Moulton Statement on Northern Triangle and the President's Threats to Close the Southern Border
A humanitarian crisis in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras is fueling America’s immigration challenges on the border with Mexico. There’s an obvious solution that has worked before: increase targeted aid to address the root causes of the crisis.
The president is doing the exact opposite, which will only force more immigrants to flee north.
Sending aid to foreign countries strengthens America’s national security, and there’s nowhere this is more obvious than in Latin America. You have to get it right, but we have a good model in Colombia. Thanks to our aid through Plan Colombia, the country went from a narco-state ravaged by war to a popular vacation destination for Americans in a little over 15 years.
Meanwhile, back here at home, we need to fix our entire immigration system. Threatening to close the southern border requires no leadership, only a microphone and a Twitter handle. Working through Congress to drive real immigration reform into law is the kind of solution the president should deliver.”
According to WOLA, a leading research and human rights advocacy organization, the number of people detained at the US-Mexico border is at its lowest level since the 1970’s, but the number of asylum requests from Central America is rising. WOLA says the spike is due to violence in the countries from which asylum-seekers are fleeing, and “there is no evidence that criminal groups like the MS-13 are taking advantage of the U.S. asylum or immigration system to place gang leaders in the United States.”
An analysis of how US aid is used across the Northern Triangle is available here.