In a significant policy shift, Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arevalo announced on Wednesday that Guatemala will accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States. This statement came after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Guatemala City.
Under the newly established “safe third country” agreement, President Arevalo stated that these deportees would later be repatriated to their countries of origin, with the United States covering the costs of these returns.
If migrants fear they will not be able to stay in the U.S. ahead of their repatriation—potentially allowing them to disappear into hiding or acquire residency by having a child on U.S. soil or some other surreptitious means—many may be deterred from entering the U.S. in the first place.
Immigration, a key focus of the Trump administration, has dominated Secretary Rubio’s agenda during his inaugural foreign trips as the U.S.’s chief diplomat, spanning five Central American nations.
The deal with Guatemala follows another with El Salvador, headed by populist President Nayib Bukele, who had agreed to host violent criminals—U.S. citizens as well as criminal aliens—at his country’s CECOT mega-prison, where gang members have been incarcerated en masse as part of an anti-crime crusade that has reduced homicides by 98 percent.
