No long-term fix to illegal immigration is possible without addressing its root causes in Central America, which include pervasive official corruption, along with related social ills — poverty, drug-trafficking and violence. Yet in a critical test case in one major migrant-producing country, Guatemala, Washington has been thwarted from doing just that, partly by its own past wavering.
For a decade, a U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission in Guatemala, with support from the United States, made powerful progress — and equally powerful enemies — pursuing hundreds of cases involving graft, payoffs and other malfeasance. Among the targets were some of the country’s most powerful elites, including sitting and former presidents. The effort put a spotlight on the diversion of funds that could have benefited programs to combat poverty and poor health.
Despite its successes and popular support among Guatemalans, the commission was killed off by the Guatemalan government under a former president, Jimmy Morales, who had himself been a target of investigations. He was successful in no small part because of the indifference of the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress. Over the objections of career U.S. diplomats, they were swayed by Guatemalan corporate and political figures who argued, without basis, that the commission was an affront to national sovereignty and a tool of leftists.
The commission’s death, in 2018, left a courageous cohort of Guatemalan prosecutors and judges to press ahead on their own with anti-corruption investigations. They did so at their peril. Threats to their careers, and in many cases to their lives, multiplied, and a number of key anti-corruption crusaders were forced to flee the country. They included a former attorney general and presidential candidate, Thelma Aldana.
Ms. Aldana was the vanguard of what has become a steady exodus of Guatemala’s most prominent and effective anti-corruption fighters — nearly two dozen over the past four years. This year, Erika Aifán, a tough-minded judge who oversaw some of the most aggressive probes, also departed; she is now in exile in Washington. Ms. Aifán and others forced out of the country faced daunting enemies, including the incumbent president, Alejandro Giammattei, who backed Mr. Morales’s efforts to shut down the anti-corruption commission.
The Biden administration, in a reversal from its predecessor’s heedlessness, has pressed to fight graft in Guatemala, even going so far as to officially censure the attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, who has obstructed key investigations. Vice President Harris drove home the point last year, after meeting with Mr. Giammattei. On migration, she said, “We will not make significant progress if corruption in the region persists.” Despite that pressure, Ms. Porras might be named to another term as attorney general; if she is, it would be a signal that graft in Guatemala will continue to flourish.
Guatemalans who have profited from the status quo, including influential military, political and business figures, have continued to quash investigations and intimidate those who have pushed them. They seem intent on stalling in the hopes that Donald Trump, or a Republican in his mold, will recapture the White House. That outcome is unacceptable. The Biden administration should redouble its efforts and bring pressure to bear on a country where impunity has too long been the rule, and migration too often the result.
Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.
Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Karen Tumulty; Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus; Associate Editorial Page Editor Jo-Ann Armao (education, D.C. affairs); Jonathan Capehart (national politics); Lee Hockstader (immigration; issues affecting Virginia and Maryland); David E. Hoffman (global public health); Charles Lane (foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long (economics); Molly Roberts (technology and society); and Stephen Stromberg (elections, the White House, Congress, legal affairs, energy, the environment, health care).
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