When Vicente Sacor was deported from Los Angeles, California, in 2008, he faced a reality he wasn’t prepared for.
The thirteen years he had lived in the United States had changed his outlook on life. With a decent salary earned through long hours working at a construction company, he had lived comfortably and supported his wife and three children.
The years spent apart from his family and his country took their toll: his children were now adults, and in Quetzaltenango no one would hire him because of the stigma that being deported is equivalent to being a criminal.
The lack of employment —the very reason he had migrated in the first place— became even more acute upon his return.
Guatemala’s Tarmac of Tears
While he was still in the United States, his wife, Maribel Hernández, took care of the children. At one point, Maribel considered making the journey as an undocumented migrant, tempted by the dozens of neighbors who were migrating and at her husband’s request.
But she was deterred by accounts of dozens of people who had disappeared, been captured by U.S. immigration authorities, returned deported after years away, ended up in debt, or had their families torn apart.
In 2012, four years after Vicente’s deportation, faced with the lack of government assistance, he and Maribel decided to organize in their neighborhood to support the deported, returnees, and their families, as well as to prevent young people from deciding to migrate.
This is how the Garibaldi Association of Migrants and Deportees (AMIDEGA) came into being. Garibaldi is a neighborhood in Quetzaltenango where, alongside small houses, larger, more expensive homes are also being built — what many refer to as “remittance architecture.”
According to Maribel, this is what encourages people to envision a similar life and take out loans to pay a coyote, migrate to the United States, and build one of those two- or three-story houses.
Of the 55,276 deportees Guatemala received in 2025, 48,500 were deported from the United States and 6,776 while passing through Mexico.
Quetzaltenango, with 3,818 deportees, is one of the four departments that received the most people in 2025, already under the new administration of Donald Trump, who has promised to deport more people than any other U.S. president.
But Garibaldi, where many were forcibly returned nearly two decades ago, like Vicente, reminds us that mass deportations have been a constant under Democratic administrations, too.
“ICE is here!”
In the final year of his presidency alone, Joe Biden deported 61,680 migrants to Guatemala — 13,118 more than Trump deported in 2025, the first year of his second term.
But on a global level —at least according to official reports— the difference between Biden and Trump in deportations is at first glance staggering.
In fiscal year 2024, which runs from October 2023 through September 2024, Biden removed 271,484 people. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 605,000 people were removed from January to December 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term.
Meanwhile, questions have emerged over transparency and, in particular, over whether the second Trump administration is inflating its figures.
Regardless of these currents, in Quetzaltenango, migration is a historic tradition, as is returning. Families where women take care of everything are the norm.
You need only walk the streets and talk to someone for them to tell you they were deported, like Melvin Valle, 45, who was deported six months ago and now works as a traffic director with a “Stop” sign in downtown Xela.
In the garage of her home in Garibaldi, Maribel Hernández does her best through cooking workshops to give people a reason to stay in Guatemala so that, upon their return from the United States, reintegration is less difficult.
Her students include people who returned years ago and now volunteer with the association, as well as those who returned just a few months ago due to the terror imposed by ICE in U.S. cities.
“People return feeling anxious and panicked, and they struggle to reintegrate. We built a community to make life easier for returnees,” says Maribel.
In Garibaldi, nestled in the hills surrounding downtown Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second-largest city, the architecture of small family homes has gradually changed over decades of migration. Now, houses are regularly built up to three stories high.
Although the reality is not the same for all migrants, AMIDEGA director Maribel Hernández says these buildings become a dream, aspirational for the people in the area.
“Here, people take out loans of thousands of quetzales, not to build [right off the bat in Guatemala], but to pay a coyote, make the trip to the United States, provide for their family, and then build a house here,” she says. “One of the greatest frustrations for people here is not achieving what their neighbor achieved.”
In early 2025, Francisco Hernández took out a loan of 175,000 quetzales ($22,837) to pay a coyote to take him to the United States. His aunt, Maribel Hernández, advised him not to make the trip, but he left in March.
Weeks later, due to a dispute among criminal groups operating in Reynosa, Mexico, he was kidnapped and spent three days with guns pointed at him. A call from another coyote saved his life, announcing that he had already paid for his passage through the area.
After that, he was taken far away to go around the cities on the other side of the border. He walked for days, lost along the way. His feet blistered.
“I couldn’t take it anymore; we had already crossed into the United States, but I couldn’t go on. Out of nowhere, immigration [agents] showed up, and I had never been so happy to see them,” he said. Thanks to the workshops at AMIDEGA, his wife found a job. Now he puts his entire salary toward paying off the debt. They get by on his wife’s salary.
A group meets regularly in the garage of Maribel Hernández’s home — mostly women who have returned, were deported, or have family members in the United States, but for whom financial aid is insufficient.
There, other returnees lead cooking workshops and exchange ideas for starting businesses. The resources are community-based; everyone contributes to the ingredients, and those who lead the workshops do so without pay.
Every December, Maribel says, they distribute gifts in rural communities with high deportation rates. For over ten years, they have trained people who now run their own businesses.
Maribel Hernández Pac, 65, is the director of AMIDEGA. She studied law but was unable to graduate; she worked and cared for her children because her husband, Vicente Sacor, had emigrated to the United States.
Since the association’s founding, she has been the lead administrator, yet she receives no salary. The burden grew heavier, as Vicente had to throw himself into his construction company, which he managed to restart years after his deportation.
Every day, after leaving her job at the Ministry of Economy’s Directorate of Consumer Services and Assistance, Maribel arranges workshops or donations for the association and seeks out spaces where family members affected by deportations can sell their goods and have a source of income.
“The government gives us nothing; it only makes promises. Many deportees who have come through the association were told that the Ministry of Labor would call them, and it never happened,” she commented after calling Quetzaltenango City Hall to organize a business fair.
Two young residents of Quetzaltenango attend an internship in a domestic electrical wiring workshop.
The departments in western Guatemala have the highest numbers of people deported in 2025. Of the 55,276 deportees, 34,078 were from the west.
The state’s presence —aimed at preventing migration or training returnees— is limited to a single vocational school run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare for the entire western region.
In 1993, Vicente Sacor emigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles, California, where he worked in construction. He sent money back to his wife and children and planned to pay a coyote to bring Maribel over. But she refused to travel so she could stay behind to care for their children in Quetzaltenango.
In 2008, after he had already adapted to life in California, Vicente was deported; his work permit was revoked, and shortly thereafter, immigration agents showed up at his apartment.
Upon his return to Guatemala, he was confronted once again with the reality he had fled: a lack of employment in a department where, as of 2023, 77.9 percent of the workforce was employed in the informal sector and the average monthly income was 2,225 quetzales, about $290.
Adjusting was difficult; his children were teenagers with ever-increasing needs to meet, and he couldn’t find a job. Vicente realized he wasn’t the only one facing that reality.
“When you’re deported, you come back feeling defeated,” he said. “I was on the verge of returning to the United States, but the association was founded, and that changed my life. I don’t recommend that young people leave their families; time changes everything.”
Now Vicente is less active within AMIDEGA, but from his current position, he continues to help the deported. He started a small construction company that hires men deported from the United States.
Melvin Valle, 45, lived for 15 years in Long Island, New York. Six months ago, he was deported, traveling for hours shackled on a plane until he landed in Guatemala.
He now makes a living directing traffic at a dangerous intersection in downtown Quetzaltenango where there are no traffic lights, relying on the quetzales some drivers give him and helping park vehicles a few blocks away. Melvin is one of the 3,818 people from Quetzaltenango who were deported in 2025.
Ángela Soloj, 57, is one of the association’s longest-standing members and a testament to Quetzaltenango’s migratory vocation.
When she was 17, she emigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles, but returned to Guatemala a few months later because the language —even in that city, home to thousands of Hispanics— was a barrier she could not overcome.
Since her return, she has never had a stable job; her income began to stabilize just under ten years ago, when she learned about the AMIDEGA association. Ángela embroiders and sells her textiles when the association organizes fairs for returnees and deportees to sell their products.
“Beyond the financial aspect, the association is an opportunity for us to come together as people who have experienced the frustration of the American dream,” she explained.
Maribel is in charge of purchasing materials for workshops, even if it means working late into the night due to other commitments. She spends her vacations at AMIDEGA. Contributions from participants are used to buy supplies, but many cannot afford to pay and are still invited to join.
“We are aware that families in the area are poor, that the deported often have no money, but we have a commitment to society,” she said. “If we stop, perhaps someone will lose the opportunity to learn something new and earn an income, and that’s how the desire to emigrate begins.”
Rebeca Hernández spent her youth as a domestic worker. In 2017, during Donald Trump’s first term, she took out a loan to go to the United States.
She describes the journey as a nightmare: Despite fracturing her foot, she had to trek through the desert for days. When she encountered Border Patrol, she couldn’t run; the others left, but a border agent stopped her with a kick.
“They treated me like an animal; now I imagine it must be worse because of all the news you see over there. I wouldn’t recommend that journey to a woman — there’s too much suffering,” she recalled.
The loan she took out was for 50,000 quetzales (about $6,550), and she managed to pay it off nine years later. When she returned to Guatemala, she went back to working as a domestic worker until she learned about the Garibaldi Association of Migrants and Deported Persons.
Through entrepreneurship workshops, she began selling her knitted goods, and with the savings she accumulated, she opened a shop in the village of San Antonio Pajoc in the municipality of Olintepeque, Quetzaltenango.
Every month, the association organizes entrepreneurship fairs where people —mostly women— sell their wares. For Maribel, the association’s director, this is a way to prevent emigration or mitigate its economic effects.
“When people talk about emigration, little is said about the consequences: separated families, debt, trauma,” said Maribel. “All families affected by any of these consequences need help that the government should guarantee, but does not.”
Between her work and commitments with the association, Maribel is constantly away from Quetzaltenango. When that happens, her daughter Débora Sacor takes charge, alongside a team of women. She says the commitment she saw in her mother even before the association began motivates her to serve returnees and their families.
“At first, I didn’t understand why she helped without getting paid, but it was because our situation was similar at one point,” she said. Débora was five years old when her father Vicente left for the United States. He returned two decades later.
In 2006, Marta Hernández tried to go to the United States to live with her husband, but was apprehended on U.S. soil. She was sent to a detention center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then deported. At the association, she volunteers by leading a workshop on making sausages and runs her own business.
Marta says she is preparing for the worst: “I think at some point they’re going to deport my husband; given how [Trump] is targeting migrants there, nothing good can come of it, and here, thanks to the association, at least I have a job to support my children,” she said.
Judith Pum, 63, lived under the terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She locked herself in the room she rented in Inglewood, a city in Los Angeles County. Her acquaintances were being arrested by ICE, which caused her to lose her job and spend her savings on rent.
“I was terrified; I didn’t go out at all, and I said those were no conditions to live my life anymore,” she recalled as she looked through a photo album. Judith returned to Guatemala four months ago and is the newest member of the Garibaldi Association of Migrants and Deportees.
“My son is there [in the United States] and is going through the same situation because he doesn’t have papers,” she said. “People can’t imagine how hard life is for undocumented immigrants.”