White House slow-walking aid to Central America
Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid that Congress approved for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is stalled at the White House budget office, an impasse that threatens ongoing efforts to stem the influx of asylum seekers from the region.
The holdup: Administration officials aren't sure whether President Donald Trump wants to withhold the funds for these countries to punish them for the northward flow of migrants.
The money — a significant portion of roughly $627 million that Congress allocated for Central America one year ago — has been in limbo for months at the White House Office of Management and Budget, according to three people with knowledge of the process.
"We have paralysis moving this funding through the Northern Triangle because people don't know what the president wants," one State Department official said. "No one wants to do something that looks like they're not following his guidance." The paperwork gridlock could undermine a push to address the root causes of out-migration from the region, the official said.
The aid is part of a program launched under former President Barack Obama to foster economic growth, improve governance and increase security in the countries – and is aimed at reducing illegal immigration and illicit trafficking. The programs paid for by the funding include the training and assistance of prosecutors, judges and law enforcement personnel to build functioning justice systems.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will meet with officials from the three countries in Honduras on Wednesday to discuss a migration pact that aims to increase cooperation on security issues and prevent the "caravans" that have provoked the president's ire over the past year.
While the funding delays won't be front-and-center at the gathering, the slow pace of disbursement is a regular source of frustration for Northern Triangle officials, whose countries have devoted billions of dollars to joint development efforts in recent years, according to a Central American official.
"While it may not be a sexy, hot political issue, it is something that actually will help stem caravans," said a second person familiar with the funding logjam.
The person added that some staff within the White House budget office — overseen by acting chief of staff and deficit hawk Mick Mulvaney — oppose the assistance. "They find ways of slow-rolling things, they find ways of pushing back," the person said. "It's just the bureaucratic resistance."
Under the terms of a 1974 law, the White House is permitted under certain circumstances to withhold a portion of these funds.
The internal lack of urgency stands at odds with the Trump administration's public argument that migration from Central America has reached crisis levels.
Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency in February as part of a plan to shift $6.7 billion in non-congressionally approved funds to border wall construction. When Congress voted to terminate the emergency earlier this month, he issued the first veto of his presidency.
Echoing Trump's message, Nielsen said in a March 18 speech that the situation at the border had reached "a near system-wide meltdown." Border Patrol arrestedmore than 66,000 migrants at the southwest border in February, the highest monthly total since March 2009.
Still, Trump has threatened repeatedly to yank back the Central America aid over what he perceives as an inability or unwillingness by the countries' governments to stem migrant flows.
"Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money," Trump tweeted in late December. "We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries - taking advantage of U.S. for years!"
More recently, Trump slammed the governments at the Conservative Political Action Conference in early March, saying they're not sending "their best and their finest" to U.S.
"They give us some very bad people," he said. "People with big, long crime records. People with tremendous violence in their past. Murderers, killers, drug dealers, human traffickers. They want to keep their good people because they're smart. It's so sad to see how stupid we've been."
The president's opposition to the aid has baffled some Trump officials and contributed to confusion about what administration policy is. The money does not go to the governments directly, but to U.S. agencies, international organizations, consulting companies, non-profits and local civil society groups that aid capacity building, provide technical assistance and donate equipment.
"He doesn't understand why we're sending any money overseas at any time," said one former Trump administration official familiar with the issue. "He wants everything to be transactional."
In response to a request for comment, a senior administration official said the Trump administration will continue to work with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras "to determine how best to use available funding to address outward migration from these countries."
"President Trump has made very clear that the U.S. allocates assistance in order to meet U.S. priorities," a State Department spokesperson said. "We expect all foreign aid recipients to hold up their end of the bargain."
The Trump White House has called for slashing aid to Central America in its budget requests, and, to a degree, Congress has followed suit. The funding stream dropped by 30 percent from fiscal years 2016 to 2019, going from $754 million to $528 million, according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service.
"We have a president who thinks the smarter thing to do is to just put $40 billion into a wall, rather than put a fraction of that into helping to turn around these three countries," Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said of the drop in funding.
Carper, who led a group of Democratic lawmakers on a five-day delegation to the region in late February, argues that the effects of funding will take years or decades to realize, but that it's still worthwhile.
"It's like turning an aircraft carrier," said Carper, a former Navy captain. "It takes a long time to change the course of an aircraft carrier, but if you stay with it, you can change the course."
Carper compares the Central America investment to Plan Colombia, a 17-year bilateral effort between Colombia and the U.S. that began with counternarcotics operations and expanded to include development. Congress approved more than $10 billion for the initiative between fiscal years 2000 and 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service. Colombia greatly reduced violence and instability over that period.
"I'm sure there were some times along the way, 10 or 15 years ago, where people were wondering, ‘Is this ever going to work? Is this really a smart use of our money?'" Carper said. "It turned out it was."
John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama and career diplomat who grew frustrated with the Trump administration and resigned in January 2018, said the funds also provide the U.S. with a way to assert power.
"Foreign assistance is never a charity," he said. "Foreign assistance is a leveraging tool in your kit bag of national power that you can choose to apply to a given situation. You can invade on one end. You can sit and you can just bray at the moon and just issue sharp statements on the other end. But somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of deploying your national power, you can choose to engage with parties that you feel are worthy of your trust."
Complicating the discussion, though, is that even advocates for the Central America aid worry about its being used to support governments that don't appear fully committed to justice reforms.
By law, the State Department can't release a portion of the Northern Triangle funds until several steps have been completed, creating a possible avenue for opponents of those governments to block or reroute part of the aid money. (How much is subject to certification hasn't been disclosed publicly, but it amounted to between $35 million and $55 million per country in fiscal year 2016.)
First, the State Department must certify that the nations have met a dozen benchmarks that deal with combating corruption, expanding the economy, strengthening the judicial system and other reforms.
Additionally, the department must produce a spending plan and must notify Congress how the funding will be used on the ground. The plan and related documents then go to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees for approval — a back-and-forth exchange that can take months.
"If you're down range … in the embassy, and worried about the program running out of money, it's a pain in the ass," said one former State Department official familiar with the process.
In many developing countries, political opponents "use human rights violations as smear tactics," according to Feeley, the former ambassador. "It's enormously complicated to get to the bottom of it and determine what's real, what's not … and that just takes time."
But the State Department hasn't even embarked on that stage for the fiscal year 2018 funding, since the spending plan and notification have yet to leave the White House budget office. If the funds aren't dispersed by Sept. 30, they'll go back to the U.S. Treasury.
Even if the White House advances the funding, the State Department will need to tussle with Democratic lawmakers critical of authoritarian governments in the countries. Hypothetically, the funding intended to assist Northern Triangle central governments could be redirected to bolster the work of non-governmental organizations — an option some lawmakers might prefer.
"I'm very concerned about any specific aid into the region moving forward without fully addressing the issues that we have currently at hand," Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) told POLITICO.
Torres, who was born in Guatemala, fears that Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales "is undoing the progress that was made in previous years."
Morales, a former television comedian turned politician, announced in January that he would expel a United Nations-backed and U.S.-supported anti-corruption commission. The Guatemalan president also backs a bill that would grant amnesty to dozens of military officers and paramilitaries convicted of crimes related to the country's decades of armed conflict.
"If they didn't certify Guatemala, I don't think there would be a lot of heartburn on the Hill," one congressional aide told POLITICO.
Honduras funding stands a better chance of being approved, but some critics argue that it shouldn't be.
The State Department last certified that Honduras had met the good governance benchmarks in December 2017 — even as the country was wracked with unrest over accusations of election fraud following the reelection of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
The Organization of American States called for a new election five days later, but the Trump administration accepted the results.
To further complicate matters, U.S. federal prosecutors in November chargedHernández's younger brother with conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S., calling him a "large-scale drug trafficker."
Among the three Northern Triangle countries, El Salvador presents the strongest case to win approval for the aid dollars. Nayib Bukele, a former mayor of San Salvador and third-party candidate, won a presidential election earlier this year and will take office in June.
One congressional aide said "it's really anyone's guess" how the new Salvadoran government will perform, but remains skeptical about certifying Guatemala and Honduras.
"It's not like they can solve all these problems on their own," the aide said, "but neither should we continue throwing money in their direction."
Source: Ted Hesson