Tracking Trump and Latin America: Migration

February 17: Rubio’s Central America trip yields deportation deals

In his first trip as secretary of state, Marco Rubio ventured to Central America and the Caribbean with migration as a priority. 

On Rubio’s first stop, Panama, President José Raúl Mulino offered the U.S. government use of a landing strip in a town near the Darién Gap as a base for deportation operations. In a press conference on February 2, Mulino suggested that U.S. deportation flights could depart from the Nicanor Air Base to return migrants to their respective countries of origin, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, as well as further afield. This builds upon an agreement signed in July 2024 through which the United States finances deportation flights from Panama.

The first of these flights landed near Panama City on February 13 carrying 119 migrants from various Asian countries including Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan. President Mulino explained they would be transferred to a shelter in the Darién province and from there, returned to their home countries. Similar flights to Costa Rica reportedly began on February 17.

Rubio’s following stop was El Salvador, where he announced on February 3 that President Nayib Bukele had offered to take in deportees of any nationality with a criminal record, including alleged gang members, to be held in El Salvador’s mega prison. Bukele later clarified on X that only “convicted criminals” would be admitted “in exchange for a fee.” Both men added that the proposal included the transfer of convicted U.S. citizens, a procedure experts noted would be legally fraught. Rubio referred to the offer as “an act of extraordinary friendship” that would constitute “the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.” 

In Guatemala, President Bernardo Arévalo announced in a joint press conference with Secretary Rubio on February 5 that his country would accept 40 percent more deportation flights from the United States and receive non-Guatemalan citizens. Under the Biden administration, approximately 14 flights landed in Guatemala on a weekly basis, with over 66,000 Guatemalans being returned to their country in the 2024 fiscal year.

February 4: Laken Riley Act and Guantánamo migration detention center 

The first signed bill of Trump’s second term deals with migration. The Laken Riley Act, signed January 29, stipulates the federal detention of any migrant accused—but not yet convicted—of theft or a violent crime. It also empowers states attorneys general to sue the federal government if they feel there has been harm due to a failure of immigration enforcement.

During that signing, Trump announced that he would direct construction to expand a migrant detention center in Guantánamo Bay. This was later formalized in a memo. The president claimed that the U.S. military site, located in Cuba, could house up to 30,000 migrants, almost doubling the state’s holding capacity for persons under deportation orders. If constructed, it would be the largest U.S. migrant detention center. Flights carrying detained migrants from the mainland United States to Guantánamo began on February 4.

Best known as the site of a detention and alleged torture facility for suspected terrorists, Guantánamo Bay also hosts facilities that have been used intermittently in recent decades to temporarily house migrants and asylum seekers, including under the Biden administration, to process or return persons picked up at sea. 

January 28: Venezuelans to lose protected status 

On January 28, the Department of Homeland Security announced the cancellation of an 18-month extension to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans. This reversed an order implemented earlier in January by the previous Biden administration that offered over 600,000 Venezuelans with TPS protection from deportation and legal permission to work until October 2026. The reversal means that protections for around 350,000 Venezuelans registered under a 2023 TPS designation will instead expire on April 2, 2025. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has until July 12, 2025 to make a final determination on whether to extend or end the legal status of Venezuelans registered under a 2021 TPS designation, which is due to expire on September 10, 2025. 

Back in 2017, as one of the last acts of his first term, Trump granted Venezuelan migrants protection from deportation for 18 months, using a mechanism similar to TPS.

Following a meeting between Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, and Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on January 31, Trump stated that Venezuela had agreed to receive deportation flights and offered to provide the means of transportation. Venezuela had stopped allowing the United States to return its citizens in January 2024. The Venezuelan government has not provided details on what was discussed with Grenell, but Maduro stated that they had "taken a first step” towards a new relationship with the United States. 

January 26: Military deportation flights raise regional ire

In his second term, Trump has introduced the use of military aircrafts to carry out deportations, a move experts note is unprecedented in modern history.

Military deportation flights bound for Colombia on January 26 triggered an explosive but short-lived dispute between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Early that morning, Petro rescinded flight permissions for two planes carrying Colombian nationals. Petro objected to the use of military vessels and what he considered a lack of “dignified treatment” of those on board. 

In response, Trump threatened “decisive retaliatory measures” including: a 25 percent tariff on Colombian goods, to be raised to 50 percent within one week; visa and travel bans for government officials, their families, and “supporters;” and “enhanced” inspections of Colombian nationals at ports of entry.  The U.S. embassy in Bogotá also suspended visa processing.

Petro retaliated with the announcement that Colombia would also levy a 25 percent tariff on U.S. goods, along with a missive on X in which he suggested that Trump was plotting a coup, while insisting that he was “not scared of [a] blockade” and that Colombia would “stop looking to the North.” The United States is Colombia’s largest trading partner and purchases around a quarter of all Colombian exports. 

However, before the end of the day, both the White House and the Colombian foreign ministry confirmed that deportation flights would resume as normal and that there would be no extra tariffs. The White House added that the tariffs and sanctions would be “held in reserve” should Colombia violate the agreement. Deportation flights resumed on January 28 with Petro sending the Colombian Air Force to carry his citizens to Bogotá. 

The diplomatic dispute came just a few hours after the Brazilian government raised similar objections to returning nationals being handcuffed and prevented from using the bathroom on a January 24 deportation flight. When the plane made a stopover in Manaus, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent the Brazilian Air Force to collect the returnees and complete the journey to Belo Horizonte without handcuffs. Brazil’s foreign ministry later sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. requesting clarification on the “degrading treatment” of the migrants.

Also on January 24, Mexico blocked U.S. military planes from passing through Mexican airspace but allowed non-military deportation flights to land domestically. Neither government provided a public explanation for the refusal. In Guatemala, military deportation flights were allowed in on January 25 without issue. 

January 20: Early executive orders show immigration priorities

Rhetoric about migration featured prominently in Trump’s inaugural address. He spoke several times about what he deemed “the disastrous invasion of our country” and mentioned specific policies—such as “Remain in Mexico” and large-scale deportation—in his address.

Hours later, Trump signed a series of executive orders that actualized many of the migration promises in his speech. That included declaring a national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico and categorizing immigration as “an invasion" under the Constitution, which provides legal justification for the federal government to take expanded action on behalf of the states.

Several of Trump’s executive orders marshaled resources to the border for the construction of infrastructure and the use of technology like drones. He also authorized the Department of Defense to send troops to the border. The first wave of the military included 1,500 troops, who began to reach their new posts on January 23. 

Trump also modified several immigration policies. This included significantly reducing the geographical and time constraints on expedited removals, a mechanism that facilitates the deportation of undocumented migrants without an immigration hearing. He also resurrected the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico.” This policy, first implemented by Trump in 2018, forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration hearings. He suspended the acceptance of refugees under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. He ended the humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, leaving over 530,000 people in legal limbo. He also shut down a mobile application that migrants in Mexico used to schedule appointments with U.S. immigration, effectively canceling scheduled proceedings.

Immigration formed a central pillar of Trump’s 2024 campaign for reelection. On his campaign website, the first two of 20 “core promises” were to “seal the border and stop the migrant invasion” and “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” The Trump campaign insisted that his administration would focus on non-U.S. citizens in the country without legal status. More than three-quarters of an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States come from Latin America and the Caribbean, according to 2022 data compiled by Pew Research Center. 

In the run-up to the election, Trump and his now Vice President JD Vance amplified unverified reports of crimes committed by migrants, including Haitians and Venezuelans, to provide grist for their plans to ramp up persecution and deportation of undocumented migrants. This aligned with another of his “core” campaign promises to “stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders.”

Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, was marked by a similar “zero tolerance” approach to immigration and many policies have been leveraged in both terms.

Trump’s push to marshal funds and resources to the construction of a border is a continuation of his first-term efforts. In those four years, Trump oversaw work on about 450 miles of border infrastructure, though only 80 miles of that was new construction. Trump’s strategy of declaring an emergency to bypass Congressional approval for funding of the wall was also used in his first term.

Trump is also resuming efforts from his first term to end the entry of refugees into the United States and suspend humanitarian parole. In both cases, Trump’s first term efforts were more piecemeal and gradual.

A stricter enforcement of deportation law was also pursued in Trump’s first term. In his first few weeks in office in 2017, Trump directed Homeland Security to not exempt any classes of “removable” migrants from enforcement. Still, despite Trump’s rhetorical focus on deportation, fewer migrants were deported under his first presidency than during either term of his predecessor, Barack Obama.Trump protected some groups, namely Venezuelans, from deportation in the last days of his administration. 

In his first term, Trump used a combination of deals and threats, especially sanctions, to forge bilateral deals on migration. He implemented the MPP through an agreement with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but shortly after, threatened 5 to 25 percent sanctions on Mexico if no further efforts were taken. Trump also used threats when pursuing “safe third country” agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras whereby migrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border would be sent to one of these Central American countries and forced to apply for asylum there. To secure a deal with Guatemala, for example, Trump dangled the idea of sanctions, charging remittance fees, or banning Guatemalans from entering the United States. 

Trump has yet to resurrect some migration policies he enacted during the Covid-19 pandemic. That includes the use of Title 42, a public health measure, to block the entry of migrants into the United States.  He also hasn’t resumed the blockage of green cards he implemented in the last nine months of his presidency.