By John Binder
Officials in Central America are already complaining that they do not have the “capacity” to accept potentially hundreds of thousands of their nationals back from the United States when President-Elect Donald Trump carries out his historic deportation program.
Trump, who is tasking incoming Border Czar Thomas Homan with handling the deportation program, has vowed to deport most of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
Bureaucrats in Central America told the Associated Press (AP) they “don’t have the capacity” to take their nationals back when Trump ultimately deports them.
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are “ill-prepared to handle” an influx of their own nationals who illegally immigrated to the U.S., the AP reports:
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which have the largest number of people living illegally in the U.S., after Mexico, could be among the first and most heavily impacted by mass deportations, said Jason Houser, former Immigration & Customs Enforcement chief of staff in the Biden administration.
“We don’t have the capacity” to take so many people, said Antonio García, Honduras’ deputy foreign minister. “There’s very little here for deportees.” People who return, he said, “are the last to be taken care of.”
Approximately 560,000 Hondurans, about 5% of the country’s population, live in the U.S. without legal status, according to U.S. government figures. Of those, migration experts estimate about 150,000 can be tracked down and rapidly expelled.
To pre-emptively fight Trump’s deportation plans, Senate Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to sign several executive orders to shield huge portions of illegal aliens so that a future administration cannot deport them.
In fewer than four years, the Biden administration has overseen the arrival of nearly 8 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. A congressional report found that about 85 percent of migrants arriving at the border under Biden have been released into the U.S. interior.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
