Carlos Navarro was eating takeout outside a restaurant in Virginia recently when immigration officials arrested him and said there was an order to remove him from the country.
He has never encountered the law, said Mr. Navarro, 32, added that he used to work in poultry plants.
“Not at all.”
Last week, he was back in Guatemala for the first time in 11 years, calling his wife in the United States at a refugee reception center in the capital, Guatemala City.
The experience of Mr. Navarro could be a preview of the kind of rapid deportations coming under President Trump in communities bordering the United States, which is home to about 14 million undocumented immigrants.
The administration, which has promised the largest deportations in American history, is said to begin as early as Tuesday. In his first speech on Monday, Mr. Trump promised to “start a program to send millions and millions of criminal aliens back to their places of origin.”
The status of Mr. Navarro offers an idea of what mass deportations could mean for Latin American countries on the other side of the deportation pipeline.
Officials there are preparing to accept a large number of their citizens, although many governments say they have not been able to meet with the incoming administration regarding their deportation.
Guatemala, a small, impoverished country wracked by a brutal civil war, has the largest undocumented population in the United States. There are about 675,000 undocumented Guatemalans living in the country by 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
That makes it one of the largest countries of origin for unauthorized immigrants in the United States, after Mexico, India and El Salvador, and a laboratory for how mass deportations will 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 translates to about 1,000 people. The government has told US officials that it can accommodate about 20 such flights per week, or about 2,500 people, officials said.
At the same time, the Guatemalan government has been implementing a program – which President Bernardo Arévalo called “Return Home” – to ensure Guatemalans facing deportation that they can expect help from United States embassies – and, in the case of arrest. and removal – “honorable reception.”
“We know they are worried,” said Carlos Ramiro Martínez, the foreign minister. “They are living in great fear, and as a government, we cannot just say, ‘Look, we are also afraid of you.’ We have to do something.”
Guatemala’s plan, which it shared at a meeting of foreign ministers in the Mexico City region last week, goes beyond concerns shared by many governments in the region — such as how to build houses or feed deportees on their first night.
It also addresses how to reintegrate exiled Guatemalans back into society.
The program, which focuses on connecting deportees with jobs and using their language and work skills, also aims to provide mental health support to people who are dealing with the pain of deportation.
In practice, it means that when deportees get off the plane, government officials will interview them in detail, to get a full picture of those returning to the country, the help they need and the type of work they can do.
Experts say the Guatemalan program seems to demonstrate what the Trump administration has long hoped for, that Latin American governments not only receive their deported citizens – but also work to keep them from returning to the United States.
Historically, many repatriates have turned around and tried to return, “even under the worst conditions,” said Felipe González Morales, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of migrants.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, nearly 40 percent of deportations in 2020 involved people who had previously been deported and re-entered the country.
This change has been a “revolving door” for years, said Mr. Martínez, Guatemala’s foreign minister, in an interview.
Mr. Trump aims to change that.
“When the whole world watches President Trump and his administration deport illegal criminals from American communities back to their own countries,” said Caroline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition in an email, “it will send a very strong message to America unless you plan to do it right away or you will be sent home. “
Already, the number of illegal crossings at the American border has dropped significantly, with about 46,000 people trying to cross in November, according to the US government, the lowest monthly number during the Biden administration.
The Trump administration is expected to pressure Latin American governments to continue supporting their migration campaign.
But Guatemala’s plan to integrate deportees is not just a way to show Mr. Trump that Guatemala is cooperating, according to Anita Isaacs, a Guatemala expert who created the blueprint for the plan.
Mrs. Isaacs said of the deportees, “if you can find a way to integrate them and use their skills, there are many opportunities in Guatemala.”
So far, he said, deportees disembarking in Guatemala City often get the basics, such as new identification documents, hygiene supplies and a ride to a shelter or the main bus terminal.
Instead, he proposed, Guatemala could welcome its newly returned citizens as an economic asset, including in its tourism sector.
As an example, he pointed to the case of hundreds of Guatemalans deported after a 2008 ICE raid on a meatpacking plant in Iowa who went on to become volcanologists.
However, there are serious challenges to encourage deportees to stay in their countries.
The forces that made them leave in the first place are still there, says Alfredo Danilo Rivera, director of migration in Guatemala: grinding poverty and unemployment, extreme weather made worse by climate change, the threat of gangs and organized crime.
Then there is the draw of the United States, where not only are there more jobs, but workers are paid in dollars.
“If we are going to talk about the reasons for people’s migration, the causes, we have to talk about the fact that they live there and many are able to succeed,” said Mr. Rivera.
Deportees also feel more pressure to come to the United States than first-time migrants, said the Rev. Francisco Pellizzari, director of Casa del Migrante, a large deportee shelter in Guatemala City.
They often owe thousands of dollars to traffickers and in rural Guatemala, poor people often give up titles to their homes or land as collateral for loans to pay traffickers, leaving them homeless when they are evicted.
“They won’t be able to come back,” said Father Pellizzari.
The tough measures imposed by the Biden administration at the border have led smugglers, aware of the increased risk of deportation, to offer immigrants up to three chances to enter the United States for the price of one attempt, according to Father Pellizzari and others. .
José Manuel Jochola, 18, who was deported to Guatemala last week after being caught crossing the border into Texas illegally, said he has three months to use the remaining opportunities. “I’ll try again,” he said, although he was going to wait to see if Mr.
The desire to return to the United States after deportation is especially strong for those with families present.
Mr. Navarro, a man who was recently deported from Virginia, says that he was not discouraged by the actions of Mr. “I have to go back, for my son, for my wife,” he said.
The woman who was on the flight of Mr. Navarro, Neida Vásquez Esquivel, 20, said it was the fourth time she had been kicked out while trying to reach her parents in New Jersey. Another attempt was not out of the question, he said.
But some deportees say the main attraction of living in Guatemala is that, at this point, the alternative no longer looks good.
After José Moreno, 26, was deported last week after a drunk driving accident, he decided not to try to return to Boston, where he lived for ten years, because of the dangers of crossing the border and the new president’s attitude towards immigrants.
Instead, he said he will use his English to provide guided tours in Petén, a Guatemalan area with a beautiful lake and Mayan ruins, where his family owns a small hotel.
“My parents are here, I have everything here,” he said. “Why would I go back?”
Jody García contributed reporting from Guatemala City, as well Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.
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