In a submission to the United Nations Committee on Migrant Workers ahead of its adoption of a List of Issues Prior to Reporting for Guatemala, the Global Detention Project and the American Friends Service Committee called on the Committee to request detailed information from Guatemala regarding its recent agreement with the United States to accept deported third-country nationals. Together, we also urged the Committee to seek information on the detention and removal of these individuals to enable effective scrutiny of the impacts of this scheme.
In June 2025, Guatemala and the United States established an agreement according to which Guatemala agreed to accept Central American nationals from the United States, and that Guatemala could decide whether to consider any asylum or protection requests from these deported individuals. On 3 October 2025, the first flight under this agreement arrived in Guatemala from the United States, which included three individuals from Honduras. Since then, deportations have continued. According to Guatemala’s Migration Institute, between January-April 2026, the country has accepted 119 non-Guatemalan deportees from the United States, mostly people from Honduras and El Salvador.
Based on the small amount of information that has been made publicly available, it appears that upon arrival in Guatemala, deportees are initially briefly processed at the Guatemalan Migration Institute’s “Centro de Reception de Retornados.” Third country nationals are then transferred to a detention centre called the Migrant Care Center for Foreign Migrants, known as CAMIEX (“Centro de Atención Migratoria Para Migrantes Extranjeros”), where they are held pending their removal to their home countries. However, according to partners in Guatemala, the Guatemalan government has released scarce information about the processes individuals face before they are deported and whether asylum or other protection requests are being properly assessed.
The CAMIEX detention centre, which has also been referred to as a “shelter” (or albergue) and is located in the Zone 5 of Guatemala City, has faced repeated criticism regarding conditions. A 2019 report by the Guatemalan Ombudsman (Procuraduría de los Derechos Humanos de Guatemala) highlighted that families from Iraq and Yemen were being held in the centre and that the duration of their detention had not been defined. The report also noted that conditions within the facility were inadequate for children and adolescents.
Numerous local and international human rights observers have also noted that among the concerns surrounding this deportation arrangement is that it fails to provide any guarantees that people will not be refouled by Guatemala or receive adequate consideration of their protection needs. Observers have also emphasised the critical risks deportees may face in Guatemala, which has important institutional and social challenges, including a backlogged asylum system, surging gang violence, and dwindling international humanitarian support.
