Regional leaders on Friday called for "shock" investment in infrastructure in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to reduce the number of migrants flowing from the three economically fragile countries, bound for the United States.

Honduras will analyze any U.S. plan to have the Central American country act as a so-called safe third country to help contain migration north, but it has yet to receive any official proposal, the Honduran foreign minister said on Saturday.

The U.S. homeland security chief said in Guatemala on Thursday that the United States is pursuing "similar agreements" with Honduras and El Salvador on migration in its drive to turn the region into a buffer zone for U.S.-bound migrants.

Guatemala's refugee agency meets only sporadically and operates on a bare-bones basis, adding to doubts about how the crime-wracked, impoverished Central American country will cope with a surge in asylum-seekers under a deal signed with Washington.

Mexico's government said on Saturday it would help Honduras create 20,000 jobs this year and support its coffee farmers as the two countries seek to curb migration to the United States that has created tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Carin, a 39-year-old subsistence farmer from Honduras, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her two sons late last year. They had fled after her political organizing led to threats of violence, she said, and intended to claim asylum.

Toward the end of 2018, Honduran coffee farmer Mario Lopez paid a human smuggler, or coyote, to take him to the United States in a bid to escape the economic ruin engulfing him at home.

U.S. Democrats in the House of Representatives on Friday proposed reinstating hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that was cut off by the Trump administration because thousands of their citizens sought asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Monday cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, after Trump blasted the three countries because thousands of their citizens had sought asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.

A U.S. plan to make asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador seek refuge in Guatemala instead of the United States would endanger, not protect, refugees, a prominent rights group said on Friday as U.S. negotiators met Guatemalan officials.