U.S. deporting Mexican migrants to Guatemala and Honduras, angering Mexico

The Trump administration has been quietly deporting migrants from Mexico to different countries in Central America despite the Mexican government's willingness to accept the return of all its citizens, two Department of Homeland Security officials told CBS News.

U.S. immigration authorities have been sending deportees from Mexico to Guatemala and Honduras, flying them around Mexican territory instead of returning them to their homeland, the DHS officials said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The officials said one of the objectives of the deportations, which have not been formally announced by the U.S. government, is to deter illegal immigration from Mexico by sending some of its citizens further south and farther away from the U.S.-Mexico border.

The deportations have been occurring for months and have sent hundreds of Mexican citizens to Honduras and Guatemala, one of the DHS officials said. It was not immediately clear what the precise number is.

In a statement to CBS News, Mexico's Foreign Ministry voiced its opposition to the deportation of Mexican citizens to other countries.

"The Government of Mexico accepts the return of all its nationals. It therefore rejects the deportation of Mexican nationals to third countries and has no such agreement in place," the foreign ministry said. "Mexico consistently takes the steps necessary to ensure the safe and dignified return of all its nationals to national territory."

Representatives for DHS did not respond to questions about the deportations of Mexicans to Honduras and Guatemala.

Under Republican and Democratic administrations, the U.S. has deported Mexican migrants caught at the American southern border deep into Mexico, in an effort to discourage them from trying to enter the U.S. illegally again. But immigration policy experts said the move to send Mexican deportees to other countries in the region was unprecedented.

While the Trump administration has vastly expanded deportations to so-called "third countries," or nations where deportees don't hail from, it has mostly done so in cases in which migrants' home countries, like Cuba, limit or reject U.S. deportations or when they have won legal protections from being returned to their homelands. Mexico, however, has historically accepted all U.S. deportations of its citizens, as well as of deportees from other Latin American countries.

"This is almost entirely punitive," said Adam Isacson, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America who studies migration flows in the region.

Isacson said the U.S. accomplishes two goals by deporting Mexicans to Honduras and Guatemala. It makes it harder for them to try to cross the U.S. southern border. But it also sends a message of deterrence.

"It's the same as the purpose of sending them to Ecuador or Africa or anywhere else: to broadcast the hardship, to make sure people know that this is a possible consequence of remaining undocumented in the United States and to encourage people to self-deport," Isacson said.

CBS News contacted representatives for the governments of Honduras and Guatemala requesting comment on their deportation arrangements with the U.S. but has not heard back.