Earlier this month, on her first international trip as vice president, Kamala Harris traveled to Guatemala. There, she warned Central American migrants fleeing the violence and poverty of the region not to seek asylum in the United States. Speaking at a press conference in Guatemala City after a meeting with President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris said “I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home. At the same time, I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States–Mexico border: Do not come, do not come.”

Harris went on to champion a US$310 million “humanitarian” aid package for the region announced in late April. Aimed at stemming what the Biden administration has described as a “surge” of migrants at the US-Mexico border, including Central American children traveling unaccompanied, this package includes money for pandemic and disaster relief as well as funds to support jobs and education for women and girls. In exchange for these funds, the Biden administration expects Giammattei and other leaders in the region to “combat corruption” and to implement enhanced and militarized border security to prevent migration.

Combining so-called humanitarian aid with exhortations to harden border controls against the civilians attempting to cross them is a staple offering in the long, brutal history of US imperial intervention in Central America. Despite its expressions of sympathy for people motivated to leave their homes — in his first press conference in March, Joe Biden spoke of his grandfather’s voyage to North America on a coffin ship, comparing this flight from hardship to the situation of contemporary migrants — the Biden administration’s assumptions about migration’s root causes are dangerously incorrect and ahistorical, forcing its advocates to twist and distort language.