guatemala August 16, 2021. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Central American migrants cross the border between Mexico and Guatemala, after being expelled by U.S. and Mexican officials, in El Ceibo, Guatemala August 16, 2021. REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

Central American migrants stand at the Mexico – Guatemala border after they were expelled by U.S. and Mexican officials, in El Ceibo, Guatemala August 15, 2021. The sign reads “Limit of the Republic of Guatemala.” REUTERS/Luis Echeverria

EL CEIBO, Guatemala, Aug 20 (Reuters) – When 25-year-old Salvadoran migrant Donovan Pedro stepped off a deportation bus at the El Ceibo border crossing that connects Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, the situation was familiar but the place was not.

Pedro had already made the trek to the U.S. border twice and was stopped by Mexican authorities, who both times sent him to other locations in Mexico.

This time he was detained in the state of Veracruz near the Gulf of Mexico, and sent to a remote border crossing with Guatemala as part of U.S. and Mexican efforts to make it more difficult for migrants to cross the U.S. border repeatedly.

Wearing a jacket and a baseball cap, Pedro carried no suitcase or change of clothes and did not have a working cell phone. But with the pandemic exacerbating unemployment in El Salvador, he was already planning to head back to the United States via the Mexican city of Monterrey near the Texas border.

“I can’t get to my country. I’m going to try to go up and back to Monterrey,” he said.

From there, he planned to get across the U.S. border.

Pedro is one of hundreds of migrants, including children and babies, from Central America that U.S. and Mexican officials have expelled further south by plane and then onward in buses towards El Ceibo, Guatemala, a tiny village of about one hundred wooden and concrete dwellings some 630 kilometers (390 miles) north of the capital, a Reuters witness observed over two days there.

Many are not told where they are going.

U.S. President Joe Biden is under pressure to stem an increase in southern border crossings, with U.S. agents apprehending or expelling more than 1,276,000 migrants since last October.

The Biden administration began flying migrants to Guatemala this month from the United States under a U.S. policy allowing fast-track expulsions for some families arriving from Mexico.

It has also urged Mexico to curb migration, prompting authorities there to quietly fly thousands of undocumented migrants from the north of the country to the south for expulsion. read more

NO ONE TO CALL

For most of the migrants – hailing from Honduras, El Salvador or Nicaragua – they have no connection to Guatemala. When they get off the bus, they have no local currency, no place to stay and no-one to call for help.

Some migrants stranded in El Ceibo told Reuters they are determined to make the journey to the U.S. border again, having learned valuable lessons about navigating the routes.

Others remain in limbo in El Ceibo, unsure of what to do next. Those who can afford it, stay in a local inn for about $20 a night. Others climb a steep hill to a nearby migrant shelter that can house 30 people at a time.

Some sleep in the streets of El Ceibo, a dangerous drug-trafficking area where gunshots can be heard day or night. The rest just start walking.

“This is my first time in Guatemala. I don’t know what to do because I’m alone,” said Aura Diaz, a Honduran woman traveling with her two young daughters, aged 4 and 1.

Fleeing violence in Honduras and hoping to find work in the United States, she had been traveling for more than a month with the two girls when officials stopped them two days before in the Mexican city of Reynosa across from McAllen, Texas, she said.

“We were resting and they grabbed us,” she said.

Guatemala’s government on Tuesday said it was concerned about not receiving any notifications about migrants of different nationalities crossing into its territory by land at its El Ceibo and El Carmen border points.

It said it has facilities for returnees from Mexico at other border points, like Tecun Uman, that have the capacity to provide migrant care in a “dignified and safe” manner.

“Guatemala’s foreign ministry has sent diplomatic communications requesting official information from the governments of Mexico and the United States on these migratory movements,” the government said in a statement.

Guatemala, however, is not providing transport for migrants after they arrive at El Ceibo.

When they get off the bus at the border in Mexico, the migrants cross into the Guatemalan village, where power from a local generator for the houses and three inns goes off at 10 p.m.

Officials there take their temperature, take photos of their IDs and send them on their way. Many migrants could be seen asking where they should go now, or where they should sleep.

“They throw you into a place you don’t know, with no money, nothing, and with small children,” said Eduardo, a Honduran migrant who was staying at a local shelter with his wife and three young children. He, too, plans to return to Mexico in the hope of eventually reaching the United States.

He explained how he and his family fled Honduras after Eduardo’s wife was kidnapped by gang members. Eduardo did not give his last name due to fears for their safety.

“No matter how long we have to stay we’re going to ask for asylum because we do not want to return to our country,” he said.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/migrants-left-high-dry-guatemala-border-after-deportations-mexico-us-2021-08-20/?rpc=401&

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The number of migrant children in custody along the U.S. southern border has tripled in the past two weeks to a record 3,250, with nearly half held past the legal limit.

Because of the surge, the Biden administration has allowed child migrant centers to expand their capacity to 100% and are searching for new shelters across the country. Officials projected 13,000 child migrants will cross into the U.S. in May alone.

So, what’s the Biden administration’s plan to stop the influx?

Nothing in the short-term – his administration is laughably blaming climate change and hurricanes for the increase in numbers, not his ending catch and release, halting deportations, stopping construction on the border wall, and terminating the Trump-era remain in Mexico policy. In the long term, President Biden wants Congress to fund his $4 billion immigration plan.

Yes, that’s correct – President Biden wants $4 billion in taxpayer money to help pay for his immigration mistakes. Instead of using the money to build a wall, or increase border security, it will be dedicated to providing funding to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to help them decrease poverty, corruption, and violence in their home countries.

Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/10/biden-wants-you-pay-his-self-inflicted-border-cris/

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Guatemalan soldiers stand guard at a police checkpoint on the Motagua River to stop the advance of Honduran migrants in Zacapa, Guatemala, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

Guatemalan soldiers stand guard at a police checkpoint on the Motagua River to stop the advance of Honduran migrants in Zacapa, Guatemala, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

A Honduran migrant woman trying to reach the U.S. cries after she was detained in the Guatemalan department of Chiquimula, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)

12 more photos at the source

EL FLORIDO, Guatemala (AP) — A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. Small groups pressed on toward the Mexican border, while others accepted rides from authorities back to Honduras.

Many of the migrants were driven by an increasingly desperate situation in Honduras, where the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and two major hurricanes in November have piled atop chronic poverty and gang violence. That combined with a hope that the new U.S. administration of President-elect Joe Biden would be more welcoming gave birth to the year’s first caravan.

But Tuesday, buses carrying dozens of migrants and police patrol vehicles carrying handfuls arrived sporadically through the morning at the Guatemala-Honduras border crossing of El Florido. They were passed from Guatemalan border agents to their Honduran counterparts and then boarded buses that would take them back to their hometowns.

Some 25 miles into Guatemala where hundreds of migrants had been stalled at a roadblock in Vado Hondo for several days, traffic flowed smoothly Tuesday and few migrants remained. Guatemala’s immigration authorities reported that through Monday more than 2,300 migrants had been returned to Honduras.

Carlos Hernandez, a 29-year-old shoemaker from Honduras, sat on the roadside unable to move forward and without any reason to go back.

“I lost everything, children, house, everything,” Hernández said through tears in reference to the hurricanes. “Everyone died there, I don’t have anything. Who am I going to return to?”

Eber Sosa, an 18-year-old, bricklayer, expressed the hope of many that something would change with the new U.S. administration.

“Now that the new president (Biden) is here we are waiting for the answer, all of us immigrants who are here from Honduras,” Sosa said. “We are looking to see what the new president says to move forward.”

If Guatemala’s government had indeed dissolved the year’s first caravan, it would be a relief to the incoming U.S. administration. Biden has promised immigration reform, but for now plans to leave Trump-era border policies in place fearing a surge of migrants when he takes office.

Guatemala’s government had made clear it would stop the caravan for immigration and health reasons before it had even formed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras last week. President Alejandro Giammattei said 2,000 police and soldiers would be sent to the border.

Those forces did not stop the caravan at the border, but a series of strategically places roadblocks where forces deployed tear gas and batons dissolved the mass of people.

On Tuesday, Michael Kozak, acting assistant secretary for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, commended Guatemala via Twitter for “carrying out its responsibilities by responding appropriately & lawfully to the recent migrant caravan.”

Central American migrants began turning increasingly to caravans as a low-cost alternative to hiring a smuggler in 2018. Migrants gain a degree of safety in numbers and initially pushed successfully through Guatemala and Mexico. However, the U.S. government has led an effort to coordinate a more aggressive response from countries along the way to try to keep them from advancing far.

Caravans still represent only a fraction of the overall immigration flow that moves largely undetected.

In the past year, Guatemala has become a critical bulwark against the caravans, egged on by the more aggressive immigration policies of the Trump administration. Guatemalan forces effectively dissolved multiple migrant caravans last year.

In Tecun Uman, across the Suchiate river from Mexico, Rev. Fernando Cuevas said Tuesday there were not more than 70 migrants in the border town. Those who arrive do so in small groups, mostly family units, and try to cross to Mexico almost immediately.

Some go to the bridge to request asylum, while others attempt to cross the river.

Where hundreds of migrants massed last January before crossing into Mexico, this time Guatemala’s highway roadblocks appear to have stopped most. Most of those who have made it through carry the required proof of a negative coronavirus test and passports, Cuevas said.

Cuevas said both sides of the river are militarized. In Tecun Uman, Guatemala deployed large numbers of National Police who made a local community center their barracks and patrol the streets looking for migrants. Two buses from the Mexican government sit in the central plaza in front of his church waiting to drive migrants back to the Honduras border, he said.

“We are seeing a situation a little different from other years when the migrants had access and free transit,” Cuevas said. His church had prepared for the arrival of migrants like a year earlier, but now he expects few will make it. “We don’t expect them in great numbers nor organized. We don’t expect more than 100 at one time will be here.”

Mexico had sent thousands of National Guard members and immigration agents to that border last week in preparation. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to respect human rights, but also to enforce an orderly, legal migration.

One year ago, Mexican forces in riot gear rounded up hundreds of Central American migrants as they stopped to rest along a rural highway after crossing into the country.

Associated Press journalist Oliver de Ros reported this story in El Florido and AP writer AP writer Christopher Sherman reported from Mexico City.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-honduras-gangs-coronavirus-pandemic-immigration-c381b8ac9f22291188a403b7bbeb1d51

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Migrants seeking a U.S. work visa are pictured after being evicted from their hotel, which local authorities said was crowded, as part of the measures to prevent the spreading of the coronavirus disease in Monterrey, Mexico. Photograph: Daniel Becerril/Reuters

When Angelica turned 30, she realized there was no future for her in Honduras.

Although she had a college degree, she was still living paycheck to paycheck and was stuck in a neighborhood of the capital Tegucigalpa ruled by violent gangs.

So, after years contemplating migration to the US where she has relatives, she finally made arrangements to depart.

“I didn’t want to stay in a neighborhood where there are massacres or where the people lock themselves in their homes at six at night because the gangs impose a curfew,” she said. “I realized I was more surviving than living.”

But by the time she was due to start her journey north, Honduras had closed its borders and declared a state of emergency. She could no longer leave her city – much less take a bus to northern Guatemala, to meet a coyote who would guide her through Mexico.

“I had thought that only a hurricane could stop me,” she said. “But I hadn’t thought of a pandemic.”

Border closures and strict lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 crisis have disrupted the migrant trail through Central America and Mexico, forcing some would-be migrants to postpone their journeys – and stopping many others in their tracks.

The result has been a deterrent more effective than any wall Donald Trump could build.

Activists across the region have reported a steep decline in the number of migrants coming from Central America since the restrictions were implemented. One Mexican shelter near the Guatemalan border said it hadn’t received a new arrival in a week.

FacebookTwitterPinterest    A migrant washes the hands of a child at an encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, as more than 2,000 migrants seek asylum in the US. Photograph: Daniel Becerril/Reuters

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“The crisis has facilitated Trump’s policies because [Central American] migrants can’t even leave their countries,” said Sister Nyzella Juliana Dondé, coordinator of a Catholic migrant aid organization in Honduras.

El Salvador closed its borders on 11 March, and the governments of Guatemala and Honduras quickly followed suit. All three countries in the so-called northern triangle have since announced internal lockdowns of differing strictness.

The three nations had recently signed “safe third country agreements” with the US government under which they agreed to increase enforcement on their borders, and receive migrants who had transited their country on the way to the US.

Only Guatemala had begun to implement the new measures, but it announced on 17 March that it would suspend the deportations of Hondurans and Salvadorans from the US to its territory.

But Guatemala and Honduras continued to receive deportation flights bringing their own citizens from the US – despite concerns that the practice could accelerate the spread of the virus.

In the past week, a migrant who was deported from the US to Guatemala was diagnosed with COVID-19 and a group of deportees to Honduras escaped from the shelter where they were to be quarantined. Guatemala has now requested that the US suspend deportation flights.

Meanwhile, migrants who were already en route have been left exposed by the closure of shelters and the difficulties facing humanitarian organizations that would normally attend to them.

“They are in a vulnerable situation because the guidance is to stay at home – but the migrants don’t have homes,” said Dondé, who mentioned a case of a large group of Haitian and African migrants who were detained after crossing into Guatemala from Honduras amid the lockdown. “Neither Honduras or Guatemala wanted to offer them a place to stay.”

Migrants who already had arrived in Mexico have been left in limbo by the US government’s decision to immediately return all migrants from Mexico and Central America who cross into the country irregularly along the south-west border.

When restrictions are eventually eased, a fresh surge in migration seems likely: multiple would-be migrants who spoke with The Guardian said it was only a question of when, not if, they would set out for the US.

And the economic impact of the crisis may, in turn, cause others to migrate.. “Before many people migrated because they lacked work and dignified life,” said Silva de Souza. “Now there will be many more.”

Migrants who have come from even farther afield, have no choice but to try to push on. Mohamed left Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in 2018, following the well-trodden migrant path via Ecuador, Colombia and the jungles of Panama. He was burning through his savings and racking up debt, but making steady progress north.

But he reached Guatemala just before the government announced a state of emergency which has made moving on impossible.

“Travel has become very difficult,” he said in a brief exchange via Facebook Messenger. But he was still determined to reach the US – even if he now has to move more carefully – traveling at night and avoiding large caravans. “With God’s will, I’ll get there. I will build a life of opportunity.”

• Additional reporting by Joe Parkin Daniels
  

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  Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/02/us-immigration-central-america-coronavirus-impact

  [Disclaimer]

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Salvadoran migrant Carlos Gutierrez, part of a caravan of mostly Hondurans heading to the US, puts his shoes on at the international border bridge which links Tecun Uman, Guatemala and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, on January 21, 2020.  JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images

In a statement Monday, the Mexican government accused the caravan’s leaders of directing migrants to cross the river without considering how it would endanger children and other vulnerable members of the group. Five National Guard members sustained injuries as a result of Monday’s scuffle, the government said.

It’s not clear how many migrants were injured, but reports have indicated that at least some were. The Mexican government said it has provided medical care, including hospitalization, to migrants who have requested it, including some who appeared dehydrated.

Although some Hondurans intend to remain in Mexico and find jobs, most of those in the caravan are seeking transit through Mexico in the hopes of reaching the US border. It’s a signal that as long as violence and economic instability continues to drive Central American migrants out of their home countries, they will continue to seek refuge in the US — no matter how much the Trump administration pressures other nations to stop them.

What will happen to Hondurans in the caravan

As reports surfaced that a caravan was en route to the Mexican border last week, López Obrador had vowed that migrants could either request a work permit to remain in southern Mexico legally or claim asylum, but would not be permitted to travel to the US. Now, however, it appears that at least some of the migrants will be deported.

With the aid of the National Guard, Mexican immigration authorities sent over 400 of the migrants who attempted to cross the border to immigration detention facilities, where they will be screened to determine whether they have the right to remain in Mexico or will be sent back to Honduras. Women and children will be deported via plane, whereas others will travel via bus, according to the Mexican government.

As is standard practice in Mexico, those who claim asylum will be released from detention and processed by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), which has recently expanded its presence in Mexico to eight offices, has agreed to help COMAR identify migrants with asylum claims, a spokesperson for the agency said.

Honduras produces high numbers of people seeking asylum: In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the US granted asylum to 2,048 migrants from Honduras, compared with 1,048 from Mexico, 3,471 from El Salvador, and 2,954 from Guatemala.

Honduras remains a hotbed of gang violence, largely perpetrated by the international criminal gang MS-13, which formed in Los Angeles and was transplanted to Central America following mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants with criminal histories in the 1990s. The gangs facilitate drug trafficking, extort local residents, and force teenage boys to join.

The country also has the fifth-highest homicide rate worldwide, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as well as rampant government corruption and high rates of violence against women and LGBTQ individuals.

Hondurans likely won’t be able to seek asylum in the US

Migrants’ chances of evading Mexican authorities and being granted asylum in the US remain slim.

They may be returned to Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). More than 56,000 migrants have been sent back to await decisions on their US asylum applications.

The Trump administration has also brokered a series of agreements with Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries — Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — that allow the US to send migrants back to those countries, though the agreement with Guatemala is the only one that has gone into effect so far.

The agreements resemble “safe third-country agreements,” a rarely used diplomatic tool that requires migrants to seek asylum in the countries they pass through by deeming those countries capable of offering them protection (though the Trump administration has been reluctant to use that term). Until recently, the US had this kind of agreement with just one country: Canada.

The administration has sought such agreements in Central America as a means of achieving Trump’s goal of driving down the number of migrants seeking refuge at the US-Mexico border by sending them back to the countries from which they came and passed through. Immigrant advocates argue that doing so could have deadly consequences.

Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/21/21075158/mexico-guatemala-border-crossing-honduran-migrants

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Mexicans seeking asylum in the US could be sent to Guatemala as part of a deal signed by the Trump administration with the Central American country last year.

Under the agreement, migrants from El Salvador and Honduras who pass through Guatemala can be returned to the country to seek asylum there first.

But some Mexican migrants too could now face deportation, the US Department of Homeland Security announced.

Mexico rejected the plan, saying it could affect hundreds of people.

The controversial deal, reached last July, was part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop people trying to reach the US through Mexico. Many say they are fleeing violence and poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

At the time, critics said migrants would be at risk in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the US, according to the World Bank. Activists have also said the country does not have the resources to process and host large numbers of applicants.

• Step into the shoes of a migrant
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“Certain Mexicans seeking humanitarian protection in the United States may now be eligible to be transferred to Guatemala and given the opportunity to seek protection there,” a US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

In theory, the expanded plan could see a Mexican being deported from El Paso in Texas, across the border from Ciudad Juárez, to Guatemala, some 2,500km (1,500 miles) away.

In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry condemned the measure, saying some 900 asylum seekers could be affected from February. The government, it said, would closely monitor “human rights set out in the international agreements signed and ratified” by both countries.

Since the US began implementing the deal in November, 52 migrants have been sent to Guatemala, Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for the Guatemalan immigration institute told Reuters news agency. So far, only six have applied for asylum, she said.

Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office this month, told Reuters he would review the deal, signed by President Jimmy Morales after Mr Trump threatened to impose tariffs on his country. The US reached similar agreements with Honduras and El Salvador last year.

The number of people apprehended at the US-Mexico border fell sharply in the second part of 2019, according to the US Customs and Border Protection.

The drop is attributed to the deployment by Mexico of National Guard troops under pressure from President Trump, and to a US government programme that forces non-Mexican asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they await their court hearings.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51018778

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“I am grateful to be able to withdraw the Proclamation of Emergency due to the Trump Administration’s policy changes that diminish the flow of the migrant family units to the Yuma area and prevent releases into the Yuma community,” Mayor Douglas Nicholls said in a statement earlier this month.

BORDER APPREHENSIONS DROPPED IN NOVEMBER FOR 6TH CONSECUTIVE MONTH, PER DHS DATA

Nicholls declared a state of emergency in April near the peaks of the border crisis when the number of migrants apprehended or turned away at the border soared to over 109,000. That number would hit 144,000 in May but then decline sharply in the months since then, down to about 42,000 in November. At the time, Nicholls said the state of emergency was “due to the migrant family releases overwhelming the local shelter system.”

The administration has credited a slew of measures for bringing down the numbers of migrants approaching the border. Most significantly is the ramping up of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) over the summer — which sees migrants returned to Mexico as they await their hearings. So far more than 53,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under MPP. That has been coupled with asylum agreements with countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador that sees migrants sent there to claim asylum instead

While those policies have drawn significant criticism from pro-migrant and humanitarian groups, who warn that they could send migrants into dangerous areas and place them at risk of violence, the administration claims it is those policies that have helped slow the crisis and end the pull factors that brought migrants north. They also mean that apprehended migrants can be processed quicker and, in many cases, be sent to Mexico or a Central American country rather than released into the U.S. interior. In a press release, Nicholls also credited those initiatives for alleviating the crisis in Yuma.

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The program initially will be applied at a U.S. Border Patrol station in El Paso, Texas. The first phase will target adults from Honduras and El Salvador and the aim will be to process them within 72 hours, according to the three officials and notes taken by one of the officials during a training session of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers.

Federal immigration authorities interviewed one migrant through the new process on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday morning, the officials said. The officials did not know when the first flights to Guatemala would take place.

Chad Wolf, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, told reporters in El Paso that the agreement with Guatemala would be implemented “very soon.”

Wolf said Guatemala was setting up reception centers to process the migrants, and that the two countries were working on finalizing an implementation plan.

USCIS outlined the guidelines in a training session in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday, according to the officials. The guidelines were first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Asylum officers were instructed not to ask migrants whether they have a fear of being sent to Guatemala. Instead, the migrants must affirmatively state a fear of being sent to that country, the training materials tmsnrt.rs/2KEEwHa seen by Reuters showed.

The initiative will begin in a pilot status, with 10 to 15 people processed each day. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents will decide who will be placed in the program, the officials said.

USCIS did not respond to a request for comment on the program or on the details of the training.

The new effort began after the administration of Republican President Donald Trump brokered an agreement with the Guatemalan government in July. The deal will allow U.S. immigration officials to force migrants requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border to apply for asylum in Guatemala first.

Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the United States, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office in January, has said he will review the agreement.

Trump has made cracking down on immigration a central issue of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration has worked to restrict asylum access in the United States in an effort to curb the number of mostly Central American families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump and his top officials have argued that most migrants travel to the United States for economic reasons and lack valid claims to protection.

SLOW START

While the asylum agreement with Guatemala will start slowly, the Trump administration intends to make few exceptions.

Federal immigration officials have been instructed not to apply the program to unaccompanied children, migrants with valid U.S. travel documents, or cases of public interest, the USCIS officials and documents said.

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