US migrants sending more money back home to relatives or to save up for their own personal use if deported
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Migrants in the United States are remitting more money to their home countries, with Central Americans sending around 20 per cent more in remittances in the first quarter of 2025 (Q1 2025), according to latest official data, a trend economists said reflects their fear of deportation by President Donald Trump.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has previously clarified that not all diaspora remittances are sent from rich to less well-off nations.
Nonetheless, official US data shows that nearly one-quarter of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of impoverished Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua is made up of money sent from US-based migrants to relatives in their homelands.
Guatemala’s central bank said this week it recorded $5.64 billion in remittances in Q1 2025, a 20.5 per cent rise over Q1 2024.
Honduras’s central bank, for its part, said the country received $2.62 billion in Q1 2025, a 24 per cent increase Year-on-Year (YoY).
El Salvador and Nicaragua do not yet have complete data for the first quarter, but in January and February, remittances to both countries increased by 14.2 per cent and 22.6 per cent respectively, compared to the same months in 2024.
El Salvador received $1.4 billion and Nicaragua $909 million in the first two months of 2025, according to their central banks.
In Nicaragua, the figure includes remittances not only from the United States, but also from Costa Rica ($68.2 million) and Spain ($48.6 million).
Guatemalan Central Bank President Alvaro Gonzalez attributed the growth in remittances to migrants’ fear of being deported from the US.
Guatemalan economic analyst Erick Coyoy took a similar view, telling local media that the surge is “an anticipated reaction by migrants to the perceived risk of deportation.”
It is unclear, however, whether they sent more money home to ensure that, if deported, they would be able to access their savings or whether it is to help their relatives benefit from their situation in the US while they can.
Trump returned to the White House in January on a promise to conduct the biggest wave of migrant deportations in US history. And he has already deported thousands.
Fearing deportation, some migrants from Central and South America have cut short their journeys to the US and returned home.
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