Obama wants cooperation from Central America over immigrants

Tens of thousands of teenagers from Central America are illegally crossing the US border. President Obama has now pressed for cooperation during new talks with the region's presidents.

Deutsche Welle, 26 July 2014

"Parents need to know this is an incredibly dangerous situation," US President Barack Obama warned a few weeks ago, in light of the surge of minor migrants - more than 50,000 this year alone, attempting to cross the Mexican border. Now the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador their counterpart at the White House to discuss the problem, which has sparked an intense debate in the US.

The meeting had an important function, Dan Restrepo of explained: it was an urgently needed signal for some intensive crisis management. "It is not a problem you can switch on and off," he told DW. "And you can't solve it quickly either - you have to work permanently on the dynamic and complex circumstances."

Obama is under pressure due to the
increasing number of teenage refugees

Carl Meacham of the think tank thinks there is much lost ground to make up: "US policy in this area has been inconsistent - there hasn't been much engagement," he said. But it is doubtful if the summit, which had few tangible results, will relieve Obama in the domestic debate.

There has been a continuous barrage of criticism from the Republican Party, which makes Obama responsible for the humanitarian crisis at the border. How intense the debate is was demonstrated by the deployment of Texan Guards at the Mexican border and the assessment of the deployment of the National Guard by Obama himself.

Scaring people off

Charlie Dent, Republican representative from Pennsylvania, in whose constituency emergency shelters for children have been built, told DW what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives wanted from the meeting: "President Obama has to make it very clear that these children will be sent back," he said. In fact, Obama did threaten fast deportations, and he claimed that the latest decrease in migrant numbers was a sign of success.

But another demand is much more difficult for him to act on. Dent says Obama should "also tell the presidents of these countries that the US will change its laws" to be able to send back the children immediately. To do that Obama would have to change a law signed by George W. Bush that grants minor migrants a court hearing, and the Democrat Party will be unlikely to accept that.

US complicity

The Democrats triggered problems in Washington even before Obama met the presidents from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Some argued that the US is complicit in the current exodus of unaccompanied minors smuggled across the border by criminal organizations.

"I think we have a shared responsibility," Meacham agreed. "It is true that the United States is a major customer of drugs. On the other hand it is the responsibility [of the Central American governments] to create the necessary security."

Congress is refusing to grant an emergency
program to ease the refugee crisis

At the moment these three countries are seen as strongholds for criminality that force the children to leave. "I talked to a five-year-old girl who came unaccompanied to the US from Central America," said Dent. "She didn't know how to swim, but she crossed dangerous rivers and travelled on the roof of a train to get from Mexico to the US."

No emergency program

So far Dent's Republican Party has refused to grant the $3.7-billion (2.75-billion-euro) emergency program that Obama wants to enable better emergency housing, more immigration judges, and increased border security. They also opposed another one of Obama's pilot projects: to grant refugee status to the children in their countries of origin and therefore spare them from the dangerous voyage to the US.

The Republicans' attitude of total opposition is one of the biggest challenges, says Meacham. "The malfunction of the political system is the other big hurdle beside the crisis at the border," he said. "If we can't act in consensus, not only will the situation at the border get worse, but so will the chaos in the Central American countries."

The White House summit is just the prelude to more talks at the highest diplomatic levels between the US and the three affected states - and Restrepo is expecting Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting, to weigh in regularly.

Related Article:

Central American leaders back Obama on plea to control child migration, 'people smuggling'