The Biden administration suspends Trump's asylum agreements with 3 countries

US President Joe Biden's administration said on Saturday that it had immediately suspended asylum agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras dating back to former President Donald Trump, as part of an effort to reverse his Republican predecessor's hard-line immigration policies.

And US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement that the United States "has suspended and begun the process of ending cooperative agreements on asylum with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as they are the first concrete steps on the road to increasing partnership and cooperation in the region that President Biden has laid."

These agreements, signed by the Trump administration and Central American countries in 2019, force asylum seekers from the region to first seek asylum in those countries before applying for asylum in the United States.

The US State Department said on Saturday that these policies were never implemented with El Salvador and Honduras, as part of a controversial attempt by Trump to stop illegal immigrants from Central America who make up a large portion of the immigrants arrested at the US-Mexico border.

The statement added that transfers under the agreement between the United States and Guatemala have been temporarily stopped since mid-March 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

The steps announced on Saturday came after Biden unveiled a set of measures last week aimed at renewing the US immigration system, including a task force to reunite separated families at the US-Mexico border and another to increase the annual refugee limit.

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