The Biden government has signed an agreement with Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to temporarily increase border security in an effort to stop migrants from reaching the U.S. border.
The deal comes as the U.S. saw a record number of unaccompanied children trying to cross the border in March, and the largest number of border patrols that have met with migrants at the southern border since March 2001 – just under 170,000.
According to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Mexico will maintain a deployment of about 10,000 troops, while Guatemala has sent 1,500 police and military personnel to its southern border and Honduras has deployed 7,000 police and army to its border “to a large contingent of migrants. ”Guatemala will also set up 12 checkpoints along the country’s migration route.
Security forces in all three countries are regularly accused of using excessive force against migrants and targeting extortion and robbery.
A White House official said Guatemala and Honduras were deploying troops temporarily in response to a large caravan of migrants scheduled for late March. The Mexican government announced an increase in security and the deployment of troops in March.
Psaki said that “the aim is to make the journey more difficult and to cross the borders more difficult”.
She added that the agreement was the product of a series of bilateral talks between US officials and the governments of the Central American countries. The increase in migrants at the border is becoming one of the biggest challenges Biden faces in the first months of his first term.
Migrants from Central America and Mexico are fleeing rampant corruption, organized crime, as well as starvation due to poor harvests and the impact of climate change. The right to claim asylum is enshrined in international and American laws.
The numbers grew strongly during Trump’s last year in office, but accelerated further under Biden, who quickly ended many of his predecessor’s policies, including one that made asylum seekers in Mexico wait for court hearings in the US.
Previously militarized efforts to prevent movement in the region did not reduce the number of people traveling north through Mexico, but forced migrants to follow riskier routes through remote regions and exposed them to an increased risk of robbery, rape, kidnapping and death.
Mexicans represent the majority of the people encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol, and almost all were single adults. The arrivals of people from Honduras and Guatemala were second and third, respectively, and more than half of the people from those countries were families or children traveling alone.