(CNN Español) – El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, suggested that the United States, in order to seriously address the problem of illegal immigration, “let go of the Northern Triangle concept and work with its all-time partners to strive to proven solutions. ” a tweet.
Bukele refers to the fact that Washington has for years tried to solve these problems with bloc proposals for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, countries that together form the so-called Northern Triangle.
The United States is currently facing a new crisis due to the wave of undocumented immigrants arriving at the border with Mexico, especially children and adolescents alone. President Joe Biden even gave Vice President Kamala Harris the task of resolving the crisis on the southern border to curb the flow of undocumented immigrants arriving there.
Bukele’s view of the American immigration plan
The mission is similar to Biden’s own in 2014 and 2015, when then President Barack Obama asked him to lead diplomatic efforts in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, after a spate of unaccompanied minors from those countries in the United States had arrived.
“A reused plan that didn’t work in 2014 won’t work now,” President Bukele added in his tweet.
CNN asked the US Embassy in El Salvador for a response to Bukele’s post, but so far we have not received a response.
In 2014, the US government experienced an immigration crisis when thousands of families from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala attempted to cross the border into Mexico without documents.
Seven years later, the situation is repeated and for the same reasons. Faced with the new wave, President Biden has sent the following message to migrants: “Don’t come.”
US authorities reported that they had arrested more than 100,000 migrants in that border area in February – and up to March 3. That figure is 28% more than the arrests in January, figures that had not occurred in five years.
The Salvadoran president responded to a series of posts on Twitter from journalist Nick Mirrof of The Washington Post, who for years shared figures about migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. According to the figures, the majority of these unaccompanied minors and families come from Honduras and Guatemala.
They claim that the flow of migrants from El Salvador has decreased
In order to combat irregular migration, according to Bukele, it is necessary to create development opportunities in the countries of origin. El Salvador has succeeded in reducing the flow, according to the president. “We haven’t made a 180 degree change in the country yet, but if you look at the numbers from two years ago, you can definitely see that immigration has decreased significantly,” Bukele said in an interview with the Fox network on March 16. .
Salvadoran authorities attribute the decrease in immigrants from this country to the decrease in homicides. In 2020, 1,322 murders were registered, a decrease of 44.9% from 2019.
A statement by the El Salvador presidency, citing figures from the National Civil Police, highlighted in January that 1,076 fewer murders were recorded in 2020 than in 2019.
The Trump administration demanded more publicity from the region’s governments to detain the migrants who adopted the mode of travel in caravans. It even signed separate agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to take measures that would make travel from Central America more difficult.
Bukele has also asked for a different treatment than that of Guatemala and Honduras. In July 2019, a month after taking office, he asked the administration of then-President Donald Trump. He assures that his government in El Salvador has made efforts to reduce the level of violence, one of the factors prompting Salvadorans to emigrate. At the time, Bukele did not explain how that other deal should be carried out. The governments of Honduras and Guatemala did not respond to Bukele’s statements.