How US Policy Shifts Could Impact LatAm Organized Crime

All right
Welcome to this week's Weekly InSight. My name is Mike LaSusa
I'm the senior editor for InSight Crime, and I'm joined here by Héctor Silva Ávalos who is our senior investigator
Thanks for being with me again. Hi, Mike. How are you? Good, good.
So today we wanted to talk about
US policy towards Latin America specifically security policy and
policies related to organized crime under the Trump administration
And we've written pretty extensively about this over the past couple weeks
We have Héctor who's there in DC. So I think we'll be able to provide some pretty interesting
perspectives on this and
I wanted to talk about
US foreign aid to Latin America first
we published two articles this week about that one was published today, about the Northern Triangle in Central America and
The other one was more broadly about planned cuts in foreign assistance
to latin America, so the bottom line is that
The assistance [is] planning the planed cuts to the assistance are mostly for
development initiatives, what people call soft side aid
And and the cuts to the hard side aid to the military and security force funding are relatively
small in comparison, so
Héctor, I was wondering if you could kind of give us your perspective on
What that means
Broadly speaking that the administration and congress appear to be shifting away from supporting soft side
initiatives and towards more hard side funding for security in the region
Yes, Mike, well first of all as you said, I think this is this marks... it's too early
Yet, but I'm definitely as we have written and in this pieces in InSight Crime what these does are
both are some things that they
Accepted that the White House the penetration self that is going to do and also that the kind of marking that
congress did couple of weeks ago with that with the foreign OPS budget at
Capitol Hill, Washington what they do is
They give us a pretty clear idea of what the shifts are going to be in this administration
Compared to the Obama administration towards Latin America and what trends we can expect in the next,
the next four years
Many things that could be said, one is what you said, I think it's pretty safe to say that
both the administration and Congress are betting for
Going back to what's known as the hard approach which is in the security issue, which is
going back to the approach which
takes
aiding the military aiding the police forces focusing on interdiction of drug trafficking as the main
pillar of foreign aid versus the soft approach with a dimension which is you know betting to a
development program social and economic development programs in
Poor communities or or in needed communities in the region?
I think you know during the Obama administration those two approaches were kind of balanced because
It's not accurate to say that the Obama administration privileged the soft approach
But he put it in
he put it into the equation, the Bush administration before that was more of a hard line, hard approach are to that to the
Mexico, Central America, Colombia let's use the method mesoamerican region
as a whole, so it was introduction it was fighting the gangs, it was fighting cartels, it was putting a lot of money into
militaries, into police forces when Obama came and approached and he and
in fact the Alliance for Prosperity for the North Triangle
Which is this program that former Vice President Biden put together with Guatemala, El Salvador to tackle immigration
to tackle immigration
got in a lot of of the soft approach with an
Important chunk of money dedicated to that, you know developing programs like social economic developing programs it seems
what the Trump administration is doing now is taking that money off and going back to
the other stuff you know, to privileging a military approach not so much
The money that would go to a child from USAID for instance, so I think we're going back to those days
Well, and you have, I mean you have a lot of experience in the Northern Triangle like you mentioned
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and
the article that we did today actually focused specifically on what you were just talking about, which just which is the cuts and assistance to
to the region, so like you mentioned under Obama
Congress approved
750 million Dollars in funding that was relatively evenly balanced between sort of hard side and soft side assistance and now
Under Trump Congress has just approved in their most recent budget cuts
to primarily the soft side of that package
so the the funding as a whole is going to be reduced by about 95 million dollars and
Approximately 80 million of that 95 million is going to come out of the soft side
aid so like I mentioned you have plenty of experience in the Northern Triangle. What do you think of that?
do you think could be some of the
effects of these cuts
well
As I said, I think it's kind of early to... but listen
some things won't change will not change because
Again the Obama administration did have through the State Department and through the policies implemented from the State Department
An important piece of hard approach to this
I mean
And if you look at some of the officials that are calling the shots now in Washington are officials that
Were there in the Obama administration that were very important in
drafting policy and implementing policy in Central America for instance, in the Northern Triangle and/or
Elsewhere, I'm talking for instance about Mr.. Ambassador William Brownfield who is the head of INL and
He, he was very important
in the past administration in drafting policy and you know highlighting stuff and
communicating with US
Officials in the ground in these countries to put forward to move forward the policies and the execution of the money
The thing with the Obama administration is is that
Brownfield and the Brownfield types kind of shared the space with other more with other officials that were
More aligned to the soft side. What does this mean?
Let's look at the Northern Triangle, one important policy has been for instance the fight against corruption
the money coming from
The US To fund say the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala
CICIG that money has come from a different set of pockets and
Probably in the next exercise and the next fiscal year
Excuse me
Some of those pockets are going to change
But the support for CICIG is going to be there so that the US policy of supporting
fight against corruption in Central America won't change and Bill Brownfield who was
Kind of an advocate for that is still going to be there and if you look down south
Things might change a bit for instance in Colombia, you know
the approach towards Colombia in the peace process and the Obama administration or
Even in the war against drugs and the older eradication policy has been changing he changed before Obama but Obama
maintained some sort of balance between soft and hard approach
Now in that case probably we're going to be seeing more of the... More insistence coming from Washington to Bogota to
remain in the hard approach
side of it in terms of policy, Mike in the Northern Triangle, specifically I
Will see that's going to be...
the support towards anti-corruption efforts is going to continue
Congress has given us a hint of that if you look at the marketing they did in the budget for
2007 you see specific support for instance for
the three Fiscalías the three Attorney General Offices in Central America something that wasn't there before
Specific aid, specific packages, millions I mean
I think it's 111 million for Guatemala for instance for Ministerio Público
So that that's going to stay there what you're going to be
Seeing less and less at probably prevention problems
In the case of poor communities or gang plaged communities those that were
Put forward from USAID for instance
I think that's going to be the programs those are going to be the problems there are going to be hurt in this case
Yeah, I agree with that
And I think you know, one of the main I
Guess themes of Donald Trump's campaign and also his presidency has been not just migration
through the the Southern border of the US Most of which comes from
Central America and Mexico
but also the the issue of criminal organizations and drug trafficking also coming over the border, so
We've reported quite a bit on on some of the proposals that Trump has made
I'm talking specifically about his proposal to add thousands and thousands of new
Border Patrol Agents and ICE
Immigration Agents
And so we we've talked a little bit about how this can potentially backfire on the Trump administration
It sounds great to put more people on the border. You know you would think that that would stop immigration
rather undocumented immigration and illegal drug trafficking but
It's border patrol has long had a big problem with corruption and this could actually
End up exacerbating that problem and then weakening security along the border
I don't know if you have anything that you want to add about that?
no, I
Basically I think you're you're right the piece that we wrote about that is pretty clear on that. I mean, yes
there again, there's an intention in the way, they're drawing and drafting these budgets or approving these budgets
And yes, if you look at what CBP is getting, the Customs and Border Patrol is getting in this new exercise
It's a little bit more
from what they were getting before and yes, there's the presidential promise let's say
that they're going to put more agents on the ground, but so far they are they have had a lot of difficulties and
filling those
posts because A.
Not everybody wants to be a border patrolmen so far
B.
I was reading in our piece that
75% of those that made the test failed the polygraph exam
If you saw it. Yeah, it's a recipe for disaster
If you look at what has already happened with CBP in the case of immigration
especially when the surge of unaccompanied minors happening back in
2014
there's been a lot of complains of
How agents in the ground Handle?
these minors for instance or corruption problems or abuses problems and
at the end of the day if you were able to fill
5,000
Positions which seems, you know like a lot, that's not going to be enough
To cover and patrol the whole border and as we have pointed out in InSight Crime
What this will provoke at the end of the day is
because you could say that this is the US version of "mano dura" approach in the border right? so what this is going to
Do is it's going to enhance the muscle of the criminal
smuggling organizations that down South will be will still be working to put
illegally, people, drugs
or
Anything in the US border. It's not going to tackle the problem
Probably is going to cost you in the US a new problem in the border
Right and and so the other big proposal I think that that's perhaps even more famous than
Trump's proposal to hire all these new
Immigration and border agents as the the infamous wall that he's planning to build along the southern border
Please tell us a little bit about how you expect that to impact drug trafficking trends and criminal trends in the region
well first of all I mean it's
As we have said you know budgets are blueprints right and under, as we have written they're kind of
they're policy papers you know their budgets indicate you where
You're setting your goals, and how you're funding them of course or like one thing that's clear is that the US
Is funding the wall, nobody else is, you know US taxpayers are funding the wall and if you look at the budget
That's clear that's pretty clear so it's going to be us taxpayers money that's going to be poured to the border
That's one thing that's now
Clearer than ever and then the second thing is okay. What does that mean? What does that mean, fencing more miles?
Actually building concrete walls. Is there is the the wall an idea this idea of putting more
Agents down that's been done before
Again, that's been done before I mean it didn't solve anything, the Alliance for Prosperity
That that was put together
in
2014 at least has something and it was that weaken that plan that
policy
paper and plan
Recognized that in order to tackle immigration you have to go down south
Because I mean you can put 5,000 agents in your border board, but if you have I don't know
hundreds of thousands coming each year I
Mean dozens of thousands will will make it. You know it's been happening for three decades now and and
so
What's the wall in in actual terms, fencing?
more
agents, what is it?
So I do see a lot of rhetorics here and then again
Probably the creation of a new problem down there and here's something interesting Mike
One of the main elements of this rhetoric for instance lately has been MS-13
Would talked about this, you know we're friends to make this make this wall to
stop
MS-13 members coming to the US. It's interesting that
I was seeing the news I was watching the news that I think it was yesterday that
DHS announced that it had implemented the larger ICE, the largest
operation ever
against MS-13 with you know a number of raids of all they did I think it was 14% of
All the rest that they made 14% were alleged gang members
in the US of
those
Some 70 percent were US-born
You know and the rest were coming from Central America
So MS-13, US MS-13 problem is in great part part here in the US
Already those are US citizens. So you cannot deport them. So never mind the wall
You know it's not it's not going to be a solution for that
Well yeah, and and the other the other dynamic at play here
I mean you have the the proposal to beef up border security
To beef up immigration enforcement to to build this wall potentially and then you also have the Trump administration apparently
Pressuring Mexico as the Obama administration did to do more
To deport Central Americans from Mexico before they could reach the United States. There's also reports that the US is going to encourage
Mexico to
more eradication of opium poppies which are a huge source of the heroin that's causing
contributing to the opioid epidemic in the United States
So that's another part of their their strategy it seems us to put more pressure on Mexico ask Mexico to do more
I don't know if you have
thoughts about how that might work out or not? Yeah, I think that's really important
but then again. That's not a shift in policy the Obama administration started with that. I mean after
2014
It was the Obama administration the one that
actually
Worked with Mexico, to have Mexico to deport more Central Americans
You know probably the Trump administration what they're willing or plan to do is to enhance that and that's yeah
That's going to be
That's going to mark shifts in the in the immigration, but it won't stop it. It won't stop it, so
but then again, that's not
That's not as a shift in policy
And I think it will have
if you look at the numbers and an ice and and DHS statistics
It is yet not clear. How that particular policy in the case of
Mexico increasing their deportations impact
The whole number of Central American illegal migrants coming into the US
The take is that it was, I mean was not a big a big
Decrease in
People all over all coming to because I insist as far as the conditions that
Push migration from the North Triangle persist
Migration will keep happening
yeah, well and this kind of brings us back a
full Circle sort of you know we've talked about potential reductions in
soft side aid particularly to Central America
But also throughout the region we talked about you know putting more pressure on Mexico to continue an enforcement centric approach
enforcement of migration enforcement of drug eradication and interdiction
you know again here in the United States. There's plans to build the wall
increase
border security and immigration enforcement so all these things are
hard side or at least enforcement centric approaches to problems of security and organized crime
And I think that we can we've been talking a lot about Mexico and Central America, but I think that that applies
Probably more broadly to the region as well, and I just wondered if you have if you have thoughts on that
I mean like you've mentioned the Obama administration folks who have moved into the Trump administration
like John Kelly the Homeland Security Secretary
like Bill Brownfield at the state Department
Those guys are probably making pretty key decisions
And it could be that there's some continuity in the policies between Obama and Trump
due to that and other reasons, but
What what do you in terms of this shift
it does seem like we're seeing a shift away from trying to at least incorporate those soft side measures and
Like it seems like we're seeing a shift towards focusing more on enforcement
Security Force capacity and just sort of increasing the number of agents on the streets
Do you think that that's applicable more broadly than just in Mexico and Central America?
I think get through meant to be seen for certain that seems to be the path that seems to be
From the indications that we are having in the form of how the this first Trump budget has been
drafted and has been
approved or marked by both houses
appropriations committees
it seems like what that way for sure and then again if you look at what's happening within the
Administration at the State Department the officials that privilege the hard side of things are still there and as I said
You know being in Washington in all the Obama years, but you had inside the State Department. Where's
kind of a balance so you have to get the hardliners because you know that if let's say the interdiction
part of the drugs and war approach never
Never faded not even during the Obama administration
the hardline approach to
MS-13
Has been there always you know in the conversations between Washington and all this countries
But what you had again with a approach that privileged again all the kind of measures for instance
Supporting as we talked about before
supporting prevention programs of violence
Successful ones for instance in Guatemala in the outskirts of Guatemala city you had a couple of where those
Meaningful enough that's another discussion but you had that in the case of El Salvador you had USAID money in
cash transfer programs aimed to prevent violence in in gang played communities
It was kind of a mix but they kind of that
the document that marked the line in this second half of the Obama
Administration or the second term of the Obama administration which was the Alliance for Prosperity
Was precisely a mix of that you know and what came to that, from that mainly was kind of the the
Reinforcement of the idea that in order to address security you had to address institution
Institutional health down there in the Northern Triangle, specifically so you had to put money there
You know is that a hard approach or soft approach. Well at least it's not just the
interdiction
so based approach that was
The CARSI or the
Merida Initiative theme you know it was another a different approach that really
Grabs in the Northern Triangle to a number of stuff that's happening now in Guatemala was written about this a lot
I don't think that's going to change. [I] don't think it's going to change
I think so far what you'll see in practical terms is the end or at least
the
Yeah, their own. They will almost finish. I guess these are prevention oriented programs these
programs aimed at
Civil Society or Civilian population, I think that's going to be, we're going to be seeing less and less of that
And we're going to see more, but then again. We're going to see more of of
An approach that privileges the aid to the military, but then again if you look at the budget carefully
That has come down too you know in general terms
so we will have to see, what I think we have so far are hints are kind of uh
The idea of the blueprint you know and if you put together that with the rhetoric it seems
that yes, it's going to be hard line approach all over and
under
the whole period, but then again these are huge machines
Border Patrol is in huge machine. It's a big difference in between what you're saying
You will do and what you can accomplish in the ground you know then again
What the Mexico what the Peña Nieto Trump
Relationship is going to be, is it going to be is as smooth as the Obama Peña Nieto
Relation was? we don't know that yet, You know so but definitely is safe to say Mike that it seems like
In terms of the budget it's it's a step further than just me rhetoric
You know and probably yes, we're heading that way
Right well, I think that's that's an important point that you that you brought up about these are just sort of initial signs
They do tell us something but but there is a lot that remains to be seen about the ultimate direction the policy takes
But you mentioned one thing
About Obama and Peña Nieto's relationship compared to Obama's and I'm sorry compared to Trump's and Peña Nieto's
relationship significantly more
Rocky I would say with Trump and Peña Nieto
So I
We had a question from one of our listeners
Asking us more broadly how we see the Trump administration
Interacting on policy discussions with partners in Latin America, do you think that
because of how controversial Trump is because of the controversies about his approach and the criticisms of just him kind of as a
Leader do you think that will impede cooperation on the part of Latin American countries with the Trump administration?
I think it's safe to say now that it's come to its lowest point
I mean the and I think it has to do in fact or things that
in bureaucratic terms for instance
I'm talking to Central American diplomats here in Washington. It's not clear who the
interlocutor is in the State Department aside from Bill Brownfield you know and because you know there's a lot of
empty positions there so
embassies now are talking more with congress, with the Republican Congress than with the
Administration, so I think it's now
it's still in that side in what the relationship is especially with countries that are not as
Strategical in Latin America to the US as Mexico or Colombia. It's kind of there's still some sort of line of confusions
You know but I
Think that's about to change or and something we haven't talked about is
We have we have talked about the budget. We have talked about the border
We have talked about the security side a little bit about immigration
But there's some other signs for instance where the Trump administration said this week
or are the with before about a
TPS for for haitians you know the
Temporary Protection Status yeah, so that could be huge. I mean that if that's
Policy administrated by the
executive Branch it depends only on Trump and the White House whether that continues or not, and if it doesn't
if it is narrowed in some way that could mean a
Huge difference, I don't see a whole conversation
between
North Triangle and Washington in that regard, you know
Of course and that has to do probably with what I'm saying about it's some sort of line of confusion still on
Who the interlocutors are up here of course if you talk about
President Santos in Colombia, that's a priority you know
And I guess the Trump administration is already marking its rhythm down in Bogota on how
The US is going to handle the whole peace process down there same thing with Mexico the whole wall thing
But then again in Mexico you have to look at you know
Commerce, trade all that and
Probably is going to be rougher
you know especially in the case of Mexico in the case of Central America one thing is safe to say it's
in my view
for Secretary Tillerson for President Trump
It's far way less important than the region so far than it was for the Obama administration
It was Vice President Biden the second-in-command driving that policy, here
You know it's it's just not that important and that is important for Central America for instance
right yeah
Well, I definitely think you know we're definitely going to see differences
Based on countries based on who, which political figures the United States are
Lining up behind certain policies, you have splits even within the Republican Party
Rubio coming out and backing the Colombian peace process with
Trump kind of wavering on it
so yeah
I think you know there's definitely going to be plenty to
Keep watching going forward and we're obviously going to be covering it for our audience, so please
Keep an eye on our website for all that
But that's all we have time for today Héctor. Thank you so much for being with me. Thank you. Thank you my pleasure
Absolutely, and I don't forget to tune in next Thursday at 4:00 p.m Eastern for the next discussion. Thank you! Bye!

How US Policy Shifts Could Impact LatAm Organized Crime - Weekly InSight

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