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.
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.
Fearing deportation, migrants in US send more money home
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Fearing deportation, migrants in US send more money home
- Fearing deportation, some migrants from Central and South America have cut short their journeys to the United States and returned home
Trump administration labels 3 Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations
- The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization
- “These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence,” Rubio said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label three Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members in a decision that could have implications for US relationships with allies Qatar and Turkiye.
The Treasury and State departments announced the actions Tuesday against the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they said pose a risk to the United States and American interests.
The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by Treasury as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were mandated last year under an executive order signed by Trump to determine the most appropriate way to impose sanctions on the groups, which US officials say engage in or support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm the United States and other regions.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders have said they renounce violence.
Trump’s executive order had singled out the chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, noting that a wing of the Lebanese chapter had launched rockets on Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel that set off the war in Gaza. Leaders of the group in Jordan have provided support to Hamas, the order said.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned in that country in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in April.
Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said some allies of the US, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, would likely be pleased with the designation.
“For other governments where the brotherhood is tolerated, it would be a thorn in bilateral relations,” including in Qatar and Turkiye, he said.
Brown also said a designation on the chapters may have effects on visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the US but also Western European countries and Canada.
“I think this would give immigration officials a stronger basis for suspicion, and it might make courts less likely to question any kind of official action against Brotherhood members who are seeking to stay in this country, seeking political asylum,” he said.
Trump, a Republican, weighed whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2019 during his first term in office. Some prominent Trump supporters, including right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, have pushed his administration to take aggressive action against the group.
Two Republican-led state governments — Florida and Texas — designated the group as a terrorist organization this year.
