Ex-British colony tells Donald Trump it will take in US asylum seekers | World | News
A former British colony accustomed to hosting members of the Royal Family will now accept US refugees under a new agreement signed this week. Belize, the small tropical South American nation that gained independence from Britain in 1981, is still under the rule of King George III. It retains Charles as head of state and is visited by Prince William and Kate in 2022.
But nowNew visitors are expected to arrive in the form of immigrants processed by the US under a Rwanda-style “safe third country” deal with the president Donald Trump‘s management. The terms of the agreement are not yet clear even to the Belize Senate, which must approve the agreement before it comes into force.
The Belize-US agreement is likely to be similar to that agreed to by Paraguay’s “safe third country” agreement, under which asylum seekers currently in the US would be sent there while they pursue their cases.
A U.S. State Department post on
Belize opposition leader Tracy Taegar Panton wrote on social media that the agreement “could reshape Belize’s immigration and asylum systems, impose new financial burdens on taxpayers, and raise serious questions about national sovereignty and security.”
During Donald Trump’s first term, the United States signed several immigration agreements that would allow asylum seekers to seek protection in other countries, such as Guatemala, before heading north. The policy was criticized as a circuitous route that made it harder for immigrants to seek asylum in the United States and was later reversed by the Biden administration.
Earlier this year, Panama and Costa Rica also accepted U.S. flights for hundreds of people deported from Asian countries without calling the deals “safe third country” deals, pushing the migrants into a kind of international limbo. The United States has also signed agreements, such as deportation agreements, with war-torn South Sudan, Eswatini, and Rwanda.
The Belize government said Monday that it “has an absolute veto over transfers, with nationality restrictions, a cap on transfers, and extensive security screenings.”
The government of this largely rural country, sandwiched between Mexico and Guatemala, reiterated its “commitment to international law and humanitarian principles while providing strong national safeguards.” He said anyone deemed to pose a threat to public safety would not be allowed into the country.
