Members of the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala are raising concerns about the implementation of reforms and regulations by the Guatemalan government that they say will put their networks of migrant shelters at risk of closure. The concerns stem from the implementation of requirements that are codified in the country’s new immigration law.
The reforms were made in February 2022 by Guatemala’s congress, under pressure from the Biden Administration to address irregular migration from Guatemala. They increased the sentence for human trafficking by coyotes, the human smugglers that give routes to migrants, from ten to thirty years in prison.
According to the Episcopal Conference, Guatemala’s government is also pressuring the networks of migrant shelters run by the Catholic Church to gather biometric data and other personal information from the migrants they serve and to provide that data to immigration authorities. Due to the vague language of the reforms and the eagerness of Guatemalan authorities to combat migration, the reforms also put humanitarian migrant shelters at risk of trafficking charges.
“The government wants to have access to very detailed data on migrants,” says Brenda Peralta, who works with one shelter operator, the Franciscan Network for Migrants. “The concern there is that they want to have more control.”
She adds, “The Church’s humanitarian [shelters] are there [so migrants can] rest while they continue on their way.”
The Catholic Church’s networks across Guatemala includes a total of nine shelters that supply migrants with shelter, food, and other services for up to three days, before they set out to the next shelter along their journey north.
This kind of migrant support could lead to trafficking charges, especially because the shelters also provide migrants with information about safe routes. Due to these threats of new oversight, the Episcopal Conference has suggested that if they are forced to comply with these new measures the best move may be to close the shelters entirely in order to protect the migrants.
“What the government wants us to do is practically use us for their interests and that we hand over the data of the migrants and no, that is not possible.”
“[The shelters] are not police stations where you have to ask for all the information to know if they are thieves or not,” Cardinal Alvaro Ramazzini, who serves as the bishop to the department of Huehuetenango, exclaimed at a press conference in Guatemala City’s central plaza on February 9. “No, what matters to us is helping [migrants].”
Members of the Human Mobility Pastoral of Guatemala will be meeting with the country’s Vice President Guillermo Castillo and the members of the National Immigration Authority in the coming week to discuss the implementation of the requirements and reforms so that they do not threaten the shelters. But at the same time, those who are providing services for migrants are still concerned that threats could come for simply providing humanitarian services.
“Getting to that point of criminalizing [the shelters] is serious,” says Friar Germán Tax, a member of the Franciscan order in Guatemala who manages its migrant shelter south of Guatemala City.
“It is an attack against people, against migrants,” he tells The Progressive. “We hope it doesn’t come to that, or at least that they accept the modifications. Because what the government wants us to do is practically use us for their interests and that we hand over the data of the migrants and no, that is not possible.”
Across the hemisphere, migrant shelters have increasingly come under attack, often by criminal groups, for their support of migrants. These threats have led to the closure of at least two shelters in the last decade.
In Guatemala, the director of the main shelter in Guatemala City received death threats for his work giving refuge to migrants during the caravans of Honduran migrants and asylum seekers in 2020. According to Tax, his parish outside Guatemala City faced threats in October 2022 for providing shelter to Venezuelan migrants in a nearby church, though he says it was unclear if the threats came from gangs or from the government.
According to experts in Guatemala, the current threats stem from the pressure to criminalize coyote networks, and essentially the shelters, that is coming from the United States government.
The government of the United States along with others, have argued that combatting coyote networks is key to resolving irregular migration. Since taking office in 2021, the Biden Administration has especially increased pressure on Guatemalan and other Central American governments, and has often found a willing ally in the administration of Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei.
Police and immigration officials also have expanded the definition of coyote to criminalize those who give passage to migrants seeking to reach the border with Mexico.
“[These policies] come from the United States,” Delia Catu, who works with the Guatemala-based migrants rights advocacy group Pop No’j, tells The Progressive. “Guatemala is now a transit country, [and the United States] does not want [migrants] to pass here and they create norms and laws so they do not pass through here.”
This latest wave of migrant suppression traces back to January 2021. That’s when a caravan of migrants and asylum seekers who left Honduras and sought to pass through Guatemala in the hopes of reaching the United States were beaten with poles and tear gassed by police and military forces, driving them back to the border.
Since then, the Guatemalan government has attempted to demonstrate that it is trying to resolve the flow of migration to the United States. They have prosecuted a number of those accused of participating in coyote networks.
Police and immigration officials also have expanded the definition of coyote to criminalize those who give passage to migrants seeking to reach the border with Mexico. This has resulted in accusations of trafficking and even the arrests of taxi and bus drivers who give passage to migrants.
These measures have resulted in higher costs and further instability for migrants as they cross through Guatemala, though the nation continues to be one of the primary sources of migrants from the region. Driven by poverty, state abandonment, violence, and the lack of opportunity, migrants will continue to seek an escape.
“Guatemalans have their very own route because Guatemala continues to export people,” Tax says. “They keep going.”