From his years at CBP, McAleenan knew that individual policies at the border were stopgap measures that failed to address emigration at its source. He wanted to restart US aid money to the region, while also rewiring the asylum system to account for what he viewed as an unstoppable exodus. He called his plans “asylum cooperative agreements,” but they were also known as “safe-third-country” deals. The principle was that migrants had to apply for asylum in the first country they reached after fleeing their own, provided that the country had a working asylum system.
