Political Report # 1423 Sweeping Language in Asylum Agreement Foists U.S. Responsibilities onto El Salvador by  John Washington, The Intercept

Amid a tightening embrace of Trump administration policies, last week El Salvador agreed to begin taking asylum-seekers sent back from the United States. The agreement was announced on Friday but details were not made public at the time. The text of the agreement — which The Intercept requested and obtained from the Department of Homeland Security — purports to uphold international and domestic obligations “to provide protection for eligible refugees,” but immigration experts see the move as the very abandonment of the principle of asylum. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy analyst at American Immigration Council, called the agreement a “deeply cynical” move. The agreement, which closely resembles one that the U.S. signed with Guatemala in July, implies that any asylum-seeker who is not from El Salvador could be sent back to that country and forced to seek asylum there. Although officials have said that the agreements would apply to people who passed through El Salvador or Guatemala en route, the text of the agreements does not explicitly make that clear. “This agreement is so potentially sweeping that it could be used to send an asylum-seeker who never transited El Salvador to El Salvador,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director of refugee protection at the nonprofit organization Human Rights First. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Guatemalan deal has yet to take effect, as Guatemala’s Congress claims to need to ratify it first. DHS officials are currently seeking a similar arrangement with Honduras and have been pressuring Mexico — under threats of tariffs — to crack down on U.S.-bound migration. The agreement with El Salvador comes after the Supreme Court recently upheld the Trump administration’s most recent asylum ban, which requires anyone who has transited through another country before reaching the border to seek asylum there first, and be denied in that country, in order to be eligible for asylum in the U.S. Meanwhile, since January, more than 42,000 asylum-seekers who filed their claims in the U.S. before the ban took effect have been pushed back into Mexico and forced to wait there — where they have been subjected to kidnapping, rape, and extortion, among other hazards — as the courts slowly weigh their eligibility. Reichlin-Melnick called the U.S.-El Salvador deal “yet another sustained attack at our system of asylum protections.” It begins by invoking the international Refugee Convention and the principle of non-refoulement, which is the crux of asylum law — the guarantee not to return asylum-seekers to a country where they would be subjected to persecution or death. Karen Musalo, law professor at U.C. Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, called that invocation “Orwellian.” “The idea that El Salvador is a safe country for asylum-seekers when it is one of the major countries sending asylum-seekers to the U.S., a country with one of the highest homicide and femicide rates in the world, a place in which gangs have control over large swathes of the country, and the violence is causing people to flee in record numbers … is another absurdity that is beyond the pale,” Musalo said. “El Salvador is not a country that is known for having any kind of protection for its own citizens’ human rights,” Musalo added. “If they can’t protect their own citizens, it’s absolutely absurd to think that they can protect people that are not their citizens.” “They’ve looked at all of the facts,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “And they’ve decided to create their own reality.” Last week, the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro reported that the country’s agency that reviews asylum claims only has a single officer. Meanwhile, though homicide rates have gone down in recent months — since outsider president Nayib Bukele took office in June — September has already seen an increase in homicides. Bukele’s calculus in accepting the agreement is still opaque to Salvadoran observers (Guatemala’s version was deeply unpopular in that country), but he has courted U.S. investment and support. The legal status of nearly 200,000 Salvadorans with temporary protected status in the U.S. is also under threat from the administration. This month also saw the symbolic launch of El Salvador’s Border Patrol — with U.S. funding and support. This week, Bukele, who has both sidled up to Trump and employed Trumpian tactics, will meet with the U.S. president in New York to discuss immigration. Reichlin-Melnick noted that the Guatemalan and Salvadoran agreements, as written, could bar people not only from seeking asylum, but also from two other protections meant to fulfill the non-refoulement principle: withholding of removal (a stay on deportation) and the Convention Against Torture, which prevents people from being returned to situations where they may face torture. That would mean that these Central American cooperation agreements go further than the recent asylum ban, which still allows people to apply for those other protections. Another major difference between the asylum ban and these agreements is that with the asylum ban, people would be deported to their home countries. If these agreements go into effect, the U.S. will start sending people to Guatemala or El Salvador, regardless of where they may be from. In the 1980s, the ACLU documented over 100 cases of Salvadorans who were harmed or killed after they were deported from the U.S. After this agreement goes into effect, it will no longer be just Salvadorans who the U.S. will be sending into danger. Original article can be found (here). URL:      Click here for article

Political Report # 1422 U.S. announces asylum deal with Honduras, could send migrants to one of world's most violent nations

Political Report # 1422 U.S. announces asylum deal with Honduras, could send migrants to one of world's most violent nations by  Nick Miroff, The Washington Post

The Trump administration announced a migration deal Wednesday that will give U.S. immigration authorities the ability to send asylum seekers from the border to Honduras, one of the most violent and unstable nations in the world. Department of Homeland Security officials reached the accord with the government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is embroiled in allegations of government corruption and charges that he and others have been operating the nation as a criminal enterprise — Hernández has been named as a co-conspirator in a major U.S. drug trafficking case. The deal paves the way for the United States to take asylum seekers from the U.S. border and ship them to a nation with one of the highest murder rates in the world, a country with gang wars that have fueled waves of mass migration and multiple “caravans” to the United States that became a major irritant to President Trump. More than 250,000 Hondurans have crossed the U.S. border during the past 11 months alone, many filing protection claims that have added to the soaring number of asylum cases clogging U.S. courts. That DHS would enter into such an accord with the Honduran government a month after its president was named by U.S. prosecutors as a co-conspirator in a drug case is a sign of the Trump administration’s eagerness to armor the U.S. immigration system against a new surge of Central Americans. Last week, DHS Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan signed a similar deal with El Salvador, after reaching an accord with the government of Guatemala in July. None of those pacts have been implemented, but once in place, U.S. officials say they will have the ability to redirect asylum applicants from the U.S. border to the same three countries that accounted for the vast majority of unlawful migration. McAleenan and other U.S. officials said asylum seekers should try to find refuge “as close to home” as possible, rather than embarking on the long and often dangerous trip to the United States. A senior DHS official who described the Honduras agreement to reporters Wednesday said that the accord would allow the United States to redirect asylum seekers to the countries through which they transit while on the way to the United States — if they failed to seek protection in those countries first. An asylum seeker from Nicaragua or Venezuela, for example, would be asked to choose among Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador as places to seek protection, under the scenario the senior DHS official described. Immigration attorneys and rights advocates have denounced the DHS agreements as a flagrant abrogation of long-standing U.S. legal protections extended to those fleeing persecution. Trump administration officials have acknowledged that their goal is to deter migrants from using U.S. humanitarian programs as a way to avoid detention and deportation at the border. “If you don’t have integrity in the system, if you can’t effectuate immigration results as people arrive at the border, and they’re invited to come up with a promise they’ll be released into the next country, they’re going to keep coming,” McAleenan said Wednesday on Fox News. McAleenan has made several trips to Honduras in recent months seeking a deal, and he met with Hernandez and other senior officials on Aug. 27 in Washington. DHS officials say the agreement will be key to unlocking U.S. investment and a renewed commitment to job creation and growth in the region. The acting DHS secretary also hosted Honduras’ first lady, Ana García Carías, during a border tour in June, making a personal appeal to her government and others in the region for help stemming a record influx of Central American families at the border. DHS officials say the accord signed with Honduras also will expand information-sharing and improve cooperation targeting transnational criminal organizations. Hernández, the Honduran president, was accused by U.S. prosecutors in New York last month of conspiring with other top officials to protect cocaine traffickers, including a crime ring allegedly led by the president’s younger brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández. U.S. prosecutors described the president’s brother as a “a violent, multi-ton drug trafficker” after taking him into custody in Miami last year. He has pleaded not guilty to weapons and drug charges. The charges include claims that about $1.5 million in drug money was used to finance Hernández’s 2013 presidential campaign, paying for bribes and gifts to politicians who provided their support. President Hernández has denied the charges. Asked whether the Trump administration took the pending charges into account while hashing out the migration accord with Hernández, the senior DHS official declined to answer. Original article can be found (here). URL:      Click here for article

Political Report # 1406 Puerto Rico: Increased Federal Control Is Not The Solution

By Yarimar Bonilla And José Caraballo Cueto The Hill

After 12 days of protests, the governor of Puerto Rico resigns. Some claim that the scandals related to the governor give credence to President Trump’s claims about Puerto Rican politicians being “inept” and “corrupt.” Others have suggested that the current political crisis calls for strengthening federal oversight and increasing the powers of the fiscal control board that is already charged with managing the island’s debt crisis. However, there is no evidence to suggest that increasing federal control would help tackle Puerto Rico’s problems of governance and such an outcome would run contrary to the goals of those marching in the streets. When Puerto Rico’s fiscal oversight board was first established, some residents held out hope that it would act precisely as a regulatory body that could bring an end to the kind of corruption that has been revealed by the recent FBI arrests. Yet, this has hardly been the case. In its nearly three years of existence the board has not filed a single corruption case or canceled any of the dubious contracts related to the FBI arrests.  Further, the board has been sued repeatedly for lack of transparency, a key element for good governance, and several politicians who lobbied for the board’s creation, including Puerto Rico’s former resident commissioner, are now working at firms that hold lucrative contracts with it. Moreover, some of the board members themselves have possible conflicts of interest due to their own involvement in the generation of the debt crisis they are now tasked with solving. These conflicts might have been elucidated through congressional nomination hearings. A first circuit court ruled that the board was unconstitutional precisely because of its failure to hold such hearings, a process that the U.S. government claimed was unnecessary in the case of “territorial officers.”

Political Report # 1400 Honduran Labor Fight Reveals Exploitation Behind the Migrant Crisis

By Michael Galant,   Truthout

Thousands of migrants sit in cages along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. policy makers and media debate their proper treatment as if they have appeared out of nowhere - fleeing hardships that are, to us, unknowable and unavoidable. Two thousand miles away, one labor struggle reveals how false this narrative is. In a microcosm of the conditions that have forced millions around the world to leave their homes in search of a better life in the global North, farmworkers in Honduras are fighting for their rights against the violent exploitation of a powerful multinational corporation and a global economic system designed to marginalize them. Fyffes plc is the fourth-largest banana distributor in the world and the top importer of winter-season melons to the United States. Despite an annual $1 billion in revenue, the Japanese-owned and Irish-headquartered corporation remains a virtual unknown compared to its competitors: Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte. But in Honduras, Fyffes is infamous. Fyffes employs up to 8,000 seasonal workers in its Honduran melon fields, the majority women. These workers have faced unendurable and often illegal exploitation. Fyffes pays sub-poverty wages, fails to provide legally mandated benefits, and leaves workers without savings for retirement. According to The Guardian, workers report that Fyffes regularly refuses to supply adequate drinking water, toilets or safety gear, and the company has been known to illegally fire pregnant workers. When these dangerous conditions reach their inevitable conclusion - when, for example, 17 women are hospitalized from exposure to dangerous agrochemicals - Fyffes fails to deliver adequate medical care or compensation.

Political Report # 1399 Migrants Will Pay the Price of Mexico’s Tariff Deal With Trump

By Luis Gómez Romero,   The Conversation

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is celebrating an agreement avoiding U.S. tariffs as a major political and diplomatic triumph for his government. “We didn’t win everything, but we were able to claim a victory with there being no tariffs,” said chief negotiator Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, on June 9. The two neighbors have been at odds since United States President Donald Trump on May 30 threatened to hit all Mexican imports with steadily rising tariffs unless Mexico successfully halted the northward flow of Central American migrants fleeing extreme poverty and violence through Mexico toward the United States. Approximately 80% of Mexican exports are destined for the United States. Tariffs would have devastated Mexico’s economy. To keep its goods untaxed, Mexico had to convince President Trump that it was serious about stopping migration. After a week of frantic negotiations, Mexico said it would deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to its southern border with Guatemala to stop migrants from entering Mexico. As part of the agreement, a Trump administration program known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces some migrants to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed in the U.S., will also be expanded.

Political Report # 1378 U.S. Meddling in Venezuela, Venezuela Next

By Vijay Prashad Frontline

On September 8, The New York Times carried a story with a provocative headline: “Trump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers”. The journalists Ernesto Londoño and Nicholas Casey spoke to 11 current and former United States officials and Venezuelan commanders. These people told the journalists that they had been involved in conversations with the Donald Trump administration about regime change in Venezuela. In August 2017, Trump had bragged that the U.S. had a “military option” for Venezuela. This statement, these men told the reporters, “encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington”. In February this year, then U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people.” This was an invitation for a military coup in Venezuela.

Political Report # 1294 NAFTA Talks: What's the Deal?

By Arthur Stamoulis Labor Notes

As renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) chugs along rapidly behind closed doors, President Donald Trump will soon be forced to decide whether to keep or abandon his campaign pledge to make the pact "much better" for working people. NAFTA's renegotiation should be an opportunity to end its quarter-century legacy of job loss and wage suppression. Longtime fair trade advocates warn, however, that without increased public pressure, Trump could end up making NAFTA even worse for working people. Rather than put good-paying jobs, better wages, and human rights at the center of NAFTA's renegotiation, as unions and others have demanded, big corporations are pushing to "modernize" NAFTA in ways that strengthen corporate power. In recent weeks, as NAFTA's renegotiation reached its "middle stage," corporations have dramatically increased their pressure on the White House, descending on Capitol Hill in droves; holding multiple press conferences; sending various letters; and encouraging their friends in the "Goldman-Sachs wing" of the administration to intervene with the president. Chamber of Commerce Vice President John G. Murphy explained during a mid-October press event, "We're urging the administration to recalibrate its approach and stop and listen to the business community, the agriculture community, the people who actually engage in trade."

Political Report # 1279 Obama's Guantánamo Legacy Lingers in Trump Era

By By Aisha Maniar, Truthout

While President Trump has quickly developed a more violent record than Obama on drone warfare, immigration and other policy areas, Trump has thus far not embraced Guantánamo and made it his own the way that Obama did in 2009. The 41 prisoners who remained at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp when Obama left office continue to be the only prisoners in the camp, and the arbitrary regime continues almost entirely as it did under Obama. Trump's odd tweets about Guantánamo, such as his tweet about the alleged recidivism rate of former prisoners, are about as meaningful and effective as his tweets about covfefe and the country needing to "heel." Many of the 197 men released from Guantánamo by the Obama administration continue to suffer the repercussions of their imprisonment every day. More than two-thirds of releases under Obama were of men resettled in third countries. Most were effectively rendered refugees who could not return to their country of origin, either due to the safety risk that resulted from their association with Guantánamo or due to the United States' foreign policy of war and hostility in states such as Yemen and Syria. The problems for prisoners transferred to third countries where they had no friends, family, job or connections, and often could not speak the local language, started almost immediately. Coupled with intrusive surveillance and restrictions, freedom remained elusive.

Political Report # 1248 How Unaccompanied Youth Become Exploited Workers in the US

By Stephanie L. Canizales,  The Conversation

The Trump administration has released a series of executive orders targeting immigration at the U.S. southern border. Central American families and children traveling alone represent nearly half of all unauthorized migrants apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. The criminalization of immigrants at the U.S. southern border disproportionately affects Central American children and youth. Nearly 153,000 unaccompanied Mexican and Central American children have been apprehended at the U.S. southern border since 2014. Of those detained by Customs and Border Protection and processed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 60 percent have been reunited with a sponsor, typically a parent. The other 40 percent are placed with a nonparent sponsor. With the guidance of a parent or guardian, these youths might obtain financial, legal, health and social support. Others who enter without detection and remain unaccompanied when they arrive in the U.S. are financially independent and may never gain access to formal resettlement services. Recent orders by the Trump administration that prioritize unaccompanied child migrants for deportation heighten the vulnerability of immigrant children in the U.S. Since 2012, I have conducted in-depth observations and interviews with undocumented immigrant youth who arrived in Los Angeles, California as unaccompanied minors and have remained without a parent throughout their settlement in the U.S. I use pseudonyms for confidentiality as research participants are migrant youth living and working in the U.S. without authorization.

Political Report # 1231 The Consideration of Elliott Abrams for Deputy Secretary of State would Represent a Rude Shock for Latin America

lliott Abrams speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2012                  Taken from Gage Skidmore. Wikimedia. By Taylor Lewis and Kate Terán, COHA

With the Trump Administration sponsoring what has been described as one of the most controversial cabinets in contemporary U.S. history, it is critical for those who are interested in such political concerns to not only look at those at the highest level of policy making, but also those who are called upon to support them, particularly the individual being considered for the position of Deputy Secretary of State. On February 6, it was revealed by Politico that Elliott Abrams is under serious consideration for the position, an appointment that would place him directly below Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.[i] Elliott Abrams is a U.S. diplomat who served during both the Reagan and G.W. Bush Administrations. Under President Reagan, he served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Under George W. Bush, he served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, Special Assistant to the President, and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs.[ii] Given his experience, Abrams would appear to be a uniquely qualified choice below Tillerson, who, as the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, has little to no experience working within the U.S. foreign policy positions and its operational base.