WASHINGTON: Mexico has refused a request from President Donald Trump’s administration to allow a US military aircraft deporting migrants to land in the country, a US official and a Mexican official said.

The government was not able to move ahead with a plan to have a C-17 transport aircraft land in Mexico, however, after the country denied permission. A US official and a Mexican official confirmed the decision, which was first reported by NBC News. Mexico’s foreign ministry, in a statement late on Friday, said the country had a “very great relationship” with the US and cooperated on issues such as immigration. “When it comes to repatriations, we will always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms,” the ministry said.

As Trump’s initiative to crackdown on illegal migrants is on the move, several migrants were also sent to Guatemala.

US military planes carrying several expelled migrants arrived in Guatemala, authorities confirmed on Friday.

Aircraft carrying expelled immigrants arrives in Guatemala

A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights — two operated by the military, and one a charter, the Central American country’s migration institute said, updating earlier figures.

Trump’s administration earlier this week announced it was re-launching the programme known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases in the United States were resolved.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday such a move would require the country receiving the asylum-seekers to agree, and that Mexico had not done so.

US-Mexico relations have come into sharp focus since Trump started his second term on Monday with the declaration of a national emergency along the two nations’ shared border. He has ordered 1,500 additional US troops there so far, and officials have said thousands more could deploy soon.

The president has declared Mexican drug cartels terrorist organisations, renamed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and threatened an across-the-board 25 per cent duty on Mexican goods beginning in February. Sheinbaum has sought to avoid escalating the situation and expressed openness toward accommodating Mexican nationals who are returned.

But the leftist leader has also said she does not agree with mass deportations and that Mexican immigrants are vital to the US economy. The use of US military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon’s response to Trump’s national emergency declaration on Monday.

Guatemalan immigrants

The Guatemalan government did not confirm whether any of the migrants arrested this week were among the deportees that arrived on Friday. “These are flights that took place after Trump took office,” an official in the Guate­malan vice president’s office said.

A Pentagon source said that “overnight, two DOD (Department of Defence) aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala.”

Early Friday the White House posted an image on X of men in shackles being marched into a military aircraft, with the caption: “Deportation flights have begun.”

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2025