The appearance in Central America of someone like Power, with her deep roots in high-level Democratic politics as a close ally of President Obama and a former permanent representative to the United Nations, is another signal of the importance the Biden administration is attaching to its most politically fraught policy: immigration.
More than unrest in Cuba, humanitarian disaster in Venezuela or autocratic repression in Nicaragua, it is immigration that turns the Biden administration’s attention to its southern neighbors. Along with Mexico, the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador account for the largest numbers of people who attempt to cross the U.S. border.
U.S. officials are also now trying to stave off a new exodus of people fleeing Cuba and Haiti, after protests in Havana and the Haitian president’s assassination in Port-au-Prince, which would have the potential of distracting from the Northern Triangle project. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas — a Cuban immigrant — warned Cubans and Haitians this week that they would be turned back if they attempted to arrive in the U.S. by boat, a common mode of flight.
President Biden has assigned Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee the efforts in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Veteran diplomat Ricardo Zúñiga was appointed special envoy for the Northern Triangle countries. And Power has set up a USAID task force dedicated to the region.
Experts remain skeptical.
“It’s too early to tell, but it’s like they are having to start over,” said Gerardo Berthin, head of the Latin America programs at Freedom House, an advocacy organization. “There hasn’t been a coherent policy in the last four years, and the root causes have only aggravated, multiplied and become much more unmanageable.”