Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with US
Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow US Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital's airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects.
But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip.
'Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,' Noem said. 'We've never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States.'
Asked about Noem's comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home.
Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during US President Donald Trump's first term in office. But 'we made it clear that our path was different,' Arévalo said.
He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of 'solidarity.'
The president's communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier.
During Trump's first term, the US signed such safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the US to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for US protection and permitted the US government to send them to those countries deemed 'safe.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
4 hours ago
- Arab News
El Salvador says Paris fashion show ‘glorifies' criminals
SAN SALVADOR: El Salvador's government on Saturday criticized a Paris Fashion Week show that made references to inmates at the country's CECOT mega-prison, with President Nayib Bukele joking that he could send prisoners to France. At Mexican American designer Willy Chavarria's show in Paris on Friday, the white T-shirts and shorts worn by his models invoked the uniforms worn by inmates at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). Bukele had the maximum-security prison built to hold gang members nabbed in his war against organized crime. Also imprisoned at CECOT are 252 Venezuelans deported from the United States and accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. 'We're ready to ship them all to Paris whenever we get the green light from the French government,' Bukele wrote in response to an X post that said Chavarria was paying tribute to CECOT prisoners. The president's press secretariat said Bukele's post showed his 'firm stance against the attempt to glorify criminality.' Since March 2022, Bukele has run an offensive against gangs under a state of emergency that allows arrests without a warrant. The Trump administration has paid Bukele's government millions of dollars to lock up migrants it says are criminals and gang members. US President Donald Trump invoked a rarely used wartime legislation in March to fly migrants to El Salvador without any court hearing. Lawyers for the Venezuelans deported to CECOT say the charges are without basis and the inmates are victims of physical and emotional torture.
Al Arabiya
21 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with US
Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow US Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital's airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects. But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip. 'Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,' Noem said. 'We've never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States.' Asked about Noem's comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home. Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during US President Donald Trump's first term in office. But 'we made it clear that our path was different,' Arévalo said. He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of 'solidarity.' The president's communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier. During Trump's first term, the US signed such safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the US to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for US protection and permitted the US government to send them to those countries deemed 'safe.'
Arab News
a day ago
- Arab News
What's next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court's ruling
WASHINGTON: The legal battle over President Donald Trump's move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite the Republican administration's major victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions. Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent. The high court's ruling sends cases challenging the president's birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president's policy remains uncertain. Here's what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court's ruling and what happens next. What does birthright citizenship mean? Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution's 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship. 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,' the amendment states. Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the US to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the US after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the US, no matter their parents' legal status. It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of US law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the US to foreign diplomats. Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship Trump's executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the US illegally or temporarily. It's part of the hard-line immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a 'magnet for illegal immigration.' Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' – saying it means the US can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally. A series of federal judges have said that's not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect. 'I've been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,' US District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom. In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, US District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that 'the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed' Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship. Is Trump's order constitutional? The justices didn't say The high court's ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge's authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president's authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters. But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump's bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order. 'The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges' decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,' said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor. Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is 'very confident' that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case. Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps. The Supreme Court's ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump's order. But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor. 'It's not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,' said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned the court's dissenting opinion, urged the lower courts to 'act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court's prompt review' in cases 'challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order.' Opponents of Trump's order warned there would be a patchwork of polices across the states, leading to chaos and confusion without nationwide relief. 'Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century,' said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports refugees and migrants. 'By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear.'
