Safe Third Country or Baltimore?
You'd be surprised — the facts are the facts
By Andrew R. Arthur on December 2, 2019
In a November 21, 2019, post, I wrote about an interim final rule (IFR) that modifies existing regulations to implement Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs, also known as "safe third-country agreements") the United States has entered into with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, allowing asylum officers and immigration judges to send third-country asylum applicants to one of those three countries to apply for asylum. Despite claims that those countries are too dangerous for asylum seekers, each is safer than my erstwhile hometown of Baltimore, Md.
With respect to reports about the danger in those countries, take, for example, the following from Vox:
[T]he countries with which Trump has brokered or sought to broker safe third country agreements have a long history of instability and violence, and, in some cases, asylum seekers are in particular danger.
In Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, migrants are commonly robbed, kidnapped for ransom, raped, tortured, and killed. The State Department, meanwhile, has issued travel warnings for US citizens in all four countries.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Safe-Third-Country-or-Baltimore
