OPINION
Donald Trump made an interesting comment during his conversation with Elon Musk this week – more of a brag, really, about how he curbed illegal and unwanted immigration into the United States when he was president.
Trump had promised to crack down on illegal immigration and it was a hot topic leading up to the 2016 election, which became real when Trump followed through by threatening to withdraw US aid to three South American countries busily clearing their jails of criminals and gang members and sending them to the Mexican border to enter the US.
Trump’s message was ignored until 2019 when he acted by suspending US$180 in aid for the 2017 fiscal year and reallocating US$370M promised for the 2018 year.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, after Trump blasted the three countries because thousands of their citizens had sought asylum at the US border with Mexico.
Reuters 18 June 2019
It didn’t take long, around 12 weeks, for an Asylum Agreement to be signed by El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and US targeted aid restored. At that time these countries were the source of 71 per cent of the migrants detained on the US’s south-west.
Guatemala, Honduras & El Salvador have all signed historic Asylum Cooperation Agreements and are working to end the scourge of human smuggling. To further accelerate this progress, the US will shortly be approving targeted assistance in the areas of law enforcement & security,” Trump said on Twitter. The three countries from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America have sent record numbers of migrants toward the United States in recent years, fueling Trump’s rhetoric as part of his “zero tolerance” anti-immigration policy.
Reuters News 7 October 2019
A significant clause in the agreement was the right for the US to return illegals described as “certain eligible migrants” from the US back to their home countries in Central America. The criteria for deportation from the US included “transnational criminal organizations and gangs, migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, and human trafficking” including members of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13 gang.
The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, is perhaps the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. While it has its origins in the poor, refugee-laden neighborhoods of 1980s Los Angeles, the gang’s reach now spans from Central America to Europe. A predatory criminal organization, the MS13 lives mostly from extortion. But the gang’s resilience owes to its strong social bonds, which are created and strengthened via acts of violence mostly directed at their rivals and one another. Their activities have helped make the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras – one of the most violent places in the world outside a warzone. The US Department of the Treasury categorizes the group as a “transnational criminal organization,” the first such designation for a US street gang, though the MS13’s criminal proceeds do not even approach those of their counterparts on that list.”
Insight Crime 28 February 2024
The effect of the Trump Asylum Agreement and Covid can be seen in the graph below provided by USA Facts in the introduction of Title Clause 42 into the US Public Health Services Law allowing the government to prevent migrant entry during a public health emergency.
In February 2021 the Biden administration overturned Trump’s Asylum Agreement and “suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden.
Reopening the door to illegals accounts for the growth of MS13 gangs in the US, specifically in New York City and in Washington, and also in Europe, specifically Spain and Italy.
The consequences of the Biden administration allowing illegal migrants into the US can only be described as catastrophic. In May this year House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) said.
“It is unbelievable that we are on track to hit 10 million encounters nationwide before this fiscal year is even over – and that doesn’t count the roughly two million or more known got-aways on this administration’s watch,” Green wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas continue to break all the wrong records, and it’s overwhelming our Border Patrol agents, CBP officers, and AMO agents on the frontlines of this historic crisis,” Green said. “The American people should not have to bear another day of this self-inflicted disaster.”
When Trump left the presidency US foreign aid was US$50.1B a year, but in 2022 Biden increased the amount of foreign aid to US$70B creating an awful lot of influence and negotiating power that simply goes begging.
As Trump said during his Musk interview: it’s not the enemies outside your gate that should be feared; it’s those inside your country who do the damage.
