The governments of ten Latin American nations expressed concern over the “threat” of mass deportations under President Donald Trump in a joint statement released over the weekend.
Last week, foreign ministers and representatives of Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela gathered in Mexico City for a “Meeting on Human Mobility on the Northern Route of the Continent,” a joint initiative of the far-left Presidents of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum and Honduras’s Xiomara Castro.
According to the Mexican government, which served as the gathering’s host, the meeting sought to discuss actions aimed at “protecting the human rights of migrants, preventing abuse and mistreatment, managing regular, safe and orderly migration from a humanitarian perspective.”
Additionally, the participants discussed “integrating migrant populations, and strengthening international cooperation to address the migration phenomenon from its structural and circumstantial causes, and in its full cycle: origin, transit, destination and return.”
The summit concluded with the ten participant nations signing a 14-point joint statement that expressed “serious concern” over announcements of mass deportations, “particularly because of their incompatibility with fundamental human rights principles and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration.” It did not make any direct mention of the United States and President Donald Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportations of illegal migrants during his administration.
“We call on all countries in the hemisphere to conduct themselves in accordance with international law, human rights and their own domestic legislation in the management of human mobility with a humanistic approach, particularly in the face of the threat of mass deportations,” the declaration read.
While the ten signatory nations stated in the declaration that they were in “solidarity with people who are forced to leave their communities of origin, with the conviction that migration should be an option and not a necessity,” the document did not condemn the circumstances that cause that migration — namely the actions taken by several of the states involved to persecute and impoverish their people. Communist Cuba and Venezuela are especially egregious human rights violators responsible for a large percentage of migration in the Western Hemisphere.
Instead, the declaration asserted that “external factors” such as “unilateral coercive measures” — a euphemism widely used by the Castro and Maduro regimes to refer to human right sanctions imposed on them — adversely affect “entire populations and, to a greater extent, the most vulnerable individuals and communities.”
“We urge their lifting, as they are contrary to international law and have serious social repercussions beyond the countries on which they are imposed,” the joint declaration read.
Hours later, the Brazilian government issued a press release congratulating Mexico for convening the meeting at which “serious concern was expressed about the possibility of mass deportations.” The Brazilian government stated that its delegation highlighted “the positive impacts of migration on the American continent.”
“Brazil advocated stepping up the fight against poverty and inequality as the best way to prevent irregular migration and reiterated its interest in reactivating meetings on migration within the framework of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), currently chaired by Honduras,” the Brazilian government’s press release read.
Brazilian outlet Universo Online (UOL) reported on Saturday that there are around two million Brazilians living in the United States, of which some 230,000 are believed to be living illegally and could be subject to deportation.
Although Brazil was one of the ten countries that expressed its concern over mass deportation, radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reportedly stated on Monday morning that he hopes the United States continues to be a “historic partner” to Brazil throughout Trump’s second administration.
“There are those who say that Trump’s election may cause problems for world democracy. As president of Brazil I hope that he will have a profitable administration (…) and that the Americans will continue to be Brazil’s historical partner,” Lula said during a Monday morning meeting with his cabinet of ministers.
“For our part we do not want fights, neither with Venezuela, nor with the Americans, nor with China, India or Russia,” he added.
Honduran newspaper El Heraldo reported on Monday morning that the government of Xiomara Castro has yet to publicly present an action plan for any prospective mass deportation of Honduran migrants. According to El Heraldo, there are 261,651 Honduran migrants in the United Stated that could be subject to deportation. President Castro threatened this month to have the United States’ military base in Honduras shut down if President Trump’s administration carries out mass deportations of Hondurans.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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