President Donald Trump continues to try and conduct some semblance of foreign policy via Twitter, which even in this case places him at odds with his own administration. This Tuesday, literally one day after the United States and Guatemala released a joint statement touting apparent progress towards stopping a flow of undocumented immigration into the U.S., Trump got on Twitter and angrily threatened to impose tariffs and more if the country doesn’t do more to stop immigration to the U.S. Trump specifically wants them to sign a so-called safe third country agreement, under which they would be prioritized as a stop for asylum seekers who cross through the country — and Trump’s apparently willing to sacrifice North American relations to get there.
He ranted, packing in the lies about the nature of undocumented immigration to the U.S. in the first place:
‘Guatemala, which has been forming Caravans and sending large numbers of people, some with criminal records, to the United States, has decided to break the deal they had with us on signing a necessary Safe Third Agreement. We were ready to go. Now we are looking at the “BAN,” Tariffs, Remittance Fees, or all of the above. Guatemala has not been good. Big U.S. taxpayer dollars going to them was cut off by me 9 months ago.’
No Central American government organizes groups of migrants to send them to the United States, despite Trump claiming as much over and over and over. The suggestion that Guatemala is conspiring to send criminals into the United States is an outlandish conspiracy theory with nothing to go on besides racially singling out those on the other side.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales had allegedly been prepared to sign a safe third country agreement in a meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that had been set for D.C. earlier this month, but the nation’s highest court blocked the implementation of that order and transfer of U.S. asylum claims to Guatemala. The Guatemalan administration has claimed that “at no moment” did it contemplate actually signing such an agreement in the first place, and despite its absence — and Trump’s tweet-slinging into the dark — they and the U.S. continue to work towards other immigration goals, like the program to hold asylum seekers in Mexico agreed to by that country.
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
