United States and Guatemalan authorities have announced the arrest of six people charged with human smuggling linked to a semi-trailer truck crash in Mexico in 2021 that killed more than 50 migrants.

Immigration is a core issue for voters.

Guatemalan police have arrested seven Guatemalans accused of having smuggled 53 migrants from Mexico and Central America who died of asphyxiation in 2022 in Texas after being abandoned in a tractor trailer in the scorching summer heat.

Nearly six months into his administration Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo says opposition in the Congress and the Attorney General’s Office have made it difficult to implement the change he seeks for the Central American nation that he says he found “semi-destroyed.”.

Guatemala’s new president has huge challenges to address now that he's finally been sworn into office.

Protests by thousands of Guatemalans this week supporting President-elect Bernardo Arévalo suggest that the efforts by some officials to derail his presidency have awakened a new will among many citizens to defend democracy.

Guatemala's President-elect Bernardo Arévalo says he plans to call people into the streets next week to protest efforts to derail his presidency before he can take office.

Over the past decade, Guatemalan presidential candidate Sandra Torres has been drifting rightward on the political spectrum as she repeatedly has tried to win the presidency.

The Guatemalan government’s clumsy interference with its presidential election has turned a global spotlight on a country whose struggles with deep corruption previously received little international notice.

Electoral workers are slowly tallying ballots across Guatemala, and early counts are giving no indication of which two candidates from a huge field of presidential contenders will advance to a runoff.

Just days away from electing a new president, many Guatemalans remain undecided, unimpressed by the leading candidates and even considering casting a protest vote to express their disapproval.

An Indigenous female farmworker leader hopes to become Guatemala's next president.

Guatemalan authorities have arrested more than a dozen alleged members of a migrant smuggling network near the shared border with Mexico, including four sought by the United States in connection with the death of a migrant in Texas in 2021.

Several hundred migrants who had departed from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula in hopes of reaching the United States entered Guatemalan territory where they were intercepted by authorities who began talks on returning them to their homelands.

The body of Guatemalan migrant Daniel Arnulfo Pérez Uxla was laid out for the memorial service Sunday in his hometown of Tejar, in the highland province of Chimaltenango.

Guatemalan officials say they're trying to arrest a former anti-corruption prosecutor whose ouster led the U.S. to reduce cooperation with the Central American nation’s legal system.

Thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets in protest, blocking highways and calling for a national strike over the government’s apparent unwillingness to tackle corruption.

He believes his daughter Santa is one of the charred corpses found in a northern Mexico border state on Saturday. The killings revived memories of the gruesome 2010 massacre of 72 migrants near the town of San Fernando in the same gang-ridden state. “In the aforementioned acts of Jan. 22, at least 12 state police officers participated,” Barrios Mojica said. In December, one of the four victims so far identified in the January massacre claimed the vehicle from immigration authorities. But Barrios Mojica said the state police officers charged in the killings knew their shell casing might give them away, so probably picked them up.

Honduran migrants hoping to reach the U.S. entered Guatemala on foot Thursday, testing the newly reopened frontier that had been shut due to the new coronavirus pandemic. Guatemala’s president quickly vowed to detain them and return them to Honduras, saying the migrants represented a threat to the health of Guatemalans amid efforts to contain the pandemic. In one group were four teenagers, all friends and neighbors from San Pedro Sula, from which hundreds of migrants had set out the previous night. Mexico and the United States deported hundreds of migrants back to their home countries to try to empty detention centers. Mexico has typically offered migrants the opportunity to seek asylum there, but many have their minds set on the United States.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei wearing a protective face mask as a precaution against the new coronavirus arrives at Constitution square for the independence day celebration in Guatemala City, Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said Friday he has tested positive for the new coronavirus, but he told a local radio station he feels well. Up to now, I have body aches, it hurt more yesterday than today, like a bad cold,” the president said. Guatemalans returning to their country and children under 10 would not be subject to the test requirement. The country of 16 million has more than 83,600 confirmed coronavirus cases, and 3,036 deaths.

All rights reserved)GUATEMALA CITY Guatemala plans to reopen its borders next week, six months after closing them in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. A government notice published Thursday in the official register said that with some limitations and requirements to follow health guidelines, the country's land, sea and air borders would reopen Sept. 18. The notice also restricts Guatemalans' ability to travel within the country for recreational, social or familial trips. Guatemalas government has reported about 80,000 COVID-19 infections and nearly 3,000 deaths. More than half of the countrys municipalities continue to be on the highest level of health alert.

The United States resumed deportation flights to Guatemala, nearly a month after the Central American country refused to accept them. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)WASHINGTON U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday that it has expanded COVID-19 testing among people held at its detention facilities following criticism of its response to the outbreak. ICE says it now offers voluntary tests for the virus to all people held at detention facilities in Tacoma, Washington, and Aurora, Colorado, and will consider doing the same at other locations. There have been 45 confirmed cases among ICE employees at detention facilities, including 15 at a facility at the airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, where people are held just prior to deportation. The results for the testing at the Aurora, Colorado, facility are expected to be available within a week.

GUATEMALA CITY Guatemala's president questioned his country's relationship with the United States, revealing frustration over the U.S. continuing to send deportees infected with COVID-19 to a country struggling to manage the crisis. This of allies with the United States isn't true, President Alejandro Giammattei said Thursday. Guatemala is an ally of the United States, but the United States is not Guatemala's ally. Guatemala has confirmed 119 deportees arrived with COVID-19 from the United States. Giammattei said the infected deportees were creating serious problems in his country's already overloaded health system.

This combination of file photos shows presidential candidate Sandra Torres in Villanueva, Guatemala, on June 14, 2019, and her opponent Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala City on June 13, 2019. Guatemalans go the polls Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019,GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemalans voted Sunday in a presidential runoff pitting former first lady Sandra Torres against conservative Alejandro Giammattei in a nation beset by poverty and unemployment, and dealing with migration issues. Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. local time and close at 6:00 p.m., with preliminary results expected by late Sunday. And whoever wins, should focus on crime and employment, to keep more Guatemalans from going to the United States, Estrada added. Sundays winner will take office on Jan. 14 and be tasked with attempting to stem the large flow of migrants headed toward the United States.