RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Guatemala has received in the last five days a total of 44 migrant families from the United States in the recently inaugurated Reception Center for Returnees since that country resumed expedited deportation flights last Friday.
The spokeswoman of the Guatemalan Migration Institute, Alejandra Mena, said Wednesday that since Friday, three flights from Brownsville, Texas, have arrived at the Guatemalan Air Force, adjacent to the Reception Center, with a total of 157 people from 44 families.
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Wednesday’s flight arrived in Guatemala City with 16 family units, composed of 10 men, 14 women, and 16 minors, seven of them girls.
Last Monday, 34 Guatemalan returnees arrived, 18 adults and 16 minors, and last Friday, when the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Administration resumed expedited deportation, 83 Guatemalans arrived, corresponding to 14 families.
ALMOST 30,000 RETURNEES IN THE YEAR
Before these expedited returns, the Guatemalan Migration Institute had registered from January to July 31 the return of 2,585 people by air from the U.S. and 2,198 by flights from Mexico, and 22,270 by land from land Mexico for a total of 27,053 people.
On July 7, a month after the visit of the US Vice President to Guatemala, the Central American country inaugurated the Returnee Reception Center, built with the support of 1.2 million US dollars.
The inauguration was attended by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was also touring the Central American country.
The Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, said that day that the center would support the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare so that the deported Guatemalans “get a decent job” in their country and thus avoid trying to return to the United States.
Giammattei said that the returned migrants, before his administration, were received outside the Guatemalan Air Force by the same human traffickers who had sent them to the U.S., as well as by money changers who offered to “take them back” to the North American country, an extreme that “will be avoided” with the renovated Reception Center for Returnees.
MORE ACTORS INVOLVED
According to information shared by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the construction, furniture, and equipment were donated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the cost of 1.2 million dollars.
In addition, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund and USAID added an additional US$64,935 for furniture and complementary disinfection and cleaning equipment.
The facilities have the capacity to accommodate some 130 people per flight, in addition to specialized areas for unaccompanied minors and two medical clinics, among other supplies.
During the two years before the pandemic, i.e., from January 2018 to 2019, Guatemala received just over 100,000 people deported by air from the United States, mainly from Texas.
Every year more than 300,000 Guatemalans seek to migrate illegally to the United States to seek better living conditions, away from poverty and violence in the Central American country.