Guatemala

The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.

What has happened

Guatemala has signed two instruments with the United States about receiving people who are not Guatemalan. They are not the same kind of instrument, and the difference between them is the subject of this page.

The guarantee that was removed

The Asylum Cooperative Agreement signed on 26 July 2019 applied to everyone who was not Guatemalan. Article 3(1) said that to ensure transferred people had access to a protection system, “Guatemala will not return or expel applicants for protection in Guatemala, unless the application is abandoned by the applicant or is formally rejected through an administrative decision”. Article 3(2) made the United States responsible for people during the transfer. Article 4 carved out unaccompanied children. Article 7(4) provided for joint evaluation.

The United States suspended that agreement on 6 February 2021 and began terminating it. It does not appear in Treaties in Force 2026. It is not in force.

What is in force is four hundred words long. Its single substantive sentence is that the parties “intend to ensure the dignified, safe, and timely transfer of nationals of Central American countries to Guatemala” and will act in accordance with their respective obligations and laws, “including consideration by Guatemala of requests by these nationals of Central American countries for refugee or equivalent temporary protection”. Consideration is permissive. There is no undertaking to decide anything, no bar on sending a person onward, no protection against return, and expressly no money.

The Coalition states the absence plainly because the absence is the finding. Every safeguard the 2019 text contained has been taken out of the 2025 text, and the number of people arriving has gone up.

A second mismatch runs through the whole record. The agreement covers “nationals of Central American countries”. Mexicans are not Central American, and both monitoring projects report that most of the people actually being flown in are Mexican, and that the transfers are therefore happening outside the agreement rather than under it. Both also report that there have been no known transfers under the agreement at all. Its practical effect so far has been felt in United States immigration courts, where asylum cases have been cut short on the basis that it exists.

What happens on arrival

Flights are received by the Guatemalan Migration Institute at its reception centres for returnees. Those centres, the Return Home Plan, and the tens of thousands of arrivals reported each year are all about Guatemalans coming home. No named body has documented that a person who is not Guatemalan receives any of it, and this page does not assume they do.

What has been documented, by a United Nations body that was invited in and whose report Guatemala itself asked to have published, is the physical place. The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture visited in October 2023. Of the administrative reception area at La Aurora International Airport it wrote that access “is extremely restricted, and not even lawyers are allowed to enter”, that airlines are responsible for food and sometimes withhold it “as a way of exerting pressure”, that no interpreters are provided, and that it is not equipped for long stays. It met a person held there more than 38 days who had been unable to bathe. Of the migration shelter in Zone 5 it found sanitary conditions inadequate and one person held more than 45 days.

Two limits on that evidence, which the Coalition states rather than leaves for someone else to find. The Subcommittee described the airport area as holding people due to be deported, which is people leaving Guatemala rather than people arriving from the United States. And the visit was in October 2023, before either development on this page. It is nonetheless the only description by any named body of the place these flights land in, and a rule that lawyers may not enter is a fact about the room rather than about the direction of travel.

Onward, within a day

The clearest account of what happens next comes from the head of the Guatemalan state. Asked in August 2026 whether Guatemala had become a safe third country, President Arévalo said there is no stay and no refuge and nothing that could be considered a safe third country arrangement, because the people are in transit. He said they are sent on to their own countries in less than twenty-four hours, and that the cost is met by the Mexican or United States government.

He had said the same thing at the outset. In February 2025 he described the flights as carrying people of other nationalities “for their ulterior repatriation”, arriving “as part of their continued repatriation”. When the Migration Institute announced the first mixed flight in October 2025, it said the three Honduran men aboard “would subsequently be transferred to their country of origin”.

Whether that is lawful turns on a fact nobody publishes. Moving a person on to their own country is not refoulement, unless their own country is the place they are afraid of. No source the Coalition has found documents a consent procedure, a right to remain, an appeal, or an opportunity to apply for protection before the onward flight. Nor does any source establish that anyone moved on had said they were afraid. The Coalition does not assert that refoulement has occurred. It records that the arrangement contains nothing that would prevent it and no step at which a person could say so.

The procedure that exists, and its size

Guatemala does have a refugee procedure. It is run by the Department for the Recognition of Refugee Status, a department of the Migration Institute, working with the National Commission for Refugees. It sits on the fifth floor of a building in Zone 4 of Guatemala City, which matters, because the United States State Department recorded in 2023 that the requirement to travel to Guatemala City for the first interview limited access, along with delays, a growing backlog, and inadequate identification and referral. The 2024 edition of the same report deleted all of that and replaced it with a single sentence saying a system exists.

The size of the system is a matter of record. On the United Nations refugee agency’s own data, Guatemala received 1,373 applications in 2025, recognised 278 people, and ended the year with 4,088 claims pending against 1,586 recognised refugees in the country. Every recognition Guatemala has made in the eleven years to 2025 comes to 1,543 people.

What routes exist

More than in most states on this list, and the page says so.

The Committee against Torture is open to individuals. Guatemala acceded to the Convention on 5 January 1990 and made the declaration under article 22 on 25 September 2003, recognising the Committee’s competence to receive communications from or on behalf of individuals, in respect of events occurring after that date. A person removed to Guatemala today, or someone acting for them, can complain to the Committee about Guatemala. Guatemala withdrew its reservations to articles 28 and 30 in 1990, so it is also subject to the inquiry procedure. It has made no declaration under article 21.

There is a national preventive mechanism. Guatemala signed the Optional Protocol on 25 September 2003 and ratified it on 9 June 2008. The National Office for the Prevention of Torture was established under Legislative Decree 40-2010, is funded and staffed, and on the Subcommittee’s own record reaches the migration shelter and the airport. The Coalition prints the caveat alongside it: this is the body the Subcommittee asked Guatemala to audit, having found its independence not ensured.

The Inter-American system is open. Guatemala has been a party to the American Convention since 25 May 1978 and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on 9 March 1987.

None of these runs against the United States. The United States has made no article 22 declaration and does not accept the Court’s contentious jurisdiction. A complaint about what was done to a person in Guatemala can be brought against Guatemala. A complaint about the decision to send them cannot be brought in either forum.

The first days

The window here is short, and on the government’s own account it is measured in hours rather than days. Nothing below is advice, and no page can tell a particular person what to do in their case.

Who is reachable in Guatemala

Every entry below was checked on 10 September 2026 against the source named in it. Where the Coalition could not open an organisation’s own site, it says so and gives the route it could verify.

The Coalition has verified that the following organisations are real and were active in October 2023, because the United Nations Subcommittee met them and listed them: Bufete Jurídico de Derechos Humanos, Bufete para Pueblos Indígenas, Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala, Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos, Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional, Coalición CAT, Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, and the World Organisation Against Torture. Their contact details have not been checked and are therefore not printed. The Ombudsman’s own website could not be opened and the details above come from the refugee agency’s listing of it.

What is not established

How many people have been sent. Two credible monitoring projects give figures that cannot be reconciled over overlapping periods, and neither government publishes a count. The Coalition gives no total.

That anyone transferred from the United States has entered the refugee procedure. No source establishes it either way.

That anyone has been moved on to a country other than their own. Not established.

That anyone moved on had expressed a fear of their own country. Not established, and it is the fact on which the lawfulness of the whole arrangement turns.

The text of the Guatemalan note of 24 February 2025 on which the agreement in force is expressly built. It has not been published.

Any finding by any treaty body, regional commission or international monitor about what happens to people transferred to Guatemala. None exists. The Committee against Torture last reported on Guatemala on 26 December 2018, seven months before the first agreement and six and a half years before the second. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say nothing about it in their most recent reports.

The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.

What runs the other way

Guatemala let a United Nations body inspect its detention places and then asked for the resulting report to be published. Very few states on this list have done that, and the most damaging paragraph on this page exists because Guatemala allowed it to.

It has accepted individual complaints to the Committee against Torture since 2003, withdrawn its reservations to the inquiry procedure, ratified the Optional Protocol, built and funded a national preventive mechanism, and answered to the Inter-American Court since 1987. A person harmed in Guatemala has forums to go to that a person harmed in several other states on this list does not.

The president has refused, in public and repeatedly, to accept the description of Guatemala as a safe third country, and has said in terms that no one is being given refuge there. That statement is used on this page as evidence against the arrangement. It is also a refusal to pretend, and the Coalition records it as such.

What this page does not yet carry

Any figure for how many people have been transferred that the Coalition is willing to stand behind.

The position of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and of the Human Rights Ombudsman on this arrangement. Neither could be reached: every attempt at the Organization of American States site and at the Ombudsman’s own site was refused.

Contact details for the eight human rights organisations named above, and for the state public defender service, which is available to asylum seekers in principle but publishes no direct route.

What became of any individual transferred to Guatemala. The Coalition has found no case followed to an outcome.

If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.

Sources

Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.

The two agreements. The agreement in force, on the transfer of nationals of Central American countries, TIAS 25-627, exchange of notes of 11 and 13 June 2025, in force 27 June 2025, printed at 90 Federal Register 31670. The Asylum Cooperative Agreement of 26 July 2019, TIAS 19-1115. United States Department of State, press statement of 6 February 2021 suspending it. United States Department of State, Treaties in Force 2026.

United Nations. Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, report on its visit to Guatemala of 8 to 19 October 2023, CAT/OP/GTM/ROSP/1, published 24 October 2024 at Guatemala’s request, paragraphs 11, 20 and 160 to 163. Committee against Torture, concluding observations on Guatemala, CAT/C/GTM/CO/7, 26 December 2018. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Refugee Data Finder, country of asylum Guatemala, 2015 to 2025.

Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, for the accession of 5 January 1990, the article 22 declaration of 25 September 2003 and the withdrawal of the reservations to articles 28 and 30, and chapter IV-9-b for the Optional Protocol.

The Guatemalan government in its own words. President Arévalo to Reuters, 20 August 2026. President Arévalo and the United States Secretary of State, joint appearance, 5 February 2025, State Department transcript. Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración, announcement of 10 October 2025, reported by Prensa Comunitaria on 17 October 2025.

Country conditions. United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Guatemala, 2023 and 2024 editions, which differ. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Guatemala chapter.

Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. Two claims that appeared in the Coalition’s working notes were removed before publication because they could not be verified: a figure of about 1,460 people transferred, which turned out to be a count of asylum cases cut short in United States immigration courts rather than a count of people who arrived in Guatemala, and a statement that the president signed the 2025 agreement on 27 June 2025, which is the date it entered into force. Corrections to the Coalition.