By Simon Lewis
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) -Guatemala will accept 40% more deportation flights from the United States, including both Guatemalan deportees and those of other nationalities, President Bernardo Arevalo said after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.
Rubio, speaking at a press conference alongside Arevalo following their meeting in Guatemala City, said he had pledged U.S. support to the Central American country’s efforts to return people not from Guatemala to their homeland.
Washington’s top diplomat, who has been on a tour of Central America to discuss migration in his first trip abroad as secretary of State, said Arevalo’s offer to increase the number of flights Guatemala accepts was “very important for us in terms of the migratory situation that we’re facing.”
“His willingness to accept not just nationals but those from other nationalities as they seek to ultimately return to their own homelands is also important, and we’ve pledged our support with those efforts,” Rubio said.
The details of the increase in flights will be discussed in working groups to be established, Arevalo said.
Arevalo said accepting criminals was not discussed in Wednesday’s meeting, after El Salvador on Monday offered to house in its jails “dangerous criminals” from anywhere in the world deported by the United States.
As well as smoothing the way for the U.S. to send migrants back to their own countries, Rubio in his visits this week has sought to secure “third country” agreements, in which nations accept citizens of other countries that will not accept deportees.
Cuba and Venezuela, for instance, have frosty relations with the U.S. and have in the past limited the number of deportees they will accept, although the Trump administration says Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has agreed to accept back his country’s citizens.
Since taking office on January 20, President Donald Trump has stepped up the number of migrants the U.S. deports to Latin America, including using military planes for repatriation flights.
The Trump administration on Monday removed protection against deportation from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the U.S.
Trump last week said he was expanding a detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold 30,000 people.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis in Guatemala City, Brendan O’Boyle and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)
