The Obama administration praised the Honduran government on Tuesday for detaining children and families fleeing its chaotic and oppressive rule.
A top State Department official said the Honduran government “continues to make progress in apprehending [unaccompanied alien children] and family units being smuggled out of the country.” Francisco Palmieri, an aide to Secretary of State John Kerry, made the comment in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Honduras has been ruled by a US-backed right-wing authoritarian regime since 2009, when its duly-elected populist President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a coup d’etat. It has since suffered from rampant political violence and one of the highest violent crime rates in the world.
Murders of Honduran journalists, activists and dissidents routinely go unpunished. The State Department’s own human rights report said that in 2015, Honduran security forces carried out “unlawful and arbitrary killings and other criminal activities,” and that abusive officials received “widespread impunity.”
The plight of refugees fleeing this grim situation briefly took center stage in Washington almost two years ago, when about 18,000 Honduran children sought safety by crossing into the US, after long overland journeys. They were part of a cohort of unaccompanied kids from Central America seeking sanctuary in record numbers.
The number of Honduran kids that have reached the US border has fallen since 2014 due mostly to a crackdown by Mexico on undocumented immigrants from countries to its south—namely the so-called Golden Triangle countries: Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The Honduran government also boasted to Fusion in January that it “succeeded [last year] in reducing by 70 percent the emigration of unaccompanied children and adolescents.” It also said Honduras was the only part of the Golden Triangle to lower the outflow of migrant children last year.
The plight of migrant Central American children has been an issue in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February, for supporting the immediate deportation of these kids.
“I thought it was a good idea to allow those children to stay in this country,” he said at a debate. “That was not, as I understand it, the Secretary’s position.”
Clinton responded by saying the move was done to discourage more migration, because “we knew that so many of these children were being abused, being treated terribly while they tried to get to our border.”
Honduras’ abusive government also last month fueled criticism of US foreign policy and Clinton’s record as America’s top envoy, after an internationally-acclaimed Honduran environmental activist named Berta Caceres was assassinated.
As Secretary of State, Clinton spearheaded outreach to Honduras’ junta regime, refusing to echo calls from governments throughout the Western Hemisphere to back Zelaya’s restoration. Clinton boasted about it in her 2014 autobiography “Hard Choices,” in writing singled out for criticism by Caceres. The passage highlighted by Caceres was notably edited out of the paperback version of the book afterward.
Since the 2009 coup, the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress have offered strong support for the Honduran government, despite laws aimed at preventing the US from financially backing human rights abusers.
On Tuesday, the US-Honduras relationship was scrutinized by Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
“Will a partial cut in our aid to Honduras help the situation?” Markey asked Palmieri, referring to the Caceres assassination and other recent reports of trouble. “They’re not listening,” he added.
