GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said Wednesday his country will accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States, the second deal that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reached during his trip to Central America.
Under the agreement announced by Arévalo, the deportees would be returned to their home countries at U.S. expense.
“We have agreed to increase by 40% the number of flights of deportees both of our nationality as well as deportees from other nationalities,” Arévalo said at a news conference with Rubio. Guatemala has been cooperating in receiving deportees from the United States, accepting both civilian and military flights.
El Salvador announced a similar but broader agreement on Monday. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said his country would accept U.S. deportees of any nationality, including American citizens and legal residents who are imprisoned for violent crimes.
Both President Donald Trump and Rubio acknowledged the legal uncertainty.
“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “I don’t know if we do or not, we’re looking at that right now.”
Rubio called it a very generous offer but said there were “obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution.”
Immigration, a Trump administration priority, has been the major focus of Rubio’s first foreign trip as America’s top diplomat, a five-country tour of Central America spanning Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and soon the Dominican Republic.
Rubio’s trip has been dogged by the administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, including a late Tuesday order abruptly pulling almost all agency staffers off the job.
After the news conference with Guatemala’s president, Rubio headed directly to the U.S. Embassy, where staffers and their families who were unsure of their futures gathered to hear from their new boss.
The meet-and-greet event was closed to the press, as was an earlier similar event in El Salvador. Both Guatemala and El Salvador have significant USAID missions. In Panama on Sunday before the shut down announcement, Rubio’s embassy event had been open to journalists.
