More than 2,300 Mexicans have been sent to Guatemala and Honduras under Donald Trump’s expanded third-country deportations. On Thursday, 35 Mexicans deported from the United States arrived in Honduras, part of a routing pattern that has moved Mexican nationals through Central America before they return home.
They landed at Ramón Villeda Morales Airport in San Pedro Sula, then were transported by bus after the flight. The movement adds a concrete scale to the shift: U.S. authorities are no longer sending Mexican nationals only back across the border into Mexico.
Honduras route grows
The arrivals in Honduras show the mechanism in plain terms. Mexican nationals deported from the United States are flown into Central America, then continue onward by ground travel, rather than being handed directly to Mexico at the border. That routing affects how quickly people get home and which authorities handle them first.
For migrants, the change is operational as much as geographic. A deportation that ends in Honduras or Guatemala adds a transfer point, a new airport, and another inland leg before return to Mexico. Around 600 migrants also left Mexico’s southern border region on Thursday seeking to continue asylum procedures and hoping to find work elsewhere in the country.
Guatemala and Honduras
The broader pattern already reached Guatemala before the Honduras flights. On Dec. 30, 2025, Guatemalans deported from the United States arrived at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City after deplaning a repatriation flight. That earlier step showed the same third-country structure that now includes Mexican nationals.
Donald Trump’s administration has expanded third-country deportations, and the total sent to Guatemala and Honduras is now more than 2,300 Mexicans. For affected migrants, the practical question is not the politics of the policy but the route itself: where the plane lands, who receives the passengers, and how long the handoff takes before they reach Mexico.
Mexico objected to the deportations even as U.S. authorities continued sending Mexican nationals to Guatemala and Honduras. The friction leaves the routing in place for now, while the open question is why Mexican migrants are being sent through Central America instead of directly back to Mexico.
For the people on Thursday’s flight, the immediate next step was not a hearing or a new announcement. It was the bus from Ramón Villeda Morales Airport and the overland trip that follows, which turns a deportation into a two-country transfer before homecoming.
