Category Archives: Guatemala

Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan children and Venezuelans

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Double defeat protects Venezuelans with temporary protected status and Guatemalan minors

The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.

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Guatemala says it is willing to receive hundreds of deported children from US

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Announcement comes a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 unaccompanied Guatemalan minors

Guatemala is ready and willing to receive about 150 unaccompanied children of all ages each week from the United States, the country’s president has said, a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children.

Those children had already boarded a plane when a court responded to an emergency appeal on Sunday. They were later returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

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Judge orders US to halt deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children

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Washington judge says unaccompanied children cannot be deported for at least 14 days as legal process unfolds

A US judge on Sunday ordered an emergency halt to a plan by the Trump administration to deport a group of nearly 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country after immigrant advocates lawyers called the plan “illegal”.

Attorneys for 10 Guatemalan minors, ages 10 to 17, said in court papers filed late on Saturday that there were reports that planes were set to take off within hours for the Central American country. But a federal judge in Washington said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days, and after a hastily scheduled hearing on Sunday, she enforced that they needed to be taken off the planes and back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities while the legal process plays out.

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First human case of flesh-eating screwworm parasite confirmed in US

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HHS told Reuters patient had returned from El Salvador but beef industry said person had traveled from Guatemala

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Sunday reported the first human case in the US of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affected country.

The case, investigated by the Maryland department of health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was confirmed by the CDC as New World screwworm on 4 August – and involved a patient who returned from travel to El Salvador, an HHS spokesperson, Andrew G Nixon, said in an email to Reuters.

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Homeland security denies reports that Ice ‘secretly deported’ Pennsylvania grandfather

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The department said in a statement that Ice never arrested or deported Luis Leon to Guatemala, and that the reports were a ‘hoax’

Confusion swirled around the fate of a Chilean resident of the US after the Department of Homeland Security called reports of his deportation to Guatemala a “hoax”.

On 18 July, the Morning Call newspaper of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reported that the family of the man, Luis Leon, said he was handcuffed after showing up at to immigration office on 20 June to report a lost green card. They said he was first sent to a detention facility in Minnesota, then to Guatemala, where they said a Chilean relative informed them he was in a hospital.

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Climate crisis threatens the banana, the world’s most popular fruit, research shows

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Fourth most important food crop in peril as Latin America and Caribbean suffer from slow-onset climate disaster

The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found.

Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.

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Arizona governor pauses deportation for Guatemalan who gave birth days ago

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‘Erika’, 24, gained public attention after lawyer said federal agents denied him access to her in a Tucson hospital

A Guatemalan immigrant who crossed the US border eight months pregnant and gave birth in Arizona has avoided fast-track deportation after intervention by the state’s governor, her lawyer and a federal official said on Saturday.

The 24-year-old woman gained public attention after lawyer Luis Campos said federal agents had denied him access to her in a Tucson hospital after she gave birth on Wednesday and told him she was set for rapid removal after entering the country illegally.

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Video shows Ice agents smashing car window to detain asylum seeker

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Lawyer says officials were looking for someone else while taking Juan Francisco Mendez in Massachusetts on Monday

A Massachusetts family is demanding answers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), complaining its agents smashed a car window with a large hammer and detained a man whom they say had applied for asylum.

A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him on Monday in New Bedford while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into Ice detention.

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Couple who ran Swedish eco-resort say 158 barrels of human waste left behind was ‘very normal’

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Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk reject criticism of how they abandoned resort and fled to Guatemala

A Danish couple who fled their “forest resort” in Sweden for Guatemala and left behind a large tax debt and 158 barrels of human waste have hit back at criticism and claimed that their handling of the compost toilets was “very normal”.

Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, both chefs, abandoned their purportedly eco-friendly retreat, Stedsans, in Halland, southern Sweden, last year. They owed large sums to Swedish and Danish tax authorities. They have since set up a business in Guatemala.

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Exile is ‘a little bit less than death’ for lawyer forced to flee Guatemala

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Virginia Laparra spent two years in prison after reporting her suspicion that a judge leaked sealed details of a case

A Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutor forced into exile after being pursued by the country’s conservative elite has said that leaving the country was the only way to save her life but was only “a little bit less than death”.

Virginia Laparra, 45, spent two years in prison for allegedly abusing her position after she reported her suspicion that a judge had leaked sensitive details from a sealed corruption case to a colleague in 2017.

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Rubio to visit Central America with migration and Panama canal on agenda

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US secretary of state to visit region amid concern over Trump threat to ‘take back’ canal and tensions over China

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will travel to Central America this week on a five-country tour that will focus on limiting migration to the United States, curbing Chinese influence in the region and on securing Donald Trump’s ambitious goal of reasserting US control over the Panama canal.

Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Saturday to Thursday this week, meeting with the presidents of each. It is the first time in more than a century that a secretary’s first official visit abroad will be to Central America.

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Weather tracker: Tropical Storm Sara and Super Typhoon Man-yi wreak havoc

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Powerful storm systems bring heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides to Central America and Asia

Tropical Storm Sara has caused significant disruption across Central America in recent days after forming in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday afternoon. It is the 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season and the third this month. The large number of tropical storm and hurricane formations this season can be attributed to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico being warmer than average, thus providing more energy for the development and intensification of these systems.

Since its formation, Sara has affected Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize and Guatemala, bringing heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides. The slow-moving nature of the storm has exacerbated the damage, prolonging the duration of its impact. However, Sara is losing strength; initially it had sustained winds of 45mph on Thursday but weakened slightly after moving inland, with winds dropping to 40mph by Sunday. According to the National Hurricane Centre, Sara is expected to dissipate into an area of low pressure as it moves north-west toward the southern region of the Yucatan peninsula on Monday.

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Global health charities warn of ‘huge and terrible’ threat to abortion rights if Trump returns

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‘Global gag rule’ and funding cuts will be ‘on different scale’ if Republicans win again, family-planning providers say

Providers of women’s healthcare around the world are preparing for potentially disastrous consequences should Donald Trump win the US presidential election in November.

Policies pursued during Trump’s last presidency caused “devastating” harm in a number of countries, said Beth Schlachter, a senior director at MSI Reproductive Choices in the US. It meant “clinics shuttered, health teams closed, women dying … but a second Trump term will be on a different scale”.

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More than 500 Mexicans flee to Guatemala to escape cartel violence in Chiapas

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Chiapas, once a haven for Guatemalans fleeing genocide, sees citizens crossing border to escape tyranny of cartels

The Mexican state of Chiapas was once a haven for Guatemalans fleeing genocide at home, but this historical relationship has recently flipped, with hundreds of Mexicans crossing the border to escape the violent tyranny of organised crime groups.

Entire communities emptied out last week as more than 500 men, women, children and the elderly fled with what they could carry and walked across the border, citing food shortages and the conflicts between criminal groups pressing in ever closer on their homes.

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Deadly heat in Mexico and US made 35 times more likely by global heating

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Researchers find extreme heat four times more likely than at turn of millennium and urge reduction in fossil fuels

The deadly heatwave that scorched large swaths of Mexico, Central America and the southern US in recent weeks was made 35 times more likely due to human-induced global heating, according to research by leading climate scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA).

Tens of millions of people have endured dangerous day – and nighttime temperatures as a heat dome engulfed Mexico – a large and lingering zone of high pressure that stretched north to Texas, Arizona and Nevada, and south over Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

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Rare birds at risk as narco-gangs move into forests to evade capture – report

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Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America’s key habitats for threatened birds under threat, study finds

Cocaine consumption is threatening rare tropical birds as narco-traffickers move into some of the planet’s most remote forests to evade drug crackdowns, a study has warned.

Two-thirds of key forest habitats for birds in Central America are at risk of being destroyed by “narco-driven” deforestation, according to the paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

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Brazil and Colombia voice concern as Venezuela bans opposition candidate

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South American neighbours respond to blocking of Corina Yoris, who was favoured to beat strongman Nicolás Maduro in elections

A chorus of Latin American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, have voiced concern over the deteriorating political situation in Venezuela after the opposition politician best-positioned to challenge its strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, in July’s presidential election was prevented from registering for the vote.

Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old philosopher, was little-known outside academic circles until last Friday, when she was catapulted on to the frontline of Venezuela’s long-running political crisis by being named as the substitute for María Corina Machado, a prominent opposition figure who had been banned from running in the election.

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Guatemala president-elect’s supporters block roads to protest party suspension

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Demonstrations surge after court upheld suspension of Bernardo Arévalo’s party over alleged voter registration fraud

Thousands of protestors have blocked roads across Guatemala in surging demonstrations to support the president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo, after the country’s highest court upheld a move by prosecutors to suspend his political party over alleged voter registration fraud.

Arévalo, an anti-corruption crusader who won a landslide victory in the August election, has denounced the suspension as a “coup” aimed neutralizing him before he takes office in January, and his supporters are demanding the resignation of the prosecutors responsible. Street blockades that started this week grew from 14 on Monday to 58 road and highway blockages Friday.

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US and Brazil warn of attempt to stop Guatemala president-elect taking power

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Fears Guatemalan democracy is in peril amid warning of potential coup to block inauguration of anti-corruption crusader

International concern over the future of Guatemala’s democracy is growing, as Brazil’s president warned of a possible coup to stop the president-elect taking power and the US denounced unprecedented attempts to undermine the Central American country’s election result.

The centre-left anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected Guatemala’s new president last month. This week thousands of supporters took to the streets to protest against alleged attempts to block his inauguration in January.

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Anti-corruption campaigner wins Guatemala presidential election

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Bernado Arévalo’s surprise victory comes at time of growing concern for state of democracy in Central America

Central America’s democratic downswing has received a powerful correction after the centrist anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected president of Guatemala – a result almost inconceivable just a few weeks ago.

Alongside El Salvador and Nicaragua, Guatemala was one of several Central American countries to have suffered a troubling authoritarian slide in recent years with judges and prosecutors forced into exile and a leading journalist thrown in jail.

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