Asylum agreement between US and El Salvador is ready to go into effect

The agreement, signed last year, would send some migrants requesting asylum at the US border to El Salvador to seek protection. Immigrant advocate groups have criticized the agreements, arguing that they put migrants in harm’s way.Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, who traveled to Panama and El Salvador this week, called the implementation of the so-called “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” a “critical step in the establishment of a truly regional approach to migration, and, more specifically, to the offer of protection to those migrants who are victims of persecution,” according to the memo. The agreement was scheduled to be part of the discussion between Wolf and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele this week, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In the waning days of the Trump presidency, DHS is trying to ramp up agreements to send asylum seekers to Central American countries, plans that have largely been under the radar during the coronavirus pandemic, CNN previously reported.