Guatemala’s pres­i­dent said Wednes­day af­ter meet­ing with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio that his coun­try will ac­cept mi­grants from oth­er coun­tries be­ing de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States.

Un­der the “safe third coun­try” agree­ment an­nounced by Pres­i­dent Bernar­do Areva­lo, the de­por­tees would then be re­turned to their home coun­tries at U.S. ex­pense.

“We have agreed to in­crease by 40% the num­ber of flights of de­por­tees both of our na­tion­al­i­ty as well as de­por­tees from oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties,” Aré­va­lo said, speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence with Ru­bio.

Im­mi­gra­tion, a Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion pri­or­i­ty, has been the ma­jor fo­cus of Ru­bio’s first for­eign trip as Amer­i­ca’s top diplo­mat, a five-coun­try tour of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

In El Sal­vador on Mon­day, he an­nounced a sim­i­lar but broad­er agree­ment.

Sal­vado­ran Pres­i­dent Nay­ib Bukele said his coun­try would ac­cept U.S. de­por­tees of any na­tion­al­i­ty, in­clud­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and le­gal res­i­dents who are im­pris­oned for vi­o­lent crimes.

Dur­ing Ru­bio’s trip he’s faced ques­tions about the le­gal­i­ty of El Sal­vador’s of­fer, as well as about the ma­jor up­heaval at the U.S. Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment. Al­most all the aid agency’s work­ers over­seas are be­ing pulled off the job and out of the field un­der a sud­den Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion or­der.

Aré­va­lo, a pro­gres­sive and son of a pres­i­dent cred­it­ed with es­tab­lish­ing much of Guatemala’s so­cial safe­ty net, told the AP in Jan­u­ary that his pre­de­ces­sor’s “safe third coun­try” agree­ment with Trump was “ab­solute­ly in­ad­e­quate,” and that a more re­gion­al ap­proach must be tak­en for deal­ing with im­mi­gra­tion.

But he no­tably did not rule out mak­ing a sim­i­lar deal. “We are not a safe third coun­try, no­body has pro­posed it,” he said at the time.

Guatemala has been co­op­er­at­ing in re­ceiv­ing de­por­tees from the Unit­ed States, ac­cept­ing both civil­ian and mil­i­tary flights.

But Trump’s promised mass de­por­ta­tions from the Unit­ed States would hit Guatemala hard, as re­mit­tances — the mon­ey Guatemalans send home — make up about one-fifth of the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct. —GUATEMALA CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press