The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, confirmed this Thursday that Guatemala has received 2,300 Mexicans deported from the United States this year on flights shared with returning Guatemalans. “There is no permanence, there is no refuge, there is no figure that can be considered as a figure that constitutes a Third Safe Country, because they pass in transit,” Arévalo clarified. The president reported that the deported Mexicans were transferred to their country within 24 hours, with transportation costs covered by Mexico or the United States.
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The report on these deportations was first made public by CBS News, which cited two officials from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who explained that U.S. immigration authorities have sent Mexicans to Guatemala and Honduras flying over Mexican territory, instead of repatriating them directly. Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told the same media that the strategy seeks to deter migrants from trying to cross the border again and “send a message” that remaining undocumented in the United States has consequences.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and the Secretariat of the Interior of Mexico reported in a statement this Thursday that they are carrying out all necessary procedures to guarantee the safe and dignified return to their territory of Mexican people who were deported by the United States to Central American countries. “The Government of Mexico has conveyed to U.S. authorities its rejection of this practice and has reiterated that every Mexican person has the right to enter national territory,” the Mexican authorities stated in a communiqué.
The Honduran Foreign Ministry said it did not have information on the matter, and its Returned Migrant Assistance Center told Reuters that it had not received deported Mexican citizens. Savi Arvey, policy director of the organization Human Rights First, told that news agency that since May the Trump administration has indeed “systematically” deported Mexicans to Honduras and Guatemala. Human Rights First indicated that it had confirmed the deportation of about 200 Mexicans to Honduras.
International agreements establish that deportees must be sent directly to their place of origin, but they can also be transferred to third countries if their country rejects them or if conditions are not safe. However, under the U.S. president’s immigration policy, more migrants are being deported to third countries. Arturo Trejo, a deportee who spoke to the U.S. Spanish-language television network Telemundo from his hometown in Mexico, said he was part of the dozens of Mexicans transferred to Honduras. “They didn’t tell us anything, just to get on the plane,” Trejo said in statements collected by Reuters.
In July 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term, Guatemala signed with that government the Third Safe Country Agreement, which meant opening its borders to receive mainly Honduran and Salvadoran repatriates seeking asylum in Guatemalan territory. However, the measure was suspended in 2021, after strong local and international criticism.
Last year, Arévalo accepted a “note exchange” for the dignified and safe return of Guatemalans and Central Americans through Guatemala with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. On that occasion, the president explained that the agreement was based on the Political Constitution of the Republic, which allows Guatemala to accept Central American migrants in the country and recognize them as citizens of origin. And he denied that it was about turning the country into a Third Safe Country.
Persecution against migrants
During his second term, Trump has been characterized by strongly repressing migrants living in that northern country through detention and deportation operations of people who remain in irregular migratory status.
The practice of sending migrants to countries other than their own has spread during Trump’s second administration. According to the organization Third Country Deportation Watch, between January 20, 2025, and August 15, 2026, about 20,000 citizens of third countries were transferred from the United States to Mexico.
Guatemala also records an increase in the deportation of its own citizens: the Guatemalan Institute of Migration (IGM) reported 36,243 Guatemalans deported from the United States and Mexico between January 1 and July 21, 2026, 12,147 more than in the same period in 2025.
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