Tag: deported

  • Ex-NY Giants player is helping deported migrants in Guatemala, blames Biden for the problem

    Ex-NY Giants player is helping deported migrants in Guatemala, blames Biden for the problem

    EXCLUSIVE: Retired New York Giants safety Jack Brewer and his global ministry are on the ground in Guatemala City this week, helping officials receive migrant families deported from the U.S., providing food, support and prayer as they essentially start life anew.

    Brewer and his Jack Brewer Foundation have years of experience working in impoverished areas of the world like Haiti, Malawi and Central America, which Brewer said has allowed him to work closer than most and interact with the returning families.

    While it is President Donald Trump and border czar Tom Homan enforcing U.S. law and deporting illegal immigrants, Brewer said it is clear former President Joe Biden’s “broken” policies are truly to blame for the heartache and hardship. 

    “Three years ago, I started to follow the fatherlessness crisis that is happening right here in Guatemala, where a lot of men were leaving their households and coming to Joe Biden’s open borders – and just seeing it literally devastate families.”

    CHARITY LEADERS SLAM BIDEN ADMIN RESPONSE TO US PLANES SHOT IN HAITI AMID CHAOS

    Jack Brewer on the Giants’ sideline in 2004. (Getty)

    Brewer said Guatemala was losing much of its workforce and that a lot of those poor families trying to get to the U.S. actually did not know a “legal” immigration route existed, and they instead took the cartels and others at their word and paid thousands of dollars to be trafficked north.

    “They’ve been told by coyotes and different people that you can just come [to the U.S.], and if you come here, if you bring your child, they’ll just let you in,” Brewer said.

    “And so, you know, there’s a huge education gap there on the ground.”

    Brewer also met with Raul Berrios from CONAMIGUA – the National Council for Attention to Migrants of Guatemala – as well as Sergio Samuel Vela-Lopez, head of the Guatemala Penitentiary Department.

    Berrios, Lopez and others are trying to create an effective system for welcoming the migrants and processing those who are innocent families versus those who may have criminal records or other issues requiring government attention, according to Brewer.

    FORMER NFL SAFETY JACK BREWER TORCHES CA’S COSTLY REPARATIONS PUSH

    Former NFL safety Jack Brewer hands out food and supplies to deported migrants in Guatemala.

    Former NFL safety Jack Brewer hands out food and supplies to deported migrants in Guatemala. (Jack Brewer Foundation)

    Many families returning to the capital city live hundreds of miles into the countryside and have no established way of getting there. Some buses, however, have been hired to take migrants closer to home, and Brewer visited one of them and spoke to its driver.

    “It’s really a unique perspective, I think, and just some of the things that we’ve witnessed since we’ve been here,” he said, adding stories ranged from familial hardships to reports that more than a dozen people have been burnt alive by Mexican cartels for failing to pay for passage.

    “It’s just pretty tough to see and witness and watch.”

    When a U.S. military plane arrived carrying migrants, Brewer was on the tarmac.

    HEGSETH, HOMAN TOUR BORDER

    Guatemalan families and children arrive in Guatemala City.

    Guatemalan families and children arrive in Guatemala City. (Jack Brewer Foundation)

    “We were able to provide them with food and, most importantly, with Bibles, and we preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

    Brewer said the Guatemalan Migration Authority is focusing its efforts on children ages 8 and under. Many of these children have been “lied to,” Brewer said.

    “They’re told it’s their life’s mission to migrate to the U.S. illegally,” he said, recounting stories told by some returning migrants of children on the backs of cartel coyotes and others drowning in rivers.

    Then-Vice President Kamala Harris made her own trip to Guatemala City in March 2024, seeking to understand the “root causes” of illegal migration.

    Jack Brewer visits a command center in Guatemala.

    Jack Brewer visits a command center in Guatemala. (Jack Brewer Foundation)

    “When you look at the root causes, we’re also looking at issues of corruption. Again, we’re looking at the issue of climate resiliency and then the concern about a lack of economic opportunity,” Harris said in 2021.

    Brewer rejected that Harris’ work made any difference, saying she and her then-boss’s policies “empowered human traffickers” and that half of Guatemala still lives in extreme poverty with little education.

    Jack Brewer meets deportation flights holding Guatemalan migrants

    Jack Brewer meets deportation flights holding Guatemalan migrants (Jack Brewer Foundation)

    He said the former leadership at the State Department “misguided resources” through USAID, a practice that Trump is now aggressively cutting back on.

    “We need to first put our resources into addressing the issues that are fueling a multibillion-dollar human trafficking industry. Walls, deportations and enforcement are a must, but educating indigenous populations on the truths of coyotes will deliver a devastating blow to the modern human slave trade,” Brewer said.

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    Jack Brewer meets with Raul Berrios of the National Council for Attention to Migrants of Guatemala.

    Jack Brewer meets with Raul Berrios of the National Council for Attention to Migrants of Guatemala. (Jack Brewer foundation)

    “Guatemala is not enforcing their migration issue in the country. Haitians and Venezuelans are warned of the dangers of migrating, but there is no enforcement at the time.”

    “There needs to be arrest and enforcement, but they require resources. Guatemala prisons are already overcrowded, and they don’t have immigration beds available for enforcement,” added Brewer, who said he also visited those prisons and saw conditions for himself.

  • Venezuelan planes return to Latin American country with citizens deported from US

    Venezuelan planes return to Latin American country with citizens deported from US

    Two planes sent by Venezuela returned home Monday with nearly 200 Venezuelans who were in the U.S. illegally as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.

    The 190 migrants returned to Venezuela signals a possible ease in tensions between the two longtime adversaries and a win for the Trump administration as it seeks to have countries take back their citizens found in the U.S. without authorization.

    The Conviasa airline flights arrived in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas from Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas.

    “Two planes of illegal immigrants left El Paso today headed to Venezuela – paid for by the Venezuelans,” Trump envoy Richard Grennell, who oversaw the deportations, wrote on X.

    FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS TRUMP ADMIN FROM SENDING DETAINED VENEZUELAN IMMIGRANTS TO GUANTÁNAMO BAY

    Two planes sent by Venezuela returned to the country from El Paso, Texas, on Monday with nearly 200 Venezuelans who were in the U.S. illegally. (AP)

    Deportation flights from the U.S. to Venezuela had been stopped for years, except for a brief period in October 2023 under the Biden administration.

    Large numbers of Venezuelans began arriving at the southern border in 2021 and are still among the nationalities with the most people entering the U.S. illegally, which has made Venezuela’s refusal to accept their return a major hurdle.

    Venezuela’s newfound willingness to take back the migrants came after Grennell visited Caracas a few weeks ago.

    “This is the world we want, a world of peace, understanding, dialogue and cooperation,” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said.

    TRUMP DEPORTING CRIMINAL ALIENS TO GUANTANAMO BAY: MEET THE HARDENED TERRORISTS THEY’LL JOIN

    Venezuelan migrants

    Venezuelans deported from the United States arrive at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP)

    The Venezuelan government confirmed the flights earlier on Monday, criticizing in a statement the “ill-intentioned” and “false” narrative surrounding the presence of Tren de Aragua gang members in the U.S. The statement said most Venezuelan migrants are decent and hard-working people and that American officials are attempting to stigmatize the country.

    The deportation flights on Monday came days after some illegal aliens were sent to the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, where they are separated from 15 detainees who were already there, including planners in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

    A federal judge in New Mexico temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sending three Venezuelan men to Guantánamo Bay on Sunday. Lawyers for the trio argued that their clients “fit the profile of those the administration has prioritized for detention in Guantánamo, i.e. Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang.”

    Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello walks off a plane that transported migrants deported from the United States

    Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, front left, walks off a plane that transported deportees from the United States at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP)

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    The flights also came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio reached agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala for those countries to accept their citizens and U.S. deportees of other nationalities.

    Trump said after Grennell’s visit that the Venezuelan government had agreed to accept “all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua,” and pay for their flights home. Half a dozen Americans held in Venezuela were released at the time.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  • Colombia welcomes deported illegal migrants after losing public spat with Trump

    Colombia welcomes deported illegal migrants after losing public spat with Trump

    After teetering on the brink of an all-out trade war with the United States, Colombia welcomed its first flights of deported illegal immigrants, with its president heralding their “dignified” return and insisting they are not criminals. 

    The arrivals are taking place just two days after President Donald Trump threatened crippling tariffs and sanctions on Colombia to punish the country for earlier refusing to accept military flights carrying deportees as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown.

    Two Colombian Air Force planes carrying deported Colombian nationals arrived in Bogota early on Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing local media.

    One plane, flying from San Diego, California, brought home 110 Colombians and the other, which departed from El Paso, Texas, brought home 91, the Colombian Foreign Ministry said on X.

    A VICTORY FOR TRUMP’S ‘FAFO’: HOW THE WHITE HOUSE STRONG-ARMED ONE-TIME CLOSE ALLY COLOMBIA OVER IMMIGRATION

    President Donald Trump and deported migrants in Colombia. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images | Colombian government.)

    “They are Colombians, they are free and dignified and they are in their homeland where they are loved,” Colombia President Gustavo Petro wrote on X with images of the migrants disembarking a flight.

    “The migrant is not a criminal, he is a human being who wants to work and progress, to live life.”

    The Colombian government hailed the returns as Petro fulfilling his commitments and said it is working on a “structured and accessible credit plan” to support the migrants’ reintegration.

    This weekend, American officials sent two flights of Colombian illegal aliens as part of Trump’s ongoing deportation program. Petro rejected the flights, writing that the U.S. cannot “treat Colombian migrants as criminals.”

    Trump immediately clapped back, writing in a Truth Social post he was going to slap 25% tariffs on all goods from Colombia, a travel ban on Colombian government officials and other steep financial sanctions. He said the tariffs would reach as high as 50% by next week and insisted the migrants being sent back were “illegal criminals.”

    At first, Petro retaliated with his own 25% tariffs on U.S. goods coming from Colombia. Petro had insisted he would not accept the return of migrants who were not treated with “dignity and respect” and who had arrived shackled or on military planes. 

    Trump/Petro split

    President Donald Trump sparred with alongside Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Sunday over deporting illegal migrants. (Getty Images)

    COLOMBIAN LEADER QUICKLY CAVES AFTER TRUMP THREATS, OFFERS PRESIDENTIAL PLANE FOR DEPORTATION FLIGHTS

    But amid intense political pressure from within his own government, the former Marxist guerrilla fighter acquiesced to all U.S. demands.

    The White House confirmed on Sunday that Colombia’s president had caved “to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” 

    President Trump hailed it as a victory for his “f— around and find out” [FAFO]-style of governing. 

    After the debacle, the 47th president posted a celebratory AI-generated image of himself dressed as a mobster next to a sign that read “FAFO.”

    Colombians deported from the United States arrive at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota

    Colombians deported from the United States arrive at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota. (Reuters/Luisa Gonzalez)

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    Trump officials cheered the deal as a victory and said Trump used Colombia as an example of U.S. power, while Colombian officials have said the agreement is a win for both sides. Dozens of frustrated Colombians had long-awaited visa appointments at the U.S. embassy in Bogota canceled on Monday.

    Colombia is one of the top recipients of U.S. aid in the world due to a security partnership. Since 2000, Colombia has received more than $13 billion in foreign assistance from the Departments of Defense and State and from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), largely focused on counternarcotics efforts, continued implementation of the government’s 2016 peace accord with the FARC rebel group, integration of Venezuelan migrants and refugees, and environmental programs.

    Fox News’ Morgan Phillips, Andrea Margolis, Bill Melugin, Lorraine Taylor, Landon Mion, and Reuters contributed to this report.