Most of the migrants would lose their cases for asylum once they reached the US, which was proof to McAleenan that the system was being misused. “Only ten to fifteen percent of the Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. actually get it,” he said in a meeting in Guatemala, during the summer of 2019. If the government didn’t try to “curb the flow,” authorities at the border would continue to be overwhelmed by more migrants than the system was designed to handle. McAleenan embodied a version of what had become a respectable American position. “The short-term goal” of the safe-third-country
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