Guatemala's president denies new asylum take care of US

[ad_1] GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo mentioned Friday he has not signed an settlement with the US to take asylum seekers from different nations, pushing again in opposition to feedback from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem .

Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the 2 governments publicly signed a joint safety settlement that may enable U.S. Customs and Border Safety officers to work within the capital’s airport, coaching native brokers the right way to display for terrorism suspects.

U.S. Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, second from left, meets with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo, proper, on the Nationwide Tradition Palace in Guatemala Metropolis, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool picture by way of AP)

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However Noem mentioned she had additionally been given a signed doc she referred to as a protected third nation settlement. She mentioned she reached the same deal in Honduras and mentioned they have been necessary outcomes of her journey.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after immediately can be nations that may take these people and provides them refugee standing as nicely,” Noem mentioned. “We’ve by no means believed that the US must be the one possibility, that the assure for a refugee is that they go someplace to be protected and to be shielded from no matter menace they face of their nation. It doesn’t essentially must be the US.”

Requested about Noem’s feedback Friday throughout a information convention, Arévalo mentioned that nothing new was signed associated to immigration and that Guatemala was nonetheless working below an settlement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That settlement stipulated that Guatemala would proceed accepting the deportation of its personal residents, but additionally residents of different Central American nations as a transit level on their means residence.

U.S. Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, left, shakes arms with Guatemalan Inside Minister Francisco Jimenez, at a signing ceremony on the Nationwide Palace in Guatemala Metropolis, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (AP Photograph/Moises Castillo)

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Arévalo mentioned that when Rubio visited, protected third nation was mentioned as a result of Guatemala had signed such an settlement throughout U.S. President Donald Trump’s first time period in workplace. However “we made it clear that our path was totally different,” Arévalo mentioned.

He did add that Guatemala was prepared to offer asylum to Nicaraguans who've been unable to return to their nation due to the political state of affairs there out of “solidarity.”

Folks deported from the US disembark from a repatriation flight, throughout a Division of Homeland Safety operations tour for visiting Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, at La Aurora Worldwide Airport in Guatemala Metropolis, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool Photograph by way of AP)

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The president’s communications workplace mentioned Noem had been given the ratification of the settlement reached by means of diplomatic notes weeks earlier.

Throughout Trump’s first time period, the U.S. signed such safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala . They successfully allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to use for U.S. safety and permitted the U.S. authorities to ship them to these nations deemed “protected.”

U.S. Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem boards a aircraft after touring the Division of Homeland Safety operations at La Aurora Worldwide Airport, in Guatemala Metropolis, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool Photograph by way of AP)

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