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Law360 (March 17, 2020, 9:37 PM EDT) -- Guatemala broke its agreement with the Trump administration to accept migrants applying for asylum at the U.S. border, announcing Tuesday that it is refusing flights of asylum-seekers amid the global coronavirus outbreak.
The Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is taking the "precautionary measure" to temporarily suspend all flights related to its asylum cooperation agreement with the U.S. while the U.S. establishes measures to ensure migrants with COVID-19 symptoms aren't being sent back to their home countries.
Guatemala has accepted nearly 1,000 migrants under a controversial agreement to accept certain U.S. asylum-seekers since the policy went into effect in November.
Representatives for the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.
The Central American country agreed to the asylum accord in July 2019, months after the U.S. blocked foreign aid to Guatemala and other countries in an attempt to force them to take "sufficient action to reduce the overwhelming number of migrants coming to the U.S. border."
The governments of El Salvador and Honduras also inked similar asylum cooperation agreements with the U.S.
Under the agreements, migrants who apply for asylum at the U.S. border can be sent to Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala. Only the accord with Guatemala has gone into effect.
Refugee advocates have criticized the agreements, saying it is not safe to send migrants to Central America's Northern Triangle region where they may be endangered. And in January, the ACLU filed a suit challenging the asylum policy.
However, DHS has defended the agreements, saying they will help the U.S. "burden-share" while it processes hundreds of thousands of asylum claims.
--Additional reporting by Suzanne Monyak. Editing by Adam LoBelia.
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