52 Jacqueline Bhabha migration safety or humanitarian protection and resettlement have been secured, others suggest the opposite – that given the unrealistic nature of the global compact recommendations to start with, there are grounds for cautious optimism about incremental steps toward progress in both refugee integration and life-saving migration management. The US government has signed on to the Global Compact on Refugees, though its annual rate of acceptance of resettled refugees is at an all-time low. The US government has withdrawn from the Global Compact on Migration, however, reflecting the isolationism of its current foreign policy and the failing commitment to sustainably improving the migration management system. Both these developments – the low resettlement rates and the failure to engage with constructive approaches to improved migration management – bode ill for the thousands of vulnerable Central American children and young people seeking safety from violence and the opportunity to lead productive and rewarding lives. They will create more business for people smugglers, higher casualties of fleeing children en route, and a greater burden of distress and trauma for thousands as they move from childhood to adulthood. But they will also strengthen the determination of child migrants and their supporters to press for alternatives, and to use all the means at their disposal to secure the rights and interests to which they are entitled. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press