Vice President Kamala Harris is in Central America this week to meet with the presidents of Guatemala and Mexico — her first international trip since taking office and being named illegal immigration czar — where she is set to announce new initiatives to tackle “corruption” and “economic opportunities” in the region.

The United States will send an additional $310 million in aid to the Northern Triangle countries and train a Guatemalan “task force” in an effort to upend the migrant crisis overwhelming authorities at the southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris announced.

The announcement came in a statement Monday from Harris’ chief spokeswoman and senior adviser Symone Sanders after the VP’s meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.

A Honduran migrant traveling with a caravan to the United States says President-elect Joe Biden is giving them “100 days to get” to the country.

The unnamed migrant, in an interview filmed by CNN but uploaded by The Hill to Twitter on Monday, told the network he wanted “patience and prayers that we can get to the US because they have a new president: Biden.”

“He’s going to help all of us, he’s giving us 100 days to get to the US and give us legal [unclear] papers, so we can get a better life for our kids, and for our families,” the man continued.

Customs and Border Protection agents stationed in Central America detained and removed hundreds of Honduran migrants, acting as law enforcement on foreign soil, according to a new Senate report.

The officers were in Guatemala – funded by the State Department – to train their local counterparts and provide “mentoring, advising, and capacity-building.” Instead, they took charge on the ground and returned migrants themselves.

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said on Friday a large number of migrants on a deportation flight to Guatemala from the United States this week were infected with the coronavirus, adding that U.S. authorities had confirmed a dozen cases.

Giammattei said 12 randomly selected people on the deportation flight tested positive for coronavirus when examined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sitting in a jet streaming toward Guatemala, watching the landscape shift below, Pablo replayed the scenes that had led to this moment. He recalled the day he fled his home in El Salvador rather than face the danger he felt being a gay man. He considered the sacrifices he had made over the yearlong journey to the United States–Mexico border.

A controversial Trump administration plan to send Mexican nationals who seek asylum at the southern US border to Guatemala has been temporarily put on hold, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

The move, which was initially reported by BuzzFeed News, was met with criticism and anger from immigrant advocates and politicians earlier this week. Both Mexican and Guatemalan officials also criticized the decision in recent days and called into question its legitimacy.

The Trump administration will now deport Mexican nationals — including families — who come to the US southern border seeking asylum to Guatemala, an expansion of a controversial program that will spark outrage among advocates and lawmakers, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The program, which was signed in July, was implemented in late November. Emailed guidance was sent to asylum officials across the country in recent days detailing how Mexicans were now to be included in the process.

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have started to send families seeking asylum to Guatemala, even if they are not from the Central American country and had sought protection in the United States, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

The first Central American migrant offered asylum in Guatemala, under an arrangement between that country and the U.S., has decided to return to his home in Honduras, according to the Associated Press.

Erwin José Ardón Montoya, 23, travelled to the U.S. in September in a bid to see his newborn daughter. The daughter’s mother had chosen to migrate to the U.S. while still pregnant.

“I wanted to see my daughter, to help her,” Ardón Montoya told his parents through tears as he arrived at his family’s home in Trujillo, Honduras.