LexBlog (LexBlog Guatemala)

According to the FDA Outbreak Table: The outbreak of Salmonella Newport (ref #1366) linked to cantaloupe has ended. Based on epidemiological information collected by CDC, a total of 70 people infected with the same strain of Salmonella Newport have been reported from 25 states. FDA’s traceback investigation identified Ayco Farms Inc. of Pompano Beach, Florida, as a common supplier...

2011 — Salmonella Newport – Del Monte Fresh Recall – Guatemala 2011 — Salmonella – Eagle Produce Recall – Arizona 2011 — Listeria monocytogenes – Jensen Farms Outbreak – Colorado  2012 — Salmonella Typhimurium & Newport – Chamberlain Farms Outbreak – Indiana 2017 — Salmonella Newport – Pre-Cut Melon Outbreak – Washington/Oregon 2018 — Salmonella...

President Bernardo Arévalo ended the nationwide state of siege in Guatemala on Monday, while maintaining joint military and police operations to combat organized crime and gangs. The move comes after a 30-day emergency period imposed in response to deadly prison riots and attacks that left 11 National Civil Police officers dead. In a nationally broadcast...

Grupo Licores de Guatemala, an international group in the production and marketing of spirits, has reached an agreement to acquire 100% of the share capital of Puerto de Indias, the Spanish gin brand, from H.I.G. Capital. In this transaction, Licores de Guatemala received legal support from Greenberg Traurig and Pérez-Llorca. H.I.G., for its part, was...

The International Court of Justice recently heard oral arguments by Guatemala, Belize and Honduras on Guatemala’s application to intervene under Article 62 of the Statute in the case concerning Sovereignty over the Sapodilla Cayes (Belize v Honduras). Guatemala’s prima facie grounds for intervention are straightforward: it is one of the three parties (in addition to...

On November 10, 2025, Comunicaciones Celulares S.A. (“Comcel” d/b/a “TIGO Guatemala (“TIGO”)”), a subsidiary of Millicom International Cellular (“Millicom”), a Luxembourg company, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (“DPA”) with the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to resolve a criminal investigation related to conduct

This prior post went in-depth into the recent $118.2 million FCPA enforcement action against Comcel (doing business as TIGO Guatemala – a mobile and fixed telecommunications service provider with its principal place of business in Guatemala). There are two specific individuals mentioned in the DOJ charging documents: Acisclo Valladares Urruela (“Valladares” pictured) (a citizen...

Judge blocks the deportation of Guatemalan children already waiting on the tarmac to be sent back Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons With migrant children waiting on tarmacs to be sent to their native Guatemala, a federal judge Sunday temporarily blocked the flights, siding with attorneys for the children who said the government was breaking laws...

  The Trump administration’s deportation flights are getting attention. Those on military aircraft come at high taxpayer expense — at least one flight, from El Paso, Texas, to Guatemala, “likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant,” reports Phil Stewart of Reuters. A publicly available first-class ticket was $853 at time. At least seven military flights...

Krystal Rodriguez-Campos Congratulations to the University of LaVerne’s Justice & Immigration Clinic for securing asylum for a transgender, HIV-positive woman from Guatemala, who fled from severe abuse.  Krystal Rodriguez-Campos directs the Clinic. According to the LaVerne Press release, “[d]espite facing numerous challenges, including a late asylum filing, a complex criminal history, and two...

Consumption of poorly prepared food has been identified as a factor in a fatal Guillain-Barré outbreak in Guatemala. Findings come from the results of case control studies announced by the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS) and the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security (IGSS). Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare disorder where the...

  Safe? from Lynn Marcus on Vimeo. Lynn Marcus of Arizona Law recently shared a 21-minute documentary about a U of A Immigration Law Clinic case that lasted almost 19 years. Here’s the link to “Safe?”  and a brief description of the story: “Seventeen years after fleeing Guatemala as teenagers, a young couple has finally obtained...

Public health officials in Guatemala have issued a warning as 40 people fell sick after eating dairy products. The Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance reported the food poisoning of 41 people after eating artisanal cheese in the town of Ciudad Vieja, in the department of Sacatepéquez. The first cases were detected on Aug....

More than 30 people have fallen sick and four have died in Guatemala after eating shellfish. The National Commission for the Surveillance and Control of Red Tide in Guatemala has extended an alert because of the presence of saxitoxins above the limits on the coasts of Tiquisate, Escuintla, Retalhuleu and San Marcos. Public health officials...

Today, Reps. Joaquin Castro (TX-20) and Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) led a bipartisan letter to President Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the administration to expand Temporary Protected Status protections for migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Despite the ongoing humanitarian crises in Guatemala, El...

On a trip to Guatemala, a friend introduced me to a unique outdoor classroom, a learning lab of sorts, for those interested in sustainable agriculture.  It’s located on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a beautiful volcanic lake in the central highlands. IMAP https://imapermaculture.org/ is short for the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute and was founded by local...

On a trip to Guatemala, a friend introduced me to a unique outdoor classroom, a learning lab of sorts, for those interested in sustainable agriculture.  It’s located on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a beautiful volcanic lake in the central highlands. IMAP https://imapermaculture.org/ is short for the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute and was founded by local...

JOSHUA SCHNEYER, MICA ROSENBERG and KRISTINA COOKE for Reuters report that “U.S. poultry plants, hungry for labor, rely on migrant workers and staffing agencies to fill jobs. With migration soaring from Central America, some minors are making their way into that pipeline. Reuters found one Guatemalan teen who, with the help of illegal brokers, landed...

For years, there have been a steady stream of migrants from Guatemala, and all of Central America, to the United States.   Civil wars, violence, poverty, and more have contributed to the migration. In the first dispatch from a new series on migration in the Americas (“A hunger crisis forces Guatemalans to choose: migration or death”...

  Challenges & Opportunities in Central America’s Northern Triangle Region This UCTV production sheds some light on the realities of life in Central America: “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador (The Northern Triangle) are experiencing a historic Diaspora to the US southern border. The precipitants of this migration are an unprecedented economic contraction occurring after back-to-back...

Following her trip to Guatemala, VP Harris traveled to Mexico City. The trip continues her efforts to address the root causes of migration. Today she met with Mexican President López Obrador,  According to reporting by the New York Times, Harris stated that the administration “would issue loans for affordable housing, infrastructure development and efforts to...

Official White House Photo Alexandra Jaffe and Christopher Sherman for the Associated Press report on Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit this week  to Guatemala and Mexico, her first foreign trip as vice president.  During the trip, the Biden administration is expected to announce new measures to fight smuggling and trafficking, and hopes to announce additional...

Photo courtesy of City of Carthage website Elizabeth Findell, Juan Montes and José de Cordoba of The Wall Street Journal tell the heartbreaking story of 19 people, mainly Maya Indian migrants from Guatemala, who “were killed in Mexico in January, their bodies dismembered and burned 14 miles from the Texas border.” Among the victims were longtime...

Professorsolo2015, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons BuzzFeed News has a shocking story: 33 unaccompanied minors were deported to Guatemala despite a preliminary injunction issued by federal judge Emmet Sullivan that should have prevented the flight. According to ICE, the agency did not learn of the injunction until the flight had landed in Guatemala, despite...

In the rainforests of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, the fires often start when drug traffickers try to clear large swaths of land. Due to the dry bush and lack of rainfall, the flames often spread out of control, but in the end, the result is the same: oaks, palms, acacia and mahogany trees are replaced...

As Ming noted earlier this week, “thousands of migrants have been returned to their home countries, including some who are sick with the [corona]virus, spreading disease contracted in the US to places ill-equipped to manage their health care.” Guatemala, for one, is taking steps to avoid receiving more COVID-19-infected deportees. As Reuters reports, Guatemala will...

Guatemala Scene by vasse nicolas,antoine Promoters of Migrant Liberation is a Guatemalan organization providing free translation services to indigenous Guatemalan migrants in the US. Their goal, as the BBC documents, is to assist Guatemalan migrants who are fluent in one of the nation’s 25 protected indigenous languages but not Spanish nor English. There is an...

On November 12, 2019, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida announced two key money-laundering developments concerning high-profile Guatemalans: the arrest of Alvaro Estuardo Cobar Bustamante, the director of a national Guatemalan bank, and the unsealing of a case against and guilty plea of Manuel Antonio Baldizon Mendez, a former presidential candidate in...

President Trump is following up on efforts to deny asylum eligibility to Central Americans who travel through countries on the way to the United States where they might have applied for asylum. On Friday, the White House announced that the United States and Guatemala have signed a “Safe Third Country agreement” requiring that asylum seekers...

Why are we seeing so many Guatemalans seeking asylum in United States? Rachel E. Brown offers a short explanation: “[An United Nations-backed group [t]he [International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala] was invited into Guatemala in 2007 to eliminate “clandestine illegal armed groups” – criminal networks that have infiltrated its government. These shadowy webs of...