Handout image launched by Guatemalan Migration Institute reveals Guatemalan migrants descending from an US army airplane after being deported from US on the Guatemalan Air Power Base in Guatemala Metropolis on January 24, 2025. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse
GUATEMALA CITY — Central American migrants in the USA despatched residence round 20 % extra in remittances within the first quarter of 2025, official information confirmed this week, a pattern economists stated mirrored their concern of deportation by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Almost one-quarter of the GDP of impoverished Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua is made up of cash despatched from US-based migrants to family of their homelands.
Guatemala’s central financial institution stated this week it had recorded $5.64 billion in remittances within the first quarter, a 20.5 % enhance over the identical interval in 2024.
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Honduras’s central financial institution, for its half, stated the nation obtained $2.62 billion, a 24 % enhance on the primary quarter of 2024.
El Salvador and Nicaragua don’t but have full information for the primary quarter, however in January and February, remittances to each nations elevated by 14.2 % and 22.6 % respectively, in comparison with the identical months in 2024.
El Salvador obtained $1.4 billion and Nicaragua $909 million within the first two months of 2025, in response to their central banks.
In Nicaragua, the determine contains remittances not solely from the USA, but in addition from Costa Rica ($68.2 million) and Spain ($48.6 million).
The president of Guatemala’s central financial institution, Alvaro Gonzalez, attributed the rise in remittances to migrants’ concern of being deported from the USA.
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Guatemalan financial analyst Erick Coyoy took an analogous view, telling native media that the surge was “an anticipated response by migrants to the perceived threat of deportation.”
It’s unclear, nevertheless, whether or not they despatched extra money residence to make sure that, if deported, they might have the ability to entry their financial savings or whether or not it was to assist their family profit from their state of affairs in the USA whereas they’ll.
Trump returned to the White Home in January on a promise to conduct the most important wave of migrant deportations in US historical past.
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Fearing deportation, some migrants from Central and South America have reduce quick their journeys to the USA and returned residence.
