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Fearing Deportation, Migrants In US Send More Money Home

Published

6 months ago

April 10, 2025

Editor

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.

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.

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.

Headline

Welcome Home, Israel Confirms Return Of 20 Hostages From Gaza

Published

1 day ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

Israel said that the last 20 living hostages released by Hamas on Monday had arrived in the country.

“Welcome home,” the foreign ministry wrote in a series of posts on X, hailing the return of Matan Angrest, Gali Berman, Ziv Berman, Elkana Bohbot, Rom Braslavski, Nimrod Cohen, David Cunio, Ariel Cunio, Evyatar David, Guy Gilboa Dalal, Maxim Herkin, Eitan Horn, Segev Kalfon, Bar Kuperstein, Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Yosef Haim Ohana, Alon Ohel, Avinatan Or and Matan Zangauker.

AFP

Headline

20 Members Of Gang Blacklisted By US Escape Guatemala Prison

Published

1 day ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

Twenty members of a gang designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the United States have escaped from detention in Guatemala, a prison chief said Sunday.

The members of the Barrio 18 gang “evaded security controls” at the Fraijanes II facility, prison director Ludin Godinez said at a news conference.

He received “an intelligence report” on Friday warning about the “possible escape” from the prison, which is southeast of the capital, Guatemala City.

Godinez said they were investigating possible acts of corruption.

Washington last month blacklisted Barrio 18, an El Salvador-based gang which has a reputation for violence and extortion, as part of its crackdown on drug trafficking.

The US embassy in Guatemala condemned the prison escape as “utterly unacceptable.”

“The United States designated members of this heinous group as the terrorists they are and will hold accountable anyone who has provided, provides, or decides to provide material support to these fugitives or other gang members,” the embassy said on X.

It called on the Guatemalan government to “act immediately and vigorously to recapture these terrorists.”

According to Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez, there are about 12,000 gang members and collaborators in Guatemala, while another 3,000 are in prison.

The country’s homicide rate has increased from 16.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024 to 17.65 this year, more than double the world average, according to the Centre for National Economic Research.

According to the Salvadoran government, the gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, are responsible for the deaths of about 200,000 people over three decades.

The two gangs once controlled an estimated 80 percent of El Salvador, which had one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

Headline

South Africa Bus Crash Kills 40 Including Malawi, Zimbabwe Nationals

Published

1 day ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

At least 40 people, including nationals of Malawi and Zimbabwe, were killed when a passenger bus rolled down an embankment in South Africa, a provincial transport minister said Monday.

The bus travelling to Zimbabwe crashed around 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the border on Sunday after the driver apparently lost control, Limpopo province transport minister Violet Mathye said.

“They are still working on the scene, but 40 bodies have already been confirmed to date,” Mathye told the Newzroom Afrika channel. The dead included a 10-month-old girl, she said.

Thirty-eight people were in hospital and rescuers were searching for other victims, she told eNCA media.

The bus was travelling from the southern city of Gqeberha, around 1,500 kilometres away, and its passengers included Malawians and Zimbabweans who were working in South Africa. The crash may have been caused by driver fatigue or a mechanical fault, the minister said.

South Africa has a sophisticated and busy road network with a high rate of road deaths, blamed mostly on speeding, reckless driving and unroadworthy vehicles.

AFP