Trumps threats to cut Central American aid as US bound caravan pushes north

After the US-bound migrants' caravan pushes towards north United States President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to begin curtailing millions of dollars in American aid to three Central American nations.

Trump wrote in his twitter handler: “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them,”.

Inching toward the distant U.S. border an estimated around 10,000 Central Americans who joined the migrant caravan are in southern Mexico. These people are trying to flee from the violence and poverty in their homelands.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration campaign issues ahead of the midterm elections, in which his party is fighting to maintain control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Trump has also tweeted “Remember the Midterms!”

The move is to pile pressure on Mexico to stop the caravan as he has continuously complained the Mexican police and military had failed to do put a halt on the caravan.

The caravan was moving north again on Monday as migrants left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border, bound for the town of Huixtla, also in Chiapas state.

U.S. administrations have long seen aid programs as an essential part of efforts to stabilize the countries of Central America and stem the flow of migrants leaving. But since Trump became president last year, the United States has already moved to sharply decrease aid to the region.

In 2016, the United States provided some $131 million in aid to Guatemala, $98 million to Honduras, and $68 million to El Salvador, according to U.S. data. By next year, those sums were projected to fall to $69 million for Guatemala, $66 million for Honduras and $46 million for El Salvador - a reduction of almost 40 percent for the three nations.

Trump said that despite getting a “tremendous amount of money” in U.S. foreign aid, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador “like a lot of others, do nothing for our country.”