Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday announced the Trump administration is pulling out of a United Nations-led Global Compact on Migration (GCM), claiming it could undermine the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.

“The United States has decided to end participation in the UN process to develop a Global Compact on Migration (GCM),” Tillerson said in a statement.

The U.S. has participated in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, a 2016 agreement to manage international migration, which was in the process of being adopted as a global compact in 2018.

Tillerson, however, said that the compact, which aims to protect the rights of migrants as well as help them resettle, “contains a number of policy goals that are inconsistent with U.S. law and policy.”

“While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations, in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders,” he continued. He stressed  that it “is the primary responsibility of sovereign states to […]