US signs agreements with Guatemala and Honduras to take asylum-seekers, Noem says

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala and Honduras have signed agreements with the United States to potentially offer refuge to people from other countries who otherwise would seek asylum in the United States, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday at the conclusion of her Central America trip.

The agreements expand the Trump administration's efforts to provide the U.S. government flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations.

Noem described it as a way to offer asylum-seekers options other than coming to the United States. She said the agreements had been in the works for months. with the U.S. government applying pressure on Honduras and Guatemala to get them done.

''Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,'' Noem said. ''We've 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 to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States.''

Both governments denied having signed safe third-country agreements when asked following Noem's comments.

Guatemala's presidential communications office said the government did not sign a safe third-country agreement nor any immigration related agreement during Noem's visit.

They reaffirmed that Guatemala would receive Central Americans sent by the United States as a temporary stop on the return to their countries.

Noem had said Thursday that ''politically, this is a difficult agreement for their governments to do.''

Both countries have limited resources and many needs making support for asylum-seekers from other countries a tougher sell domestically. There are also the optics of two left-of-center governments appearing to help the Trump administration limit access to U.S. asylum.

Noem said that during her Guatemala meeting, she was given the already signed agreement. While later there was a public signing ceremony for a memorandum of understanding that establishes a Joint Security Program that will put U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the Guatemalan capital's international airport to help train local agents to screen for terrorist suspects.

Honduras' immigration director Wilson Paz denied such an agreement was signed and its Foreign Affairs Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During U.S. President Donald Trump's first term, the U.S. signed such accords called safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed ''safe.''

The U.S. has had such an agreement with Canada since 2002.

The practical challenge was that all three Central American countries at the time were seeing large numbers of their own citizens head to the U.S. to escape violence and a lack of economic opportunity. They also had extremely under-resourced asylum systems.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed deals with El Salvador and Guatemala that allowed the U.S. to send migrants from other nations there. But in Guatemala's case it was to only be a point of transit for migrants who would then return to their homelands, not to apply for asylum there. And in El Salvador, it was broader, allowing the U.S. to send migrants to be imprisoned there.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico would not sign a safe third-country agreement, but at the same time Mexico has accepted more than 5,000 migrants from other countries deported from the U.S. since Trump took office. She said Mexico accepted them for humanitarian reasons and helped them return to their home countries.

The U.S. also has agreements with Panama and Costa Rica to take migrants from other countries though so far the numbers sent have been relatively small. The Trump administration sent 299 to Panama in February and fewer than 200 to Costa Rica.

The agreements give U.S. authorities options, especially for migrants from countries where it is not easy for the U.S. to return them directly.

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Sherman reported from Mexico City.