Belize receives first non-national deportees from US, joining St Kitts and Nevis
About seven people, mostly Haitians, arrived under the safe third country agreement, a US embassy spokesman said.
BELMOPAN, Belize. Belize this week accepted a small group of non-national deportees from the United States under the controversial safe third country agreement, becoming one of the few Caricom member states to do so.
Belize joins St Kitts and Nevis as Caricom members that have received actual arrivals from the US in recent weeks.
Regional preference
Like officials in St Kitts and Nevis, Belize's government says it is insisting on accepting deportees mostly from neighbouring Caribbean states, because they are more culturally in step with local people.
Belize has specifically excluded nationals of neighbouring Guatemala, largely because of the long-running border dispute between the two countries. Officials also say they have no interest in accepting deportees from distant countries such as Belarus.
US embassy spokesman Luke Martin told local television station News 5 that about seven people arrived in the past week.
"These are all regional people and they all requested to come to Belize," Martin said. "The government reviewed it, everybody's case. In this case they passed the security background clearance."
"The majority of them were from Haiti but there were Central Americans as well," he said. "These are people looking for homes and they chose Belize as a place to go through this asylum process."
Pressure on the region
Since the Trump administration took office 19 months ago, it has pressed the region to accept deportees, allegedly those with misdemeanour and immigration offences and current or failed asylum seekers.
Officials say most Caricom states have either signed on to the programme or are at advanced stages of negotiation.
They include Antigua and Barbuda, whose Prime Minister Gaston Browne has accused the US of bullying it to accept up to 120 arrivals a year, against the 10 his cabinet has proposed. Browne has blamed the dispute for recent tourist visa restrictions.
Last week the US named Antigua and Dominica among countries whose nationals must lodge a visa application bond of up to $20,000.
