Exclusive: State Department downplays dangers in Latin America in new country assessments

Fredy Rodriguez/Reuters

The State Department is publicly warning Americans about violent crime in parts of Latin America, but privately, it has given asylum officers new assessments arguing that conditions in some of those same countries are no more dangerous than in some US cities, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN.

The documents, which have not been previously reported, focus on Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Rather than emphasizing human rights issues and the prevalence of kidnapping and extortion often highlighted in State Department assessments, they instead compare violent-crime rates in those countries favorably with US cities such as Baltimore, Houston and Memphis.

The new assessments are part of a broader Trump administration effort to overhaul the way claims from migrants are assessed by asylum officers — and limit who’s eligible to remain in the United States.

Asylum applicants must prove they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of a “well-founded fear” of persecution. By lowering the perceived threats in those countries, the new assessments will likely bear directly on those claims, including determinations of whether migrants can safely relocate inside their own country rather than seeking to stay in the US.

“There’s been an oversimplification of real dangers in these countries during other administrations, but this seems to be going too far in the other direction,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan thinktank.

The State Department says the assessments were prepared by personnel with regional expertise and circulated for review, including to US missions overseas. They are “intended to provide background for adjudicators as they evaluate protection claims,” one document states.

The Department of Homeland Security, which manages asylum claims, referred CNN’s questions about the country reports to the State Department.

In a written statement to CNN, a State Department spokesman said the department “may provide information about conditions in foreign countries to (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) and immigration courts. Such information is intended to provide useful background for USCIS personnel and immigration judges.”

The new documents were distributed to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency inside DHS that processes immigration benefits, and state that violent crime in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is lower than in some major US cities. In Mexico and El Salvador, for example, the documents claim that many areas “have violent crime rates at least one order of magnitude lower than those of major US cities.”

Asylum officers generally rely on the State Department’s annual human rights report to assess conditions in an applicant’s home country. That report, which covers the prior year and is usually released in March or April, has been delayed this year. The new assessments therefore give officers more recent country conditions to consider when reviewing claims.

Asylum denials are already high. In June, for example, 94% of asylum cases were denied, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University . That’s a dramatic increase from two years ago when the asylum denial rate hovered around 50%.

The documents show how the Trump administration is using comparisons with the US to evaluate two questions that can determine an asylum claim: whether a home government can provide protection and whether an applicant could safely relocate within the country.

“When you see a government report differ so much from previous reports, it raises red flags, especially if conditions on the ground haven’t changed in a noticeable way that would warrant that,” Selee said. “Some change is OK. You can correct the emphasis in prior reports, but this seems like a wholesale shift in conditions on the ground.”

Ulises Ruiz/AFP/Getty Images

The State Department warns against travel to Honduras, citing violent crime and terrorism, according to an alert on its website. It specifically cites Gracias a Dios Department, a region in Honduras, for its crime.

The State Department’s public travel warning cites crime in the region. The internal documents, however, say violent-crime rates there and in other Honduran cities “compare favorably with rates of violent crime in parts of the United States,” including Baltimore, Houston and Memphis.

“Of course, these figures do not represent the entirety of the United States,” the document states in one part. “Rather, they demonstrate that, even in developed countries, conditions vary. Further, they demonstrate why a general judgement cannot be made concerning a country’s conditions based on conditions in certain areas.”

The documents also assert that police in Honduras are “willing to and able to respond to requests for assistance from residents, with the main constraints being vehicle storages, response-time challenges, and uneven rural access.” That, too, it states can happen in the United States.

But the realities on the ground are more complicated, Selee said.

“That clearly understates the degree to which police forces are in collusion with organized crime groups,” Selee said. “The difference with the United States is that often people face violence but no trustworthy institutions that can protect them.”

The new documents state that people can move freely in each of the countries. That includes victims of abuse and extortion. While experts say that may be the case, they note that some organized crime groups can pose a threat across the country, meaning that even by relocating, people remain in potential danger.

“The reality is that there are some people who fall afoul of criminal groups and cannot be safe anywhere in the country,” Selee said.

Former USCIS officials said that determining whether someone can relocate in country has been part of the regular line of questioning by asylum officers.

“The question of whether you can relocate in your own country has always been something an officer can and should consider,” a former USCIS official told CNN.

Trump officials have repeatedly said that travel warnings, which are separate from the State Department’s human rights reports, are intended for US citizens and not nationals of that country.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper in June, defended the administration’s policies when asked about the safety of Haiti, which also has a travel warning.

“We have ‘Do not travel’ in places in Mexico or advisory warnings. In fact, if you go through our website in the State Department, you’ll see there’s advisories to a lot of places that are vacation destinations that we have advisories on because of the real risk to Americans,” said Mullin.

“That doesn’t mean it’s a risk to people who live there,” he added.

弗雷迪·罗德里格斯/路透社

据 CNN 查阅的内部文件显示，美国国务院公开警告美国公民拉丁美洲部分地区存在暴力犯罪，但私下里，国务院向庇护官员提交了新的评估报告，认为其中一些国家的状况并不比美国某些城市的状况更危险。

这些此前未曾公开的文件主要关注墨西哥、洪都拉斯、危地马拉和萨尔瓦多。与国务院评估报告中经常强调的人权问题以及绑架和勒索的普遍性不同，这些文件反而将这些国家的暴力犯罪率与巴尔的摩、休斯顿和孟菲斯等美国城市进行了比较，并认为这些国家的犯罪率更低。

这些新的评估是特朗普政府更广泛努力的一部分，旨在改革庇护官员评估移民申请的方式，并限制哪些人有资格留在美国。

寻求庇护者必须证明，由于“有充分理由担心”遭受迫害，他们无法或不愿返回原籍国。新的评估标准降低了这些国家所面临的威胁程度，很可能直接影响到这些申请，包括判断移民是否可以在本国境内安全迁徙，而不是试图留在美国。

“在其他几届政府执政期间，这些国家面临的真正危险被过度简化了，但这次似乎矫枉过正了，”无党派智库移民政策研究所所长安德鲁·西利说。

美国国务院表示，这些评估报告由具有区域专业知识的人员编写，并已分发供审查，包括分发给美国驻外使团。其中一份文件指出，这些报告“旨在为裁决人员评估保护申请提供背景信息”。

负责管理庇护申请的国土安全部将 CNN 关于该国报告的问题转给了国务院。

美国国务院发言人在给CNN的一份书面声明中表示，国务院“可能会向美国公民及移民服务局（USCIS）和移民法庭提供有关外国情况的信息。此类信息旨在为USCIS工作人员和移民法官提供有用的背景信息。”

这些新文件已分发给美国公民及移民服务局（USCIS），该机构隶属于国土安全部，负责处理移民福利。文件指出，墨西哥、洪都拉斯、危地马拉和萨尔瓦多的暴力犯罪率低于美国一些主要城市。例如，文件称，在墨西哥和萨尔瓦多，许多地区的“暴力犯罪率至少比美国主要城市低一个数量级”。

庇护官员通常依据国务院的年度人权报告来评估申请人原籍国的状况。该报告涵盖前一年的情况，通常在三月或四月发布，但今年的发布有所延迟。因此，新的评估报告能让官员在审查申请时参考更近期的原籍国状况。

庇护申请被拒的比例已经很高。例如，根据雪城大学交易记录访问中心的数据，6月份的庇护申请被拒率高达94%。这与两年前庇护申请被拒率徘徊在50%左右的情况相比，增幅显著。

这些文件显示，特朗普政府如何通过与美国的比较来评估两个可以决定庇护申请结果的问题：原籍国政府能否提供保护，以及申请人能否在国内安全搬迁。

“当一份政府报告与之前的报告存在如此大的差异时，就应该引起警惕，尤其是在实际情况并没有发生足以支撑这种差异的显著变化的情况下，”塞利说。“一些变化是可以接受的。你可以修正之前报告中的重点，但这似乎是对实际情况的彻底颠覆。”

Ulises Ruiz/法新社/盖蒂图片社

美国国务院在其网站上发布旅行警告，建议民众不要前往洪都拉斯，理由是该国存在暴力犯罪和恐怖主义活动。警告特别指出洪都拉斯的格拉西亚斯-阿迪奥斯省犯罪率较高。

美国国务院发布的旅行警告中提到了该地区的犯罪问题。然而，内部文件显示，洪都拉斯境内及其他城市的暴力犯罪率“与美国部分地区的暴力犯罪率相比，处于较低水平”，其中包括巴尔的摩、休斯顿和孟菲斯。

“当然，这些数据并不能代表美国的整体情况，”该文件在其中一部分指出。“相反，它们表明，即使在发达国家，情况也各不相同。此外，它们也表明，为什么不能仅凭某些地区的情况就对一个国家的整体情况做出普遍判断。”

文件还指出，洪都拉斯警方“愿意且能够回应居民的求助请求，主要限制因素是车辆存放空间不足、响应时间有限以及农村地区交通不便”。文件还指出，这种情况在美国也可能发生。

但塞利表示，实际情况要复杂得多。

“这显然低估了警察部队与有组织犯罪集团勾结的程度，”塞利说。“与美国不同的是，人们常常面临暴力，却没有值得信赖的机构来保护他们。”

新文件指出，民众可以在各国境内自由迁徙，包括遭受虐待和勒索的受害者。专家表示，虽然情况可能如此，但他们也指出，一些有组织犯罪集团可以在全国范围内构成威胁，这意味着即使搬迁，人们仍然面临潜在危险。

“现实情况是，有些人得罪了犯罪团伙，在全国任何地方都无法获得安全保障，”塞利说。

美国公民及移民服务局前官员表示，确定某人是否可以在国内重新安置一直是庇护官员常规询问的一部分。

“你是否可以在自己的国家内重新安置，一直是移民官员可以而且应该考虑的问题，”一位前美国公民及移民服务局官员告诉 CNN。

特朗普政府官员多次表示，旅行警告与国务院的人权报告是分开的，其针对的是美国公民，而不是该国国民。

国土安全部长马克韦恩·穆林在 6 月份接受 CNN 记者杰克·塔珀采访时，被问及海地的安全状况（海地也发布了旅行警告），他为政府的政策进行了辩护。

穆林说：“我们对墨西哥的一些地方发布了‘请勿前往’或旅行警告。事实上，如果你浏览我们国务院的网站，你会发现我们对很多度假胜地都发布了旅行警告，因为这些地方对美国人来说确实存在风险。”

“但这并不意味着对居住在那里的人们构成风险，”他补充道。