Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with US
[June 28, 2025]
By SONIA PÉREZ D.
GUATEMALA
CITY (AP) — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not
signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from
other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland
Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Noem and
Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly
signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and
Border Protection officers to work in the capital’s airport, training
local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects. |

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, left, and Guatemalan
President Bernardo Arevalo walk inside the National Culture Palace to
their meeting in Guatemala City, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Anna
Moneymaker/Pool photo via AP) |
But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she
called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a
similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes
of her trip.
“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that
will take those individuals and give them refugee status as
well,” Noem said. “We’ve never believed that the United States
should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is
that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from
whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn’t
necessarily have to be the United States.”
Asked about Noem’s comments Friday during a news conference,
Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration
and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement
reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February.
That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue
accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens
of other Central American nations as a transit point on their
way home.
Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was
discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during
U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term in office. But “we made
it clear that our path was different,” Arévalo said.
He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to
Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country
because of the political situation there out of “solidarity.”
The president’s communications office said Noem had been given
the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic
notes weeks earlier.
During Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such safe
third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and
Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some
asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and
permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries
deemed “safe.”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights
reserved |
|
|