What Biden's election means for El Salvador
Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the US presidential election, signaling a potential change in the US policy towards Central America under Donald Trump which focused solely on blocking immigration. According to surveys, Salvadoran US citizens gave a share of their votes to Biden (74%) greater than any other national group within the broader category of Latinx voters in the country.
President Nayib Bukele sent a letter congratulating Biden on his election:
With Trump, the relationship with the US rested on a basic proposition – in return for help on reducing the flow of migrants towards the US southern border, the US would continue financial assistance to El Salvador. Under Nayib Bukele, this help has taken the form of such measures as deploying several hundred troops to his country’s borders to limit migrant smuggling rings, signing an asylum cooperation agreement to permit the US to send asylum seekers from other countries to El Salvador, and permitting the US to continue to deport Salvadorans throughout the pandemic despite the international airport in El Salvador being closed to any other kind of passenger flight.
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| Bukele and Trump at UN |
Trump’s vision of the Northern Triangle of Central America was filtered through a single narrative – MS-13 gang members were coming into the US illegally to rape and pillage. It was a narrative which was factually baseless, but it fit the xenophobic nationalism promoted by Trump and his immigration adviser Steven Miller. Trump never visited the region himself, and made only one trip to Latin America, a trip to Argentina for a summit.
Biden, on the other hand, made numerous trips to Latin
America during his time as Vice President in the Obama administration. His meetings included personally getting to
know past Salvadoran presidents Tony Saca, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén. White House documents show Biden speaking to
then-president of El Salvador Sánchez Cerén less than two months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
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| Biden with Saca and Funes in 2009 |
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| Biden at regional meeting with Central American leaders |
In an article titled The Biden Doctrine Begins with Latin America in the Atlantic, Christian Paz notes:
Biden’s interest in Latin America,
and experience there (he was Obama’s chief emissary to the region)—combined
with Trump’s apparent lack of concern for it—thus offer the former vice
president an opportunity: Regional leaders have come to accept the ebb and flow
of American engagement as a condition of living next to a superpower, but Biden
could use Latin America to signal a restoration of Washington’s historic
leadership, leveraging his existing relationships and focus on multilateralism
to cement American primacy in a region largely eager for a respite from years
of erratic diplomacy.
To that end, Biden’s campaign website has a specific section
devoted to a plan for Central
America, something I am fairly
certain I never saw on a campaign website before.
Democracy
Nayib Bukele has received significant international criticism
in the past year over perceived authoritarian tendencies and abandonment of the
rule of law. The Trump administration
has not joined in that criticism, however, except in the most muted way. Bukele enjoys a close relationship with
current US Ambassador Ronald Johnson who has steadfastly refused to criticize
the Salvadoran leader for contravening the rule of law. Johnson’s joint
appearances with Bukele are used by the Salvadoran president to support the position that his practices have Washington’s sanction.
With Trump’s defeat, Bukele will face different leadership
in the US State Department. For example,
the Democratic chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel criticized
Bukele’s use of troops to enter the country’s Legislative Assembly on February
9 to pressure lawmakers to approve a security loan. On
April 29, the Foreign Affairs Committee leader warned
Bukele about using the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine Salvadoran democracy
and the need to respect human rights in prisons.
As a consequence, Bukele can expect to see a Biden administration
more concerned with his disregard of human rights and democratic institutions
than was true under Trump.
Héctor Silva Ávalos writing
in El Faro stated:
The Democrats’ record in Central
America, at least that of Obama and Biden, is better than that of Trump. During
the Obama administration, Washington conditioned some international aid on
countries’ democratic records, at least on paper. … Given Biden’s track record,
though, it seems fair to conclude that the foreign policy of a Biden
administration would not look as kindly upon quid pro quos or the issuing of
blank checks.
One area of concern will be Bukele’s constant attacks on the
press, which parallel the diatribes of Trump against “fake news.” Bukele, who dismissed out of hand criticism
from Democratic leaders in the US House and Senate about his attacks on the independent media, will now have to deal
with a State Department which reports to a Democratic president.
Veteran journalist Jon Lee Anderson said in an interview:
I believe that Biden and his people will draw a line around the idea of press freedom and freedom of speech, respect for journalism. I’m sure they will. Because this was exactly what Trump went to war with from day one.
Immigration
Perhaps most important to a broad spectrum of Salvadorans
will be the changes in US immigration policy laid out in Biden’s immigration plan. As a country with a quarter of its native
born population living abroad, primarily in the US, how the US treats
immigrants impacts almost every family in El Salvador.
Biden says he will take executive action early in
his administration to restore the DACA program for young Dreamers and to reverse the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans and others. These steps would provide a measure of ongoing relief
for both groups, totaling more than 200,000 Salvadorans in the US
without legal status, but still would not place people with these
protections on a path to citizenship which would take separate Congressional action.
Although Biden reportedly plans a 100
day moratorium on deportations upon entering office, one should not expect immigration courts to
immediately stop issuing orders of removal. There are more than
186,000 Salvadorans with removal cases currently pending in the US
immigration court system. The denial rate for
Salvadorans seeking asylum exceeds 80% today, and that rate was only somewhat lower during the Obama-Biden administration. We can, however, expect to see some
additional discretion and the ability to exercise compassion given back to immigration
court judges.
Although border wall construction will
stop, no sections of the wall will be torn down and Customs and Border
Patrol will continue to apprehend border crossers. Along the southern US border, Biden has said
that he would end the Remain in Mexico program which forced tens of thousands
of asylum seekers to wait for their immigration court hearings in Mexico.
An early challenge for Biden will arise if the departure of
Donald Trump and Stephen Miller from the White House prompts a new surge of
asylum seekers from El Salvador and the rest of the Northern Triangle of
Central America. The economies in those
countries have been devastated by the pandemic, Hurricane Eta has just displaced
thousands, and gangs continue to control neighborhoods throughout the region. The
coyotes, human smugglers, are certain to use the change of administration in
promoting their services to ferry people to the suddenly friendlier border. The US could again see many thousands of migrants arriving weekly at the southern border attempting to enter.
If there is a rapid surge in Central American migrants seeking to get
across the US border, how will Biden respond?
He was vice president during a previous surge -- the unaccompanied minor crisis
which commenced in 2014. Biden may
resort, as Obama and Trump did, by using detention and deportations in an
attempt to deter people from making the trek north. As late as 2015, ICE under Obama planned raids
to pick up Central American families with outstanding removal orders as a
way of deterring future migrants coming north.
Like Obama before him, Biden could believe he needs to be seen as strong
on border enforcement in order to try and negotiate a package of immigration
reforms for those migrants already in the country.
We can expect to see a Biden administration which views successful
development in the region as an important factor in dampening migration
flows. During the Obama administration,
programs
funded through USAID aimed to reduce gang violence and increase community
safety. The second round of
In summary
Only four years have elapsed since Biden was fully engaged with El Salvador and the rest of Central America. The next four years will probably look much like the policies of the Obama administration after reversal of the Trump attacks on immigration. Bukele will no longer get a free pass from the US when he disregards the rule of law and press freedom, but whether heightened US attention to those issue will make a difference for El Salvador is another matter.
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