Para leer este comentario en español, haga clic aquí.
While the Trump administration is focused on deporting vast numbers of unauthorized immigrants by directing unprecedented resources to ramp up arrests, a longer-term, significant issue is receiving comparatively little policy attention: The future for returnees to Mexico and Central America, which historically have accounted for the overwhelming share of removals.
Under the threat of mass deportations, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have responded proactively and pragmatically given their decades-long repatriation agreements with the United States and the fact that their citizens account for what the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates are two-thirds of the estimated 13.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. In 2024 alone, MPI estimates these countries received 319,000 returnees. In anticipation of major numbers of deportations and other returns, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are expanding and relaunching their reception and reintegration programs. And Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador have agreed to receive third-country nationals, under varying processes—none more high-profile than the Salvadoran government’s agreement to detain Venezuelan deportees at its maximum-security prison.
Despite modest improvements in recent years, these programs have been largely ineffective in improving returnees’ long-term conditions, often the same ones that pushed them to emigrate in the first place. And the lack of sustainable funding, uneven institutional capacities, and inconsistent political will that have hampered prior reception and reintegration efforts will continue to pose significant obstacles for governments seeking to achieve positive outcomes for returnees and their receiving communities.
Therefore, if a primary objective of deportation is to deter future attempts to migrate irregularly to the United States, ensuring that returnees integrate economically, socially, and culturally should be a shared responsibility of the U.S. government and those of the receiving countries. Currently, it is an afterthought, and the tens of millions of dollars in annual U.S. assistance that had helped international organizations support existing reintegration programs in Central America has been cut or is in jeopardy. Should the U.S. government significantly increase deportations, reception and reintegration programs will likely struggle to meet returnees’ needs, counterproductively raising the possibility of repeat irregular migration.
Existing Reception and Reintegration Programming
The reintegration process starts the moment returnees reach their country of origin and receive reception services, but continues months and years after they settle into their communities. Returnees arrive with a unique set of economic, social, and psychosocial challenges, including indebtedness, stigmatization, cultural uprooting, and sometimes language barriers. Yet Mexican and Central American reception and reintegration programs have long prioritized economic integration over helping returnees achieve the social stability and psychosocial well-being they need to consider setting down roots and forgoing future migration attempts. This is particularly important given what is expected to be the changing nature of returnees: Rather than being people returned quickly after crossing the border without authorization, U.S. efforts are now focused on identifying and removing individuals who have long years of U.S. residence and significant equities, including U.S.-born children and spouses, ownership of homes and businesses, and other deep ties.
Reception Programs: A Stepping Stone to the Next Chapter
Upon arrival, returnees are led to dedicated reception centers at specific ports of entry. Because they are not previously informed by U.S. authorities about the return process or what services may be available to them, returnees often land with aggravated stress, emotionally overwhelmed and logistically disoriented. As a standard procedure, receiving government officials process and register returnees using intake forms to collect data about their sociodemographic backgrounds and document their immediate needs. While this is critical to inform programming, lack of coordination between government agencies often translates to duplicative intakes that can heighten returnees’ distress at a particularly vulnerable moment.
Though reception services vary by country across Mexico and northern Central America, in most cases returnees receive basic medical attention, legal orientation, food and hygiene kits, referral to shelters, and limited transportation assistance to their destination. As part of the new “Mexico Embraces You” strategy and Honduras’ “Come Home Brother” plan, the governments intend to provide returnees U.S. $100 in vouchers for immediate expenses. Notably, Mexico is also seeking legal reforms to guarantee returnees can use a government-issued identification number—as an alternate to a Mexican passport or voter credential that most returnees lack—to expedite their access to all government benefits for which Mexican citizens are eligible.
Reintegration Programs: A Narrower Focus on Economic Integration
Unlike the short-form nature of reception initiatives, reintegration programs focus on granting medium-and long-term assistance, mostly prioritizing economic integration through skills training, entrepreneurship assistance, and job matching. For instance, Guatemala’s Stay Here (Quédate) Training Centers, launched in 2015 and operating in four different departments, provide technical training opportunities to young returnees and at-risk youth. Similarly, the Salvadoran Institute of Professional Training offers vocational training for Salvadoran returnees in various fields, including gastronomy and electronics. In anticipation of stepped-up U.S. deportations, Honduras’ plan now includes a managed employment program intended to expand job opportunities in manufacturing and call centers. Mexico is also boosting its interagency coordination and private-sector engagement, creating a database of 60,000 job openings for Mexican returnees and foreign-born migrants.
Key Challenges and Considerations
The dearth of funding and the Mexican and Central American governments’ limited institutional capacity to meet the diverse needs of returnees are chief among the challenges to existing reception and reintegration programming. Relying primarily on U.S. funding, UN agencies and civil-society organizations have been instrumental in filling the gaps in governments’ reintegration services. Now, ongoing U.S. foreign aid funding freezes and cuts, including 85 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) assistance, will shrink reception and reintegration programs’ budgets.
It is still unclear how governments are going to provide adequate and sustainable assistance to returnees with significantly fewer resources and potentially higher demand. They must now allocate new funding and prioritize critical areas that have historically been neglected: instituting predeparture planning services, improving intake and registration data quality, and providing longer-term case support. This will likely require that governments identify potential partners, such as multilateral development banks and the private sector, which could finance existing and new services.
Who Is Coming and What Are Their Needs?
The poor quality of registration data and its limited interoperability are key obstacles to understanding returnees’ profiles and needs. The data that governments collect at reception centers are often stored across the databases of multiple institutions and are difficult to access for service providers in the communities where returnees settle. Robust disaggregated data collection at the time of reception, alongside transparent protocols to ensure data sharing with relevant actors, is crucial for governments and other providers to inform and tailor their services.
Unauthorized immigrants who have resided in the United States for decades are increasingly deportation targets and have different needs than migrants arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance. Uprooted from their homes, many may struggle upon return with language barriers, building social and professional networks, and feeling disconnected from their new surroundings. Immigrants who leave the United States voluntarily (outside of the formal deportation process and uncounted in the data) and therefore do not arrive at reception centers could fall through the cracks of existing support systems. It is essential that outreach efforts find these returnees, document their needs, and provide tailored advice on their short-term and long-term options.
How Are Returnees Faring Months after Arrival?
Returnees often face challenges months and years after they are deported. Economic inclusion programs and entrepreneurial seed grants prioritize immediate employment options that tend to push returnees to informal economy jobs that do not match the skillsets they acquire abroad. Returnees also commonly struggle with recurring mental health issues that can affect their well-being and influence their ability to retain jobs. And, though some governments have expanded reintegration services beyond employment assistance, children and youth often face challenges enrolling in school months after they have been returned. A starting point in addressing these challenges is for governments to actively collaborate with the private sector to identify and fill labor gaps in local economies with jobs that leverage returnees’ skillsets. Already, business and government leaders are discussing ways to recognize the academic and professional credentials and skills that returnees will bring. More importantly, governments and service providers should incorporate case management in post-reception programs to assess returnees' unmet needs and identify barriers inhibiting their long-term stability and desired trajectories.
Can Governments Offer Better Predeparture Preparation?
Given the distress and trauma that they have experienced, returnees often struggle to retain the government-provided information they receive at reception centers, and some forgo accessing services. Instead, providing predeparture guidance about services to immigrants while still in U.S. custody could be more effective. Research suggests that some immigrants who seek program information at their consulates prior to their voluntary departure experience better integration outcomes. While the recent strengthening of their consular networks in the United States is promising, Mexico and the northern Central American countries, as part of their ongoing negotiations with the United States, should also seek U.S. collaboration and investment in predeparture planning for immigrants in U.S. custody.
Rethinking Responsibility to Achieve Better Reintegration
The U.S. enforcement-first approach long has focused chiefly on conducting removals and returns of unauthorized immigrants while considering returnees’ reintegration to be the sole responsibility of receiving countries—a short-sighted approach given the evidence globally that many returnees re-embark on travel if they encounter the same or worse conditions that pushed them originally to leave. However, there are alternative approaches, including responsibility sharing as is done by many European governments, that promote more efficient reintegration programming, increasing the odds that returnees succeed and feel embedded in their communities.
Despite modest improvements in recent years, reception and reintegration programs in Mexico and northern Central America have largely struggled to meaningfully improve returnees’ long-term conditions. And there has been little evaluation of whether they reduce repeat irregular migration attempts.
The likelihood of a significant increase in deportations from the United States offers an opportunity to rethink reintegration programming responsibility and how to achieve better outcomes—integration and migration management ones alike. Continuing to think that once returnees arrive in receiving countries they are out of sight and out of mind is short-sighted and unsustainable. For instance, the recent arrangements that allowed the Trump administration to remove third-country nationals to Panama and Costa Rica exemplify what happens without a longer-term vision: Returnees were left in difficult conditions, with limited access to assistance, and mired with uncertainty about their future. These cases have exposed a new set of international considerations for countries that may be on the receiving end of large numbers of U.S. deportees.
Therefore, despite their expanded reception and reintegration services and renewed willingness to receive returnees, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras should carefully consider their limited resources and capacities when negotiating future repatriation agreements. Their discussions with the U.S. government should go beyond their willingness to receive returnees and also cover augmenting their capacity to reintegrate migrants into their societies. Doing so would be beneficial for returnees’ long-term wellbeing and for all parties at the negotiating table.
The Forgotten Side of Deportation: The Cost of Ignoring Returnees’ Reintegration Challenges
Para leer este comentario en español, haga clic aquí.
While the Trump administration is focused on deporting vast numbers of unauthorized immigrants by directing unprecedented resources to ramp up arrests, a longer-term, significant issue is receiving comparatively little policy attention: The future for returnees to Mexico and Central America, which historically have accounted for the overwhelming share of removals.
Under the threat of mass deportations, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have responded proactively and pragmatically given their decades-long repatriation agreements with the United States and the fact that their citizens account for what the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates are two-thirds of the estimated 13.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. In 2024 alone, MPI estimates these countries received 319,000 returnees. In anticipation of major numbers of deportations and other returns, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are expanding and relaunching their reception and reintegration programs. And Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador have agreed to receive third-country nationals, under varying processes—none more high-profile than the Salvadoran government’s agreement to detain Venezuelan deportees at its maximum-security prison.
Despite modest improvements in recent years, these programs have been largely ineffective in improving returnees’ long-term conditions, often the same ones that pushed them to emigrate in the first place. And the lack of sustainable funding, uneven institutional capacities, and inconsistent political will that have hampered prior reception and reintegration efforts will continue to pose significant obstacles for governments seeking to achieve positive outcomes for returnees and their receiving communities.
Therefore, if a primary objective of deportation is to deter future attempts to migrate irregularly to the United States, ensuring that returnees integrate economically, socially, and culturally should be a shared responsibility of the U.S. government and those of the receiving countries. Currently, it is an afterthought, and the tens of millions of dollars in annual U.S. assistance that had helped international organizations support existing reintegration programs in Central America has been cut or is in jeopardy. Should the U.S. government significantly increase deportations, reception and reintegration programs will likely struggle to meet returnees’ needs, counterproductively raising the possibility of repeat irregular migration.
Existing Reception and Reintegration Programming
The reintegration process starts the moment returnees reach their country of origin and receive reception services, but continues months and years after they settle into their communities. Returnees arrive with a unique set of economic, social, and psychosocial challenges, including indebtedness, stigmatization, cultural uprooting, and sometimes language barriers. Yet Mexican and Central American reception and reintegration programs have long prioritized economic integration over helping returnees achieve the social stability and psychosocial well-being they need to consider setting down roots and forgoing future migration attempts. This is particularly important given what is expected to be the changing nature of returnees: Rather than being people returned quickly after crossing the border without authorization, U.S. efforts are now focused on identifying and removing individuals who have long years of U.S. residence and significant equities, including U.S.-born children and spouses, ownership of homes and businesses, and other deep ties.
Reception Programs: A Stepping Stone to the Next Chapter
Upon arrival, returnees are led to dedicated reception centers at specific ports of entry. Because they are not previously informed by U.S. authorities about the return process or what services may be available to them, returnees often land with aggravated stress, emotionally overwhelmed and logistically disoriented. As a standard procedure, receiving government officials process and register returnees using intake forms to collect data about their sociodemographic backgrounds and document their immediate needs. While this is critical to inform programming, lack of coordination between government agencies often translates to duplicative intakes that can heighten returnees’ distress at a particularly vulnerable moment.
Though reception services vary by country across Mexico and northern Central America, in most cases returnees receive basic medical attention, legal orientation, food and hygiene kits, referral to shelters, and limited transportation assistance to their destination. As part of the new “Mexico Embraces You” strategy and Honduras’ “Come Home Brother” plan, the governments intend to provide returnees U.S. $100 in vouchers for immediate expenses. Notably, Mexico is also seeking legal reforms to guarantee returnees can use a government-issued identification number—as an alternate to a Mexican passport or voter credential that most returnees lack—to expedite their access to all government benefits for which Mexican citizens are eligible.
Reintegration Programs: A Narrower Focus on Economic Integration
Unlike the short-form nature of reception initiatives, reintegration programs focus on granting medium-and long-term assistance, mostly prioritizing economic integration through skills training, entrepreneurship assistance, and job matching. For instance, Guatemala’s Stay Here (Quédate) Training Centers, launched in 2015 and operating in four different departments, provide technical training opportunities to young returnees and at-risk youth. Similarly, the Salvadoran Institute of Professional Training offers vocational training for Salvadoran returnees in various fields, including gastronomy and electronics. In anticipation of stepped-up U.S. deportations, Honduras’ plan now includes a managed employment program intended to expand job opportunities in manufacturing and call centers. Mexico is also boosting its interagency coordination and private-sector engagement, creating a database of 60,000 job openings for Mexican returnees and foreign-born migrants.
Key Challenges and Considerations
The dearth of funding and the Mexican and Central American governments’ limited institutional capacity to meet the diverse needs of returnees are chief among the challenges to existing reception and reintegration programming. Relying primarily on U.S. funding, UN agencies and civil-society organizations have been instrumental in filling the gaps in governments’ reintegration services. Now, ongoing U.S. foreign aid funding freezes and cuts, including 85 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) assistance, will shrink reception and reintegration programs’ budgets.
It is still unclear how governments are going to provide adequate and sustainable assistance to returnees with significantly fewer resources and potentially higher demand. They must now allocate new funding and prioritize critical areas that have historically been neglected: instituting predeparture planning services, improving intake and registration data quality, and providing longer-term case support. This will likely require that governments identify potential partners, such as multilateral development banks and the private sector, which could finance existing and new services.
Who Is Coming and What Are Their Needs?
The poor quality of registration data and its limited interoperability are key obstacles to understanding returnees’ profiles and needs. The data that governments collect at reception centers are often stored across the databases of multiple institutions and are difficult to access for service providers in the communities where returnees settle. Robust disaggregated data collection at the time of reception, alongside transparent protocols to ensure data sharing with relevant actors, is crucial for governments and other providers to inform and tailor their services.
Unauthorized immigrants who have resided in the United States for decades are increasingly deportation targets and have different needs than migrants arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance. Uprooted from their homes, many may struggle upon return with language barriers, building social and professional networks, and feeling disconnected from their new surroundings. Immigrants who leave the United States voluntarily (outside of the formal deportation process and uncounted in the data) and therefore do not arrive at reception centers could fall through the cracks of existing support systems. It is essential that outreach efforts find these returnees, document their needs, and provide tailored advice on their short-term and long-term options.
How Are Returnees Faring Months after Arrival?
Returnees often face challenges months and years after they are deported. Economic inclusion programs and entrepreneurial seed grants prioritize immediate employment options that tend to push returnees to informal economy jobs that do not match the skillsets they acquire abroad. Returnees also commonly struggle with recurring mental health issues that can affect their well-being and influence their ability to retain jobs. And, though some governments have expanded reintegration services beyond employment assistance, children and youth often face challenges enrolling in school months after they have been returned. A starting point in addressing these challenges is for governments to actively collaborate with the private sector to identify and fill labor gaps in local economies with jobs that leverage returnees’ skillsets. Already, business and government leaders are discussing ways to recognize the academic and professional credentials and skills that returnees will bring. More importantly, governments and service providers should incorporate case management in post-reception programs to assess returnees' unmet needs and identify barriers inhibiting their long-term stability and desired trajectories.
Can Governments Offer Better Predeparture Preparation?
Given the distress and trauma that they have experienced, returnees often struggle to retain the government-provided information they receive at reception centers, and some forgo accessing services. Instead, providing predeparture guidance about services to immigrants while still in U.S. custody could be more effective. Research suggests that some immigrants who seek program information at their consulates prior to their voluntary departure experience better integration outcomes. While the recent strengthening of their consular networks in the United States is promising, Mexico and the northern Central American countries, as part of their ongoing negotiations with the United States, should also seek U.S. collaboration and investment in predeparture planning for immigrants in U.S. custody.
Rethinking Responsibility to Achieve Better Reintegration
The U.S. enforcement-first approach long has focused chiefly on conducting removals and returns of unauthorized immigrants while considering returnees’ reintegration to be the sole responsibility of receiving countries—a short-sighted approach given the evidence globally that many returnees re-embark on travel if they encounter the same or worse conditions that pushed them originally to leave. However, there are alternative approaches, including responsibility sharing as is done by many European governments, that promote more efficient reintegration programming, increasing the odds that returnees succeed and feel embedded in their communities.
Despite modest improvements in recent years, reception and reintegration programs in Mexico and northern Central America have largely struggled to meaningfully improve returnees’ long-term conditions. And there has been little evaluation of whether they reduce repeat irregular migration attempts.
The likelihood of a significant increase in deportations from the United States offers an opportunity to rethink reintegration programming responsibility and how to achieve better outcomes—integration and migration management ones alike. Continuing to think that once returnees arrive in receiving countries they are out of sight and out of mind is short-sighted and unsustainable. For instance, the recent arrangements that allowed the Trump administration to remove third-country nationals to Panama and Costa Rica exemplify what happens without a longer-term vision: Returnees were left in difficult conditions, with limited access to assistance, and mired with uncertainty about their future. These cases have exposed a new set of international considerations for countries that may be on the receiving end of large numbers of U.S. deportees.
Therefore, despite their expanded reception and reintegration services and renewed willingness to receive returnees, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras should carefully consider their limited resources and capacities when negotiating future repatriation agreements. Their discussions with the U.S. government should go beyond their willingness to receive returnees and also cover augmenting their capacity to reintegrate migrants into their societies. Doing so would be beneficial for returnees’ long-term wellbeing and for all parties at the negotiating table.