Mayorkas meets with Guatemalan leader Arévalo following House impeachment over immigration
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas met Saturday with new Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and discussed regional migration, security and the economy in the Central American nation, they said.
The meeting during the Munich Security Conference came days after the Republican-controlled U.S. House voted to impeach Mayorkas over the Biden administration’s handling of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The embattled Homeland Security secretary says his years as a federal prosecutor in L.A. helped prepare him for the verbal missiles he now faces in Washington.
“Guatemala is a key partner of ours in regional economic development, managing hemispheric migration, combatting transnational crime, and much more,” Mayorkas said Saturday in a post on X.
The U.S. has pushed Latin American allies including Guatemala to create barriers to slow northward migration. It has also sought to address the root causes of migration from countries such as Guatemala, which is seeing hundreds of thousands of its citizens migrate to the U.S. every year.
While arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol sharply dipped in January, down 50% in from a record-breaking 249,735 in December, immigration remains a top priority for the Biden administration and voters ahead of the presidential election in November.
Mayorkas and Arévalo reaffirmed their commitments on Saturday to collaborating on issues in the Americas.
“Together we will work for the security and well-being of the region,” Arévalo wrote in a post on X.
The meeting also comes after a tumultuous couple of months for Arévalo, a progressive anti-corruption crusader. He poses a threat to the country’s elite, who have long benefited from high levels of corruption and impunity in Guatemala, something the Biden administration has said contributed to migration.
Arévalo and his Seed Party Movement faced waves of judicial attacks during his presidential campaign and after his election, raising concerns across the region about democracy in the nation, and spurring the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a slew of officials it accused of seeking to “undermine Guatemala’s peaceful transition of power.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration is proud to support Guatemala’s democracy,” Mayorkas wrote Saturday, “and work together to advance the security and prosperity of the Americas.”
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