In one of the surprises of his Latin American and First International tour, the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced Monday that he is the new interim chief of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), promising that he will put end to “insubordination” in that federal entity.
“I am the interim director of USAID,” Rubio told journalists during his visit to El Salvador, pointing out that the level of “insubordination” in that agency “makes it impossible to make a kind of serious review,” reported the agency French press (AFP).
“Every dollar we spend, each program we finance must be aligned with the national interest of the United States, and the USAID has a history of ignoring that and deciding that, in some way, they are a global beneficial organization separated from the national interest,” he said Rubio before the press that accompanies him on his journey, said an office of the Spanish agency EFE.
The head of the Washington diplomacy said to be “very worried” about information that USAID employees are “denying to cooperate” with the new Donald Trump government that investigates the profiles of each assistance program and the destination of the funds.
A pillar of Soft Power
Founded in 1961 by the government of President John F. Kennedy, in fiscal year 2023 the agency distributed approximately 43.4 billion dollars in help, benefiting more than 180 countries in areas such as governance, health, and humanitarian assistance. Ukraine the main receiver with more than 16 billion dollars.
“Thus, it is not only a humanitarian aid agency, but also a pillar of the Soft Power (or soft power, in Spanish) of the United States, used to promote Washington’s relations with communities worldwide, said a article of the CNN website in Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uama8twf9re
Salvadoran scale
In the second climbing his first trip as head of American diplomacy, Rubio could communicate to President Nayib Bukele the event that El Salvador receives deported criminals, given his prison experience with this type of population.
“Just a decade ago San Salvador was the world capital of crime, and today is one of the safer cities in the world,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, a special envoy from the United States for Latin America, who praised Bukele also as ” a great ally in migration. ”
The small Central American nation, where 83 thousand people have been arrested for alleged common crimes, received in the fiscal year of 2023 about 140 million dollars from the United States to support various programs and so far, the Republican Administration has respected the status that protects of deportation to about 232 thousand Salvadorans.
More than half a million Venezuelans in the middle of nowhere
Rubio’s efforts take place when Trump ended the temporary protection status that enjoyed more than 600 thousand Venezuelans in the United States, which prevented them from deporting them to their country of origin for the political crisis prevailing in Venezuela, according to Washington.
An envoy from the United States met last week with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and demanded that he receive deported Venezuelans, including members of the Aragua Train, a criminal band of Venezuelan origin that Trump has designated as a terrorist group .
For his part, Panama, visited this Sunday by Rubio, also promised greater cooperation in the deportation of migrants from other nations, an effort that awaits it is useful to lower the tension caused by Trump’s threat to seize by force of the channel of Panama.
On Sunday, when he left back to Washington since his private mansion in Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, the president reiterated that he thinks “recovering the Panama Canal, or something very fat will happen.”
Before leaving for El Salvador, Rubio observed in Panama City a deportation flight of Colombians detained when they crossed the jungle of the Darién towards the United States.
“If they reach the southern border of the United States, they create serious problems,” he told reporters while the Panamanian authorities embarked 32 men and 11 women on the plane to Colombia, he reported EFE.
The Rubio tour, which ends on Thursday, February 6, still includes Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, with an agenda that goes from illegal migration, organized crime and drug trafficking until the strengthening of economic agreements in the region.
