Asylum-Seekers Reaching U.S. Border Are Being Flown To Guatemala

Hundreds of asylum-seekers who reach the Texas-Mexico border aren't getting a chance to make their case in U.S. immigration court. Instead, the migrants — mostly women and children — are put on planes to Guatemala and told to ask for asylum in that country. Alicia, who asked that we not use her last name, is one of more than 800 migrants from Honduras and El Salvador who have been sent to Guatemala under an Asylum Cooperative Agreement. After traveling for weeks from Honduras with her teenage son, Alicia said she was floored when a U.S. border official raised the possibility that they would be sent to Guatemala. The Trump administration says the Asylum Cooperative Agreement helps drive down the number of migrants asking for asylum in the U.S. "For the ninth straight month in a row, we've continued to make incredible progress along the southwest border," Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said at a press conference last week...MORE