Carlos Navarro was eating outside a restaurant in Virginia recently when immigration officers arrested him and said they had an order removing him from the country.
Navarro, 32, said he had never encountered the law before, adding that he used to work in poultry factories.
“Nothing at all.”
By last week, he had returned to Guatemala for the first time in 11 years, and called his wife in the United States from a reception center for deportees in the capital, Guatemala City.
Mr. Navarro’s experience may be a preview of the kind of rapid deportations taking place under President Donald J. Trump to communities across the United States, which are home to as many as 14 million illegal immigrants.
It was said that the administration, which promised the largest deportations in American history, was the one that initiated these operations As soon as Tuesday. In his inaugural address on Monday, Mr. Trump promised to “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to the places they came from.”
Mr. Navarro’s situation offers a glimpse of what mass deportations could mean in Latin American countries on the other end of the deportation line.
Officials there are preparing to receive large numbers of their citizens, although many governments have said so I couldn’t meet With the incoming administration regarding the deportation campaign.
Guatemala, a small, impoverished country torn by a brutal civil war, has a large population undocumented in the United States. About 675,000 undocumented Guatemalans live in the country in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
This makes it One of the largest countries of origin For undocumented immigrants in the United States, after Mexico, India, and El Salvador, and a laboratory for how mass deportations can also change lives outside the United States.
Last year, Guatemala received about seven deportation flights a week from the United States, according to immigration officials, which translates to about 1,000 people. The government has told U.S. officials it can accommodate a maximum of 20 flights per week, or about 2,500 people, the officials said.
Meanwhile, the Guatemalan government was working on a plan – proposed by President Bernardo Arevalo Referred to as “Coming Home” – To reassure Guatemalans facing deportation that they can expect assistance from consulates in the United States and – in the event of detention and deportation – a “generous reception.”
“We know they are worried,” Foreign Minister Carlos Ramiro Martinez said. “They are living in enormous fear, and as a government, we can’t just say: ‘Look, we’re afraid for you, too.’” We have to do something.”
Guatemala’s plan, which it shared at a meeting of the region’s foreign ministers in Mexico City last week, goes beyond immediate concerns shared by many of the region’s governments — such as how to house or feed deportees on their first night.
It also addresses how deported Guatemalans can be reintegrated back into society.
The plan, which focuses on linking deportees to jobs and utilizing their language and practical skills, aims to provide mental health support to people dealing with the trauma of deportation.
In practice, this means that when the deportees get off the plane, government officials will conduct extensive interviews with them, to get a detailed picture of those returning to the country, what help they need and what kind of work they can do.
Experts say Guatemala’s plan appears to reflect an unstated expectation on the part of the Trump administration that Latin American governments would not only receive their deported citizens but also work to prevent them from returning to the United States.
Historically, many people who were returned to their home countries turned around and tried to return, “even under extreme circumstances,” said Felipe Gonzalez Morales, who served as the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nearly 40 percent of deportations in 2020 involved people who had previously been deported and then returned to the country.
For many years, the dynamic has been a “revolving door,” Martinez, Guatemala’s foreign minister, said in an interview.
Mr. Trump aims to change that.
“When the whole world sees President Trump and his administration mass deporting undocumented criminals from American communities to their home countries, it will send a very strong message not to do that,” Carolyn Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition administration, said in an email. Come to America unless you plan to do so immediately or you will be sent back to your home country.
Indeed, the number of illegal crossings at the US border has fallen dramatically, with about 46,000 people attempting to cross in November, according to the US government, the lowest monthly figure during the Biden administration.
The Trump administration is expected to put pressure on governments in Latin America to continue supporting its campaign against migration.
But Guatemala’s plan to reintegrate deportees is not just a way to show President Trump that Guatemala is cooperating, according to Anita Isaac, a humanitarian coordinator in Guatemala. Expert in Guatemala Who laid out the blueprint for the plan.
“If you can find a way to integrate them and harness their skills, the opportunities for Guatemala are enormous,” Ms. Isaac said of the deportees.
So far, she added, deportees getting off the plane in Guatemala City have mostly received some basics, such as new identity documents, health supplies and a ride to a shelter or main bus station.
She instead suggested that Guatemala embrace its newly returned citizens as an economic asset, including in the tourism sector.
As an example, she pointed to the case of hundreds of Guatemalans deported after a 2008 ICE raid on a meatpacking plant in Iowa who went there. Become volcano guides.
However, significant challenges remain in encouraging deportees to remain in their home country.
Alfredo Danilo Rivera, Guatemala’s immigration director, said the forces that prompted them to leave in the first place are still there: extreme poverty and lack of jobs, extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, and the threat of gangs and organized crime.
Then there is the appeal of the United States, where not only are there more jobs, but workers are paid in dollars.
“If we’re going to talk about why people migrate, the reasons why, we also have to talk about the fact that they’re settling there and that many of them are making it,” Mr. Rivera said.
Deportees also feel more pressure to reach the United States than people who are immigrating for the first time, said the Rev. Francisco Pellizzari, director of Casa del Migrante, the main shelter for deportees in Guatemala City.
They often owe thousands of dollars to smugglers, and in rural Guatemala, poor people often hand over deeds to their homes or land as collateral for loans to pay smugglers, leaving them homeless if they are deported.
“They can no longer come back,” Father Pelizzari said.
The Biden administration’s tougher border measures have also prompted smugglers, aware of the heightened risks of deportation, to offer migrants as many as three chances to enter the United States for the price of one attempt, according to Father Pelizzari and others. .
Jose Manuel Gochola, 18, who was deported to Guatemala last week after being arrested on charges of illegally crossing the border into Texas, said he has three months to make the most of his remaining opportunities. “I’ll try again,” he said, though he would wait to see what Mr. Trump does.
The desire to return to the United States after deportation is particularly strong among those whose families are there.
Mr. Navarro, the man recently deported from Virginia, said he was undeterred by Trump’s crackdown. “I have to come back for my son and wife,” he said.
Neda Vasquez Esquivel, 20, who was on Mr. Navarro’s deportation flight, said this was the fourth time she had been deported while trying to reach her parents in New Jersey. She said another attempt was not ruled out.
But some deportees say the biggest appeal of staying in Guatemala is that the alternative no longer looks good anymore.
After Jose Moreno, 26, was deported last week after a drunk-driving accident, he decided not to try to return to Boston, where he had spent a decade, because of the dangers of crossing the border and the new president’s attitude toward immigrants.
Instead, he said he will use his English to offer guided tours of Petén, an area of Guatemala with a picturesque lake and Mayan ruins, where his family owns a small hotel.
“My parents are here, and I have everything here,” he said. “Why would I come back?”
Judy Garcia Contributed reporting from Guatemala City, and Maryam Jordan From Los Angeles.
