The president of Guatemala denies a new asylum agreement with us

Guatemala City (AP) – Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said on Friday that he had not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, postponing comments from comments US Interior Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem and Arévalo gathered Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement which would allow customs and border protection agents to work in the capital’s airport, to train local agents how to detect suspects of terrorism.

But Noem said that she had also received a signed document that she called a safe agreement on the third country. She said that she had concluded a similar agreement to Honduras and said they were important results in her trip.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take these people and also give them refugee status,” said Noem. “We have 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 be protected from the threat they are faced in their country. It must not necessarily be the United States. ”

Asked about Noem’s comments on Friday at a press conference, Arévalo said that nothing new had been signed linked to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement concluded with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. This agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue to accept the expulsion of its own citizens, but also citizens of other nations of Central America as a transit point on the way back.

Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, a secure third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement in the first mandate of US President Donald Trump. But “we clearly indicated that our path was different,” said Arévalo.

He added that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to the Nicaraguens who could not return to their country because of the political situation of “solidarity”.

The President’s communications office said Noem had ratified the agreement concluded by diplomatic notes from weeks earlier.

During Trump’s first term, the The United States has signed such secure third country agreements with Honduras, Salvador and Guatemala. They actually allowed the United States to declare certain inadmissible asylum seekers to request American protection and allowed the US government to send them to these countries deemed “safe”.