Podcast: End of TPS Exposes Over 50,000 Hondurans, Nicaraguans to Deportation

The following is a transcript of episode 43 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

SÁENZ: Where is Guatemala heading? Toward modernization, technological advancement, and strengthening its military capabilities. That is where we are headed. At the end of the year, aircraft will arrive, and it will be announced that we can now purchase modern weapons…

GRESSIER, HOST: Last month, on the opinion program Con Criterio in Guatemala City, Defense Minister Henry Sáenz said that President Bernardo Arévalo has ordered an overhaul of military equipment and capacity. Arévalo, who bills himself as a social-democrat, has repeatedly asserted that his government respects human rights and democracy at home and abroad.

That’s why heads turned this week when digital outlet No-Ficción reported that his administration bought millions of dollars in equipment from Israeli companies named by a U.N. special rapporteur as possibly involved in crimes of genocide in Gaza.

Clock ticking for TPS cancellation

We’ll get back to Guatemala in a bit. But first, on September 8, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to Honduras and Nicaragua in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in the late 1990s, came to an end.

The National TPS Alliance (NTPSA) had filed an appeal against the Trump administration to prevent this from happening. They claimed Trump had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by ignoring current conditions in the immigrants’ home countries and coming to a pre-determined decision to “dismantle the TPS program” motivated by racial prejudice.

But on August 20, an appeals court upheld U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to end TPS for Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal. This left tens of thousands of immigrants who have been in the United States for decades without protection from deportation.

Deutsche Welle reports that 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans will be left without protection after 26 years of legal residence. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated that this was in the name of the rule of law. “TPS was never meant to be a de-facto asylum system,” she said.

The ACLU of Northern California called the cancellation part of “a coordinated campaign” to undermine legal residency. Alianza Americas called it “a vivid example of the lack of humanity of an administration that imposes its xenophobic values over the defense of human rights.”

Now, the clock is ticking. Barring last-minute legal challenges, Hondurans and Nicaraguans have 60 days from September 8 to change their immigration status or risk deportation.

The Zamora case in Guatemala

Now, to Guatemala. On September 1, the Constitutional Court dipped its toe into the criminal cases against leading publisher Jose Rubén Zamora: The highest court in the country declined to rule in favor of letting him out on house arrest, sending the ultimate decision on the matter back down to the Supreme Court.

You may be surprised to learn that, at least in Guatemala, the Supreme Court is not supreme.

Here’s how things worked: The Constitutional Court sided with an appeal from prosecutors from the FECI unit who have been internationally denounced for criminalizing Zamora. In doing that, the high court revoked a provisional decision to let Zamora out, as he awaits trial on a series of allegations, including money laundering and obstruction of justice.

But here’s the kicker: A definitive ruling over Zamora’s house arrest versus pre-trial detention is now pending at the Supreme Court. The Constitutional Court had only struck down a provisional ruling — which in Guatemala is not the same thing. In short, Jose Rubén Zamora’s legal knot does not seem to have gotten any thinner, and he will remain in prison as the Supreme and Constitutional Courts continue to review his case.

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The snail’s pace of this back-and-forth has posed other procedural questions. Prensa Comunitaria reported that the only dissenting judge, Rony López, wrote that “the individual freedom of the applicant was violated through legal maneuvers, denying not only fundamental guarantees but also the speed of the criminal proceedings.”

This is not the first time López has warned about the excessive use of pretrial detention for Zamora as prosecutors pile on appeals and motions to keep him in prison and add new charges.

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The bottom line is this: It seems Zamora, who first entered prison now over 37 months ago, will not be getting out of jail any time soon.

Military purchases from Israel

On Thursday afternoon, No-Ficción placed the total that Guatemala paid this year for Israeli military gear at over $10.3 million dollars. The report named two Israeli companies identified by the United Nations as purveying weapons to the Israeli military as part of an “economy of genocide” in Gaza.

No-Ficción published the implementation documents and spending reports, reviewed in the public contract database Guatecompras. The purchase agreement included weapons, ammunition, radio gear, nocturnal binoculars, and “humanitarian aid equipment.” The outlet reported that the two companies, Elbit Systems and Marom Dolphin, market their equipment as “combat-tested.”

Defense Minister Sáenz told Con Criterio that the government is also seeking to acquire planes and drones. They made the acquisitions as part of a military cooperation agreement signed with Israel in early 2023, in the final months of the preceding administration of Alejandro Giammattei.

Correspondence between the Israeli and Guatemalan governments began in January, through the Israeli military attaché in Mexico. Five months later, in June, Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, issued her report naming the Israeli companies.

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One week earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Albanese for “spew[ing] unabashed antisemitism [and] express[ing] support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”

And in February, the Trump administration similarly sanctioned the International Criminal Court, which has issued arrest warrants on charges of genocide for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif.

Arévalo knows Israel well: He held multiple top diplomatic positions there from the mid-to-late 1980s. And the two countries have a deep-rooted relationship; Israel maintained close relations with Guatemala in the late seventies, even after the United States cut off aid to Guatemala in 1977, citing gross human rights abuses.

In 2018, former Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales moved the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. As for Arévalo, while abstaining from some U.N. resolutions on Israel, he has called for a cease-fire in Gaza, expressed support for a two-state solution, and expressed concern for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which has now tipped into famine, according to the World Health Organization.

In Latin America, since last year Chile and Colombia have withdrawn military attachés and cancelled arms purchases, respectively, from Israel. Guatemala, on the other hand, has done none of this. Amid mounting international pressure, today it is Guatemala, not Israel, who is standing by the other.

This episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Yuliana Ramazzini and Roman Gressier with sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.