Guatemalan president agrees to accept migrants during meeting with Secretary Rubio

In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Thursday, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said his country and the United States “don’t have a timeline” on when Guatemala will begin receiving third-country nationals who are deported by the Trump administration.

Arevalo met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week as Rubio visited five countries across Latin America for his first trip since taking office. In a press conference in Guatemala City on Wednesday, the pair announced that Guatemala had not only offered to ramp up deportation flights from the U.S. by 40% but also agreed to receive third-country nationals as they make their way back to their home countries.

“It’s very important for us in terms of the migratory situation that we’re facing,” Rubio said of the agreement.

Arevalo told NBC News that the U.S. had also agreed to aid Guatemala’s effort to repatriate third-country nationals who land in Guatemala. But the Guatemalan president added that he did not expect “big numbers of people” from other countries and noted that countries like Panama have also agreed to take third-country nationals.

“In our case, there was no discussion of specific amounts of nationalities, because it is not expected to be about that,” Arevalo said. “The repatriation process is expected to be about Guatemalans and other Central Americans, and there might be other nationalities, in which case we’re going to be apply[ing] the rules that we are developing.”