The US state-run Guatemalan Migration Institute reports that the United States sent back a record of 61,680 Guatemalans in 2024.
This announcement came after the last deportee planes arrived in Guatemala City. Four aircrafts, arriving from Texas, touched down at an air force base in the Guatemalan capital on Friday.
Around 100 people were seen disembarking from one of the planes, most of them women with small children.
The stepped-up returns from America occurred ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House as president in late January 2025. The incoming president had vowed mass deportations.
Guatemala’s government estimates there are 2.7 million Guatemalans living in the United States, but only 400,000 of them have documents to legally stay and work. According to officials, a total of 508 planes carrying 61,680 Guatemalan deportees arrived from the United States in 2024.
In 2023, a total of 55,302 Guatemalans were sent back, higher than the previous record registered in 2019 of 54,599. Thousands of Guatemalans migrate irregularly into the United States each year to escape violence and widespread poverty at home.
Guatemala’s central bank estimates that a record of nearly $21 billion was sent back in 2024, equivalent to 19 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
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