Carlos Navarro was recently eating takeout outside a restaurant in Virginia when immigration officials stopped him and said there was an order to remove him from the country.
He has never been in trouble with the law, said Mr. Navarro, 32, adding that he worked in poultry factories.
“Absolutely nothing.”
Last week, he was back in Guatemala for the first time in 11 years, calling his wife in the United States from a deportee reception center in the capital, Guatemala City.
Mr. Navarro’s experience could be a taste of the type of rapid deportations that will occur under President Trump to communities across the United States, which are home to up to 14 million illegal immigrants.
The administration, which promised the largest deportations in American history, has reportedly begun carrying them out. from Tuesday. In his inaugural address Monday, Mr. Trump promised to “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to their places of origin.”
Mr. Navarro’s situation provides a glimpse of what mass expulsions could mean in Latin American countries at the other end of the expulsion process.
Authorities are preparing to receive significant numbers of their citizens, although many governments have said they have I couldn’t meet with the new administration over its deportation campaign.
Guatemala, a small, poor country scarred by a brutal civil war, has a large undocumented population in the United States. About 675,000 undocumented Guatemalans lived in the country in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
This makes one of the largest countries of origin for illegal immigrants in the United States, after Mexico, India and El Salvador, and a laboratory for how mass deportations can also change life outside the United States.
Last year, Guatemala received about seven deportation flights a week from the United States, according to immigration officials, which equates to about 1,000 people. The government told U.S. officials it could accommodate a maximum of 20 such flights per week, or about 2,500 people, the officials said.
At the same time, the Guatemalan government is developing a plan that President Bernardo Arévalo called “Homecoming” — to assure Guatemalans facing deportation that they can expect assistance from U.S. consulates — and, in the event of detention and deportation — a “dignified welcome.”
“We know they are worried,” said Carlos Ramiro Martínez, the foreign minister. “They’re living in immense fear, and as a government we can’t just say, ‘Look, we’re scared for you too.’ We must do something.
Guatemala’s plan, which it shared at a meeting of the region’s foreign ministers in Mexico City last week, goes beyond the immediate concerns shared by many governments in the region, such as how to house or feed the deportees on their first night.
It also addresses how to reintegrate expelled Guatemalans into society.
The plan, which focuses on giving deportees access to jobs and using their language and professional skills, also aims to offer mental health support to people facing the trauma of deportation.
In practical terms, this means that when deportees get off the plane, officials interview them at length to get a detailed picture of who is returning to the country, what help they need, and what type of work they might do. .
Experts say Guatemala’s plan appears to reflect an unspoken expectation on the part of the Trump administration that Latin American governments not only welcome their deported citizens but also work to prevent them from returning to the United States.
Historically, many people returned to their countries of origin have turned around and tried to return, “even in extreme circumstances,” said Felipe González Morales, UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. .
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about 40% of deportations in 2020 involved people who had already been deported and had returned to the country.
For years, the dynamic has been “essentially a revolving door,” Mr. Martínez, Guatemala’s foreign minister, said in an interview.
Mr. Trump wants to change that.
“When the entire world sees President Trump and his administration mass deportation of illegal criminals from American communities back to their home countries,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, said in an email, “it will send a very strong message not to come to America unless you plan to do so right away or you will be sent home.
The number of illegal U.S. border crossings has already declined significantly, with about 46,000 people attempting to cross in November, according to the U.S. government, the lowest monthly figure under the Biden administration.
The Trump administration should pressure Latin American governments to continue supporting immigration crackdowns.
But Guatemala’s plan to reintegrate deportees is not just a way to show Mr. Trump that Guatemala is cooperating, according to Anita Isaacs, a expert from Guatemala who created the plan of the plan.
Ms. Isaacs said of the expellees: “If you can find a way to integrate them and exploit their skills, then the opportunities for Guatemala are enormous. »
Until now, she said, deportees who got off a plane in Guatemala City were mostly given a few basic items, like new identity documents, sanitation supplies and transportation to a destination. shelter or at the main bus station.
Instead, she proposed, Guatemala could view its newly returned citizens as an economic asset, including for its tourism sector.
As an example, she cited the case of hundreds of Guatemalans deported after a 2008 ICE raid on a meatpacking plant in Iowa. become volcano guides.
However, there remain great difficulties to overcome in encouraging deportees to remain in their country of origin.
The forces that pushed them to leave still exist, said Alfredo Danilo Rivera, Guatemala’s migration director: crushing poverty and a lack of jobs, extreme weather worsened by climate change, the threat of gangs and crime organized.
Then there is the lure of the United States, where not only are there more jobs, but workers are paid in dollars.
“If we want to talk about why people migrate, the causes, we also need to talk about the fact that they settle there and many are able to succeed,” Mr. Rivera said.
Expellees also feel greater pressure to get to the United States than people migrating for the first time, said the Rev. Francisco Pellizzari, director of Casa del Migrante, Guatemala City’s main shelter for deportees.
They often owe thousands of dollars to smugglers, and in rural Guatemala the poor often hand over title deeds to their homes or land as collateral for loans to pay smugglers, leaving them virtually homeless. ‘they are expelled.
“They can’t come back anymore,” Father Pellizzari said.
The Biden administration’s stricter border measures have also led smugglers, aware of the increased risk of deportation, to offer migrants up to three chances to enter the United States for the price of just one. attempt, according to Father Pellizzari and others. .
José Manuel Jochola, 18, who was deported to Guatemala last week after being apprehended for illegally crossing the border into Texas, said he has three months to use his last chance. “I’ll try again,” he said, although he would wait to see what Mr. Trump did.
The desire to return to the United States after being deported is particularly strong among those whose families are there.
Mr. Navarro, the man recently deported from Virginia, said he was undeterred by Mr. Trump’s crackdown. “I have to go back, for my son, for my wife,” he said.
A woman who was on Mr. Navarro’s deportation flight, Neida Vásquez Esquivel, 20, said it was the fourth time she had been deported while trying to join her parents in New Jersey . A new attempt is not excluded, she said.
But some deportees say the biggest appeal of staying in Guatemala is that, for now, the alternative no longer seems as good.
After José Moreno, 26, was deported last week after a drunken driving accident, he decided not to attempt to return to Boston, where he spent a decade, because of the dangers of crossing the border and the new president’s attitude towards immigrants.
Instead, he said, he would use his English to offer guided tours in Petén, a region of Guatemala with a picturesque lake and Mayan ruins, where his family owns a small hotel.
“My parents are here, I have everything here,” he said. “Why should I go back?”
Jody Garcia contributed to reporting from Guatemala City, and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.
