Rebuilding Lives in Guatemala: Understanding Returnee Profiles and Reintegration Challenges

Guatemala has long received citizens who were forced to return from other countries, but this return movement has entered a period of flux. Since 2025, U.S. immigration enforcement has prioritized arrests from within the U.S. interior—resulting in changed characteristics for returnees. Guatemalans have also been returned, albeit in smaller numbers, from Mexico and other countries.

As return migration flows have shifted, so too has the profile of the individuals returned. Among Guatemalans who participated in a voluntary survey after deportation from the United States, the share who had relatively little U.S. residence decreased over the first nine months of 2025, while the share with a longer residence history in the United States grew. And of the more than 55,000 to arrive in Guatemala after deportation from the United States or Mexico in 2025, a larger share were men, speakers of Indigenous languages, from Guatemala’s Western Highlands, and slightly older than returnees in 2024.

This report—the result of a mixed-methods study conducted by MPI researchers in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM)—analyzes how returnee profiles and needs are changing and what these shifts mean for Guatemala’s reception and reintegration system.

The analysis drawing on administrative data, a voluntary survey of more than 12,000 returnee cases, 22 focus groups with returnees and private-sector leaders, and dozens of interviews with government and civil-society representatives in Guatemala and the United States.

Para leer este reporte en español, haga clic aquí.