GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 6, (AP): Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said Wednesday his country will accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States, the second deportation deal that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reached during a Central America trip that has been focused mainly on immigration.

Under the agreement announced by Arévalo, the deportees would be returned to their home countries at US 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 at a news conference with Rubio. Previously, including under the Biden administration, Guatemala had been accepting on average seven to eight flights of its citizens from the US per week.

Under President Donald Trump it's also been one of the countries that have had migrants returned on US military planes. El Salvador announced a similar but broader agreement on Monday. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said his country would accept US deportees of any nationality, including American citizens and legal residents who are imprisoned for violent crimes.

Both Trump and Rubio acknowledged the legal uncertainty of sending Americans to another country for imprisonment. "I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. "I don’t know if we do or not, we’re looking at that right now.” Rubio called it a very generous offer but said there were "obviously legalities involved.

We have a Constitution.” 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 spanning Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. The agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala potentially help the Trump administration address what has always been a key sticking point in immigration enforcement since not everyone in the US illegally can be easily sent back home.

Venezuela, for example, has been a major source of migrants coming to the US in recent years, but rarely can the US deport Venezuelans back to their home country. But the US already has a robust network set up to send people to several Central American countries. Guatemala will expand its capacity to receive not just Guatemalans, but also migrants from other countries who will then be repatriated to their home countries. The details still need to be worked out.