Mexico City (AP) – Busy protection for migrants in southern Mexico was left without a doctor. A program to support mental health for LGBTQ+ newborn people who flee from Venezuela was dissolved. In Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala, so -called “safe mobility offices” in which migrants can apply to legally enter the USA.
Hardly a week after Donald Trump’s novel administration has his command to hire the US support that has a profound effect on a problem that drives him into the White House: migration.
Throughout Latin America, basic organizations that support migrants supported through a thread.
Trump, within a few hours after the office of the office on January 20, ordered a comprehensive freezer of 90 days over most US foreign support, which were paid by the Foreign Ministry. The decision immediately stopped thousands of humanitarian, development and security programs worldwide and forced US aid organizations and partners in this field to reduce hundreds of helpers.
The United States are by far the world’s largest source for foreign support, although several European countries assign a much larger proportion of their budgets. While the support for Africa puts the approximately 2 billion US dollars that Latin America receives annually, the western hemisphere has long had an expenditure priority for both the democratic and republican administration.
The region is closely linked to the United States through trade and migration as well as the flow of narcotics. And the increasing influence of China and Russia in recent years has only reinforced the strategic importance of what was previously referred to as the “Washington Garden”.
It is a message that Foreign Minister Marco Rubio will probably be visited in Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic at the beginning of Saturday at the beginning of Saturday.
Shelter has appealed to an alternative financing
Trump has made it a priority to prevent migrants from being illegally entered into the United States, and many of the aid programs he has held are made by the office for the population, refugees and migration of the US.
Such a beneficiary is the peace oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito Shelter in the southern Mexican city of Villaherermosa. The animal shelter has been running water for months because the Mexican authorities – under the United States pressure, have unloaded migrants to migration – migrants that are summarized across the country.
The AID Freeze put another blow and forced the non -profit organization, which leads the facility to dismiss its only doctor as well as a social worker and a child psychologist.
In the days since Trump’s command, the animal shelter appealed to the Mexican government for alternative financial resources for programs that were managed by the United Nations to pay flights and bus trips to the southern border between Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala for migrants who return home want. Four families from Honduras, Ecuador and El Salvador are currently stranded.
“The crisis will only deteriorate,” said the shelter in a explanation. “Those affected will be the most affected by the population that we serve.”
Psychological, physical and sexual abuse
In the Colombian capital of Bogota, the auxiliary staff in the Colombian capital of Bogota also expect.
The city is a huge turnstile for the more than 7 million Venezuelans who, according to Nicolás Maduro, have increasingly fled the economic collapse and abuse. Colombia is also the starting point for the more than 800,000 migrants – the majority of Venezuelans – who have occurred on the way to the US
The most marginalized groups of migrants include LGBTQ+ newborn people who have significantly higher rates in mental, physical and sexual abuse. The Human Rights Center at the University of California in Berkeley prepared a project financed by the USA last year to offer psychological support for LGBTQ+ tenners from Venezuela and Colombians, which have been sold internally through decades of armed conflicts.
Leila Younes, a Lebanese gender specialist, had just arrived in Bogota to start the project when she saw the devastating email with the Stop Work order of the Foreign Ministry. After broken the news to local partners, she immediately returned home – and now the human rights center is urgently looking for 300,000 US dollars to continue research
“We spent a year to prepare for our partners, and overnight we told us to stop,” said Younes. “No transition, no time to secure other funds.”
Trump’s first administration financed several programs
Although the White House only kept humanitarian aid for 90 days until further review was examined, Younes said that she was not illusional – and a sister project in Poland under the Ukrainian youth who flee Russia before the war. Trump on the campaign path has repeatedly blown up the transgender youth and granted extensive commands who taught the Federal Government to terminate initiatives on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“This is not just a reduction in financing – it is part of a rollback for LGBTQI+ rights,” said Younes.
The first Trump administration financed several programs from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to integrate the Venezuelan diaspora and that of Costa Rica to reset the opponents of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The support agreed with Trump’s foreign policy goals to isolate anti -democratic governments and prevent migrants from driving to the USA, said Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
“We will probably see a large part of foreign support in the region, which is understood by a migration lens,” said Selee. “This means to stop the financing of programs that support migrants in transit, but possibly increases the financing for the efforts to integrate migrants and those who already live in other countries in the region.”
What is less likely to resume, says Selee, is the external aid that attacks the causes of migration – at least first the bidges. Trump also suspended the offices opened by biden in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala, where migrants could apply for asylum and other legal paths to get to the USA instead of hiking to the border.
“Trust is not something that you can switch on and off”
Traditionally, US financing was headed in Latin America to support everything from the nutrition of children, legal reform and freedom of the press. The greatest security support for Chunk Fund for combating gangs, the illegal harvest and strengthen the rule of law.
Liliana Ayalde, a former American ambassador in Brazil and Paraguay, said that long-term investments in state structure, such as the more than $ 10 billion, which have been spent on “Plan Colombia” since 2000, are not uprooted due to such support.
“Trust is not something that you can switch on and off in a conflict zone”. “Partners will not trust the United States again if they do not feel safe and believe that we will be there in the long run.”
That could be good news for China, Washington’s top opponent for influence in Latin America. Since Latin America has faded from the foreign policy agenda of US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, China has associated with billions of infrastructure investments and not.
“Champagne bottles are currently unexpected in Beijing,” said Adam Isacson, who has been studying foreign auxiliary trends for years and heads the defense supervisory program in the office in Washington on Latin America. “It is really difficult for the United States to compete with a geopolitical rival if we unilaterally disarm.”
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Goodman reported Miami. AP reporter Sonia Perez in Guatemala City and Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
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Follow APS reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
