WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th October, 2020) The Trump administration misused Federal funds earlier this year by renting unmarked vans in Guatemala to transport US-bound migrants back to the Guatemala-Honduras border, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said in a watchdog report.
"Months before the Trump Administration used similar tactics against protesters in Portland, Oregon, we now know DHS [Homeland Security Department] secretary used State Department funding to rent unmarked vans in Guatemala to haul migrants back to the Guatemala-Honduras border," Menendez said in the report on Tuesday.
Menendez said this incident that occurred in January was a misuse of State Department funds and violated an agreement between the two departments.
The Senator said the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection cannot act as un-deputized international migration police throughout Latin America, adding that Congress must step in to address the administration's immigration policy.
Earlier this month, US-bound caravans of Honduran migrants set off toward the newly-opened Guatemalan border that was shut by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To bypass the requirement to provide negative COVID-19 tests to enter the neighboring country, the impoverished migrants take other routes and break through the borders illegally.
