Fearing deportation, migrants in US send more money home

Handout picture released by Guatemalan Migration Institute shows Guatemalan migrants descending from an US military plane after being deported from US at the Guatemalan Air Force Base in Guatemala City on January 24, 2025. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

GUATEMALA CITY — Central American migrants in the United States sent home around 20 percent more in remittances in the first quarter of 2025, official data showed this week, a trend economists said reflected their fear of deportation by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Nearly one-quarter of the GDP of impoverished Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua is made up of money sent from US-based migrants to relatives in their homelands.

Guatemala’s central bank said this week it had recorded $5.64 billion in remittances in the first quarter, a 20.5 percent increase over the same period in 2024.

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Honduras’s central bank, for its part, said the country received $2.62 billion, a 24 percent increase on the first quarter of 2024.

El Salvador and Nicaragua do not yet have complete data for the first quarter, but in January and February, remittances to both countries increased by 14.2 percent and 22.6 percent respectively, compared to the same months in 2024.

El Salvador received $1.4 billion and Nicaragua $909 million in the first two months of 2025, according to their central banks.

In Nicaragua, the figure includes remittances not only from the United States, but also from Costa Rica ($68.2 million) and Spain ($48.6 million).

The president of Guatemala’s central bank, Alvaro Gonzalez, attributed the increase in remittances to migrants’ fear of being deported from the United States.

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Guatemalan economic analyst Erick Coyoy took a similar view, telling local media that the surge was “an anticipated reaction by migrants to the perceived risk of deportation.”

It is unclear, however, whether they sent more money home to ensure that, if deported, they would be able to access their savings or whether it was to help their relatives benefit from their situation in the United States while they can.

Trump returned to the White House in January on a promise to conduct the biggest wave of migrant deportations in US history.

Fearing deportation, some migrants from Central and South America have cut short their journeys to the United States and returned home.