Biden’s management is dramatically expanding a list of Central Americans deemed too corrupt to work with the United States or to allow them in.
The list, first drawn up last year by congressional mandate, will make it harder for some Central American governments to do business in Washington and complicate Washington’s efforts to combat illegal immigration from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. as many potential partners would be disqualified.
People on the list are denied U. S. visas. In the U. S. , they cannot enter the U. S. They are considered to be out of reach of U. S. corporations. U. S. and maximum government programs.
“Those who are sanctioned come with former and current senior government officials who have damaged their country’s democracy, further destabilized their communities and selected non-public profits over the public good,” said Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona), one of the first architects of the “Engel List,” named after the former rep. Eliot Engel. a New York Democrat and a common advocate for human rights abroad.
Torres added that the officials included in the blacklist “will nevertheless suffer the consequences” for their “undemocratic and corrupt actions. “
The State Department announced the release of the expanded list Wednesday night. In a statement, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken accused the appointees of “undermining democratic processes and institutions” that ultimately contribute to “irregular migration and the destabilization of societies. “
The State Department was quick to detail the names on the list, but said it included another 60 people, doubling the other 50 people initially named last year.
However, other people familiar with the list said it included several senior officials in Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s tenure and several wealthy businessmen connected to Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
At least one adviser to Honduras’ new president, Xiomara Castro, will also be on the list. Earlier this year, Castro replaced President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who has since been extradited to the United States in a major drug trafficking case, and Biden’s management officials had hoped the new president would lead a less corrupt government.
The three presidents declined Biden’s invitation to attend last month’s Summit of the Americas, a giant regional meeting that was held in the United States for the first time in three decades and held in Los Angeles. These presidents, along with another absentee, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, were protesting Biden’s refusal to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the summit.
The list came to light last year just as Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris at the forefront of efforts to stop illegal immigration from Central America. .
But almost immediately, she discovered herself as a partner, as the region’s presidents were seen as intolerably corrupt or undemocratic.
Harris attended Castro’s inauguration, but the Honduran government’s hopes for cooperation would likely fade.
The updated list also adds officials from Nicaragua, which is not considered one of the Central American countries with the highest number of people fleeing to the United States, but is considered home to a corrupt and brutal government. Many members of the autocratic government led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, as well as many of their relatives and associates, have already been hit with economic sanctions across Washington. Inclusion on the Engel list is an additional layer of punishment.
Ortega imprisoned or forced into exile several hundred dissidents and political opponents. Several Nicaraguan judges will be included in the new blacklist.
Bukele has taken a decidedly autocratic turn since his election, firing judges and the attorney general, and organizing his party’s inauguration of El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly. El Faro, a popular Salvadoran media outlet in the region and attacked through Bukele, reported that Minister Alejandro Zelaya is being included in the updated list, even as he tries to renegotiate El Salvador’s foreign debt with the Washington-founded International Monetary Fund, where Zelaya would no longer be able to travel.
There were no official comments from the sanctioned officials, with the exception of the head of Bukele’s New Ideas party legislative delegation, Christian Guevara, who told Salvadoran newspapers that his US visa had been canceled but that he was proud to have been sanctioned for do what he smart idea for his country.
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Tracy Wilkinson covers foreign affairs for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, DC.
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