Latin American Migrants Boost Remittances Amid ICE Crackdown

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has triggered a corresponding increase in remittances.

That’s according to a report Sunday (July 13) by The Washington Post, which illustrates this trend with the example of the VM Services money transfer business in suburban Maryland, where lines are out the door most weekends. 

“People who’ve saved up money — who have that money left — don’t want to keep it here,” Javier Guzman told the Post as he prepared to send back $125 to his mother at VM Services in Wheaton last week. “There’s a fear that they might not be able to access it otherwise.”

The report noted that Guzman fled gang violence in Honduras in 2001, seeking opportunity in the U.S. Now, he’s sending money back home in hopes of retiring there some day.

Manuel Orozco, who heads the program for migration, remittances and development at the Inter-American Dialogue policy group in D.C., said that the increase in funds shows how fears of U.S. immigration policy have impacted immigrant populations.

Those policies have driven a steady uptick in remittances to Central America, he added, with those numbers jumping more sharply in January through March than in the same period in previous years. Remittances to El Salvador climbed 14%, Honduras 20% and Guatemala 21%.

“If you’re detained, you won’t be able to keep sending money. So your only option is to try to send everything you can now,” Orozco said. 

While presidents and policies come and go, remittances are — as PYMNTS wrote last month —  a constant, with workers around the world sending money home to friends and family to help cover costs like living expenses, medical needs or tuition.

According to The World Bank, remittances to low-to-middle income countries like India, Mexico and the Philippines were up 5.8% in 2024 at $685 billion.

As PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster said in a conversation with Matt Oppenheimer, Remitly’s CEO, “There’s a grit and tenacity to find employment regardless of where it is — even in an uncertain environment.”  

And with that tenacity comes the need to transmit funds across borders. 

“It’s hard to overstate the relevance of remittances in the global economy,” Webster added.  

Considering the fact that 250 million people worldwide live outside the country where they were born, the addressable market for simpler cross-border payments is formidable.

Still, there are some headwinds to that streamlining, the report added, particularly in economies that still depend on cash. Cross-border payments have also historically been hindered by delays and lack of transparency surrounding fees.

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