Vice President Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei. This marked her first observable act regarding the migration crisis since being delegated the task by Biden earlier this year; Harris has yet to visit any of the detention and overflow facilities, and her complacency in the turmoil has not gone unnoticed by those in Guatemala either.
Messages ranging from “Trump won” to “go home” could be seen lining the streets as Harris’s motorcade came by. Guatemala has been hit hard by the economic consequences of the Harris/Biden Administration’s pull factor; discontinuing many of the Trump-Era policies that stemmed the flow of illegal border crossings. The “Remain in Mexico” policy as well as the cessation of border-wall construction being chief among them.
Guatemalan President Giammattei has accused both Biden and Harris of promoting inconsistent messaging in regard to America’s policies; divergent, even, from one another. Guatemala has experienced a hemorrhaging outflow of its population to the United States since the Biden was sworn into office. Human trafficking is, reportedly, occurring in broad daylight. Children, specifically, are being used to bypass several legal hurdles for illegal crossings – making them a very useful resource for traffickers, and the most susceptible to abuse from the traffickers, the clients, or both.
“…the coyotes were here organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.” Giammattei described, recanting the smugglers’ immediate capitalization on the chaos at the US/Mexico broader.
Sights like the one seen in the streets of Guatemala – heckling a vice president and an administration that are clearly not respected by the international citizenry – were simply not seen during the Trump administration, and you can be the media would have made it front-page news if they had. But with the continued fumbling of the Harris/Biden Administration having no end in sight for the near future, expect such demonstrations to become even more commonplace.
