Donald Trump has reshaped one of the world’s most important migration routes
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, is an eager partner
In his quest to chuck migrants out of the United States, Donald Trump has found an eager partner in Central America. On March 15th his administration deported more than 250 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador—some under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law. They will be held in a high-security prison built by Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s authoritarian president, as part of his crackdown on gangs. But it was unclear if the Venezuelans were all criminals, and whether their deportation had violated an American federal judge’s order to halt their removal. “Oopsie…Too late," Mr Bukele wrote on X, a social-media platform.
No other Central American leader has embraced Mr Trump’s anti-immigration policy as eagerly as Mr Bukele, a MAGA icon. But he is not alone. Marco Rubio, Mr Trump’s secretary of state, secured agreements in February with Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama to serve as staging posts or destinations for people from other countries being deported. In February Costa Rica and Panama received flights deporting citizens of countries including Afghanistan, India and Iran.
Mr Trump has not yet matched Joe Biden’s pace of deportations: the huge numbers arriving at the border during Mr Biden’s term made it easier to capture and deport people. Mr Trump removed 37,660 people in his first month compared with Mr Biden’s monthly average of 57,000—but Mr Trump has laid the groundwork. This includes pressing Central American countries to accept more deportation flights.
Since taking office Mr Trump has dismantled much of the American asylum system. He has shut down CBP One, an app that let asylum seekers request appointments, and has ended temporary-stay programmes for certain nationalities, including Cubans and Haitians. Images of desperate people holding up signs pleading for help at a hotel in Panama after being expelled have spread across the region.
This marks a big shift. Central American countries have long accepted back their own citizens, but the United States previously struggled to deport migrants from countries like Venezuela that did not accept deportees. (That has since changed.) During Mr Trump’s first term he signed “safe third country" agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, obliging asylum seekers to apply there instead of in the United States, but this was feebly enforced. Mr Biden scrapped these arrangements only to replace them with similar ones. He offered Panama’s government $6m to accept deportees and beef up border patrols. Mr Biden deported roughly 4m people between 2021 and 2025, far exceeding the 1.9m removed during Mr Trump’s first term. Now Mr Trump is aiming much higher.
Anyone heading to the United States from south of Mexico must pass through at least one of the seven countries in the stretch of land that runs down to Colombia (see map). Arrivals at the southern border of the United States were already declining when Mr Trump took office again but many governments have previously turned a blind eye to people passing through their territory.
Mr Trump wants Central America to crack down on its own nationals as well as others transiting northwards. Costa Rica has provided buses to transport migrants directly from its southern border to the northern one. Honduras views migration as a human right. Meanwhile, Nicaragua has turned the airport at Managua, its capital, into an illegal migrants’ gateway.
Though comprehensive data are lacking, Mr Trump’s policies are already shaking up the pattern of migration. In Panama’s Lajas Blancas camp, more than 90% of its 485 residents—mostly Venezuelans—are preparing to return to where they came from, often Colombia. In Esquipulas, a town in south-eastern Guatemala, Jon Carabo and his family, originally from Venezuela, are heading back: “What’s the point of continuing if now there’s no way in?"
Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico have launched programmes to deal with deported and returning citizens, with patriotic names such as “Brother, Sister, Come Home!". But beyond basic aid and small cash grants, they offer little support and cannot manage a surge in returns.
The enduring lure of Uncle Sam
Moreover Mr Trump’s approach leaves more migrants stranded. Although the number arrested at the United States’ southern border dropped by 35% between 2023 and 2024, and crossings through the Darién Gap fell 42%, huge volumes of people are still on the move. The Economist’s data analysis suggests that many people are stuck not only in Mexico but elsewhere in Central America too.
Figures in Honduras suggest that many migrants who pass through the Darién Gap don’t manage to get much farther north. In 2023 some 96,000 Venezuelans who passed through the Gap had not reached Honduras, meaning they were likely languishing in Costa Rica or Panama, or had turned back.
Mr Trump’s policies are unlikely to stop migration entirely. In fact, his aggressive approach could push more people into trying to reach the United States by increasing economic instability, which, along with corruption, drives emigration. Countries struggling to provide jobs and services will be hard hit by any fall in remittances, which make up one in four dollars circulating in the region, says Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington DC. He estimates that if just 10% of those under orders to be removed and 65% of those detained are deported, the annual growth in remittances sent to Nicaragua would drop from 55% in 2023 to 6% this year.
Most Central American countries lack the resources or political will to secure their borders. And the economic allure of the United States remains potent. Getting off a flight from El Paso to Guatemala City, Ingrid, a deported 23-year-old teacher, is determined to try again; she wants to join her family. She says washing dishes with her sisters in a New York restaurant pays far better than teaching in Guatemala.
Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region.
topics
