Deportation, disinformation, and defiance: The global impact of Trump’s Immigration agenda
FOR PATRICIA SCHWARTZ
Around 60 people are sitting in a circle of folding chairs on a Thursday night in Tucson, Arizona—an American city about an hour from the border with Mexico. The weekly organizing meeting of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos is being conducted mostly in Spanglish, and attendees are diverse. Veteran activists, lawyers, church groups, teachers, students, day laborers, families with small children and many new faces–all are here to do what they can to protect their community in a political moment that feels violent and overwhelming. This group and countless others have organized for months in preparation for the Trump administration’s return to office, and for many decades before that in defense of immigrant rights.
Tucson was the departure point for one of the first military planes deporting Guatemalan migrants under Trump. In this multicultural city, organizing networks are countering Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) raids at workplaces and schools. They’re hearing from asylum-seekers—among the nearly 5 million in the US system—who’ve seen their long-awaited appointments abruptly canceled in the first hours of the new regime.
Immigrants here have long endured militarized ICE actions here, developing strong mutual aid and rapid response strategies that involve the entire community. But the current onslaught, and its inflammatory rhetoric, feels different. Right-wing politicians have made sweeping promises of mass deportations, leaving communities bracing for impact. Waiting to see which will be carried out, and which were incendiary propaganda. I’m reluctant to give space to Trump’s unfounded movements to test the limits of his power. But understanding what he’s pledged to do and what he did in his last term will be important for many families, including those with members from Guatemala, the nation from which more people have been deported than any other in recent years.
Here’s what we know as of mid-February, 2025
After taking office on January 20, Trump swiftly signed executive orders targeting immigration and expressing intentions to: freeze asylum cases, undermine long-held rights such as birthright citizenship and expand military power at the border, among other violations to human rights as described in the US constitution. ICE has begun mass expulsions without due process, deporting migrants in shackles on military planes—an unprecedented display of theatrics no doubt designed to reinforce criminalization narratives.
On the campaign trail, Trump had vowed to deport 20 million immigrants, putting 5.1 million citizen children at risk of family separation. He aims to dismantle the country’s already-inadequate legal pathways to citizenship (including those based on employment, family ties and temporary protected status). The U.S. Congress, under narrow Republican control, is expected to support crackdown efforts, but we don’t yet know to what degree.
Latin Americans make up 70% of the 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S., per the Center for Immigration Studies of New York. Nations like Guatemala are bracing for an influx of deportees and the loss of overseas remittances, which account for nearly 20% of its GDP.
Of course, migration from Central America doesn’t occur in a vacuum. U.S. corporations and government institutions have engaged in decades-long campaigns of economic exploitation and military violence in shameless plays for control of the region. Though obscured by propaganda about migration, this history has created many of the conditions that now compel people to leave home.
After Trump’s turbulent first presidency, Biden promised a more humanitarian approach, pitching small programs that claimed to address root causes of migration. The actual effects–like the Democratic party’s prioritization of the matter in general–were dubious. Biden’s administration continued harsh policies including restricting asylum under Title 42 and other emergency orders. President Arévalo’s 2024 visit to the Biden White House, to some, signaled a faint hope for future U.S.-Guatemala collaboration. After all, the relationship between the two countries is vital, with substantial trade relationships and mutual interests. Regardless, it looks like anything discussed there, even if it was just platitudes, is completely untenable now.
A return to a more transactional style of politics in the White House will mean greater pressure on other countries to intensify their border enforcement. During his first term, Trump withheld aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras until they accepted ‘safe third country´ policies which placed the burden of caring for U.S. deportees on their already-strained systems. Vital humanitarian services and projects to fight corruption, like the International Commission against Impunity (CICIG in Spanish), were paralyzed by the lapse. Weakened ability to fight corruption has dire consequences in Guatemala, where political elites emboldened by global trends toward the right continue to undermine democracy, even attempting to prevent the exchange of power to current present Arévalo in 2024.
Guatemala’s former president Giammattei had positioned himself as an ally to Trump, in part due to the U.S.
administration’s support for his purging the government of opponents who challenged his power, including those investigating him for corruption. In 2022, Giammattei then distanced himself from the Biden administration, declining an invitation to the Ninth Summit of the Americas. His trip to DC instead prioritized meetings with Republican electeds and far-right think tanks. Giammetti even demanded that USAID withdraw from Guatemala as a sign of his alliance with conservative U.S. politics of the time. Vestiges of these relationships still exist in national politics with opponents of Arévalo publicly celebrating Trump’s win.
The strategic U.S.-Guatemala aid relationship is also at risk. Since 1961, USAID (the largest arm of the county’s international aid and philanthropy network) has funded programs addressing health, education, work opportunities and more. This hundreds of millions of dollars annually is critically important to nonprofit and civil organizations in Guatemala. This stream has even funded aspects of EntreMundos in the past through one of its mediating organizations.
At the time of publishing, right-wing politicians are again threatening to halt international aid. Elimination of the Inter-American Development Foundation was proposed during Trump’s campaign and on February 2, Elon Musk said his ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (though still not technically endowed with legal power) was in the process of “shutting down” USAID. Workers were put on leave and programs frozen, spurring global condemnation. Fortunately, there are Congressional checks on the Executive branch’s ability to change budgets, so it remains to be seen how effective these destructive announcements will ultimately be. By February 3rd, a Democratic senator from Hawaii had already put a hold on Trump’s state department appointees until aid is restored, and we can expect many more such examples of interference into future power grabs.
Regardless of the rate at which these vultures can dismantle government systems, it’s a perilous time for local organizations that have already experienced a decrease in assistance from philanthropic sources and from European governments recently. In Guatemala, one of the most affected projects will be Justice and Transparency, which aims to reduce criminal impunity and restore judicial independence.
Ultimately, Trump’s tactics rely on shock and awe. His administration seeks to overwhelm and disorient us. The playbook of emerging fascist regimes has always included an inordinate focus on ‘othering.’ The modern right’s xenophobic obsession with migrants is a transparent appeal to a base, authoritarian nationalism. Most analysts don’t think Trump’s team will be able to pull off the deportations threatened. But what they can accomplish will be done very visibly in order to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment and generate new levels of fear–disrupting daily life and keeping immigrants from work, school, and healthcare.
Beyond the human rights crisis, Trump’s policies are economically and geopolitically reckless. U.S. imports from Guatemala total around $5 billion annually. And as Guatemala’s largest trading partner, U.S. goods currently enjoy duty-free status in the country’s market because of regional trade agreements. Migrants, both with and without documents to work legally, have always been the backbone of the American economy. Stripping them of status and deporting so many people would cripple an economy still recovering from the pandemic, with key disruptions to industries like agriculture, construction, hospitality, and healthcare. Many people at risk of deportation have been in the U.S. for decades; many children have never known their parent’s country of origin. Receiving nations will struggle to reintegrate returnees, creating economic ripples across the region. Trump’s threats of tariffs and political aggression ignore vital interdependencies across the Americas.
In this moment, civil society organizations across Latin America and in the U.S. are evaluating advocacy strategies, finding ways to collaborate, and adapting to the modern landscape of disinformation that relies heavily on social media. We can’t know what such a volatile, hateful institution will ultimately be capable of. But there are fail-safes against such appalling unilateral actions in the U.S. constitution–not to mention in the resistance of its people. Communities like those here in Tucson will continue to resist, knowing that the fight for human dignity transcends borders and the ambitions of reckless politicians.
