The agreements were announced by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as the US administration seeks flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations.
Noem described it as a way to offer asylum-seekers options other than coming to the United States. She said the agreements had been in the works for months. with the US government applying pressure on Honduras and Guatemala to get them done.
"Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well," Noem said. "We've never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States."
Both governments denied having signed safe third-country agreements when asked following Noem's comments.
Guatemala's presidential communications office reaffirmed that Guatemala would receive Central Americans sent by the United States as a temporary stop on the return to their countries.
Noem said Thursday that "politically, this is a difficult agreement for their governments to do."
Both countries have limited resources and many needs making support for asylum-seekers from other countries a tougher sell domestically. There are also the optics of two left-of-centre governments appearing to help the Trump administration limit access to US asylum.
Noem said she was given the already signed agreement, during her meeting in Guatemala. Later there was a public signing ceremony for a memorandum of understanding that will put US Customs and Border Protection officers in the Guatemalan capital's international airport to help train local agents to screen for terrorist suspects.
Honduras' immigration director Wilson Paz also denied such an agreement was signed.
During US President Donald Trump's first term, the US signed such accords called safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the US to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for US protection and permitted the US government to send them to those countries deemed "safe."
The US has had such an agreement with Canada since 2002.
The practical challenge was that all three Central American countries at the time were seeing large numbers of their own citizens head to the US to escape violence and a lack of economic opportunity. They also had extremely under-resourced asylum systems.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico would not sign a safe third-country agreement, but at the same time Mexico has accepted more than 5,000 migrants from other countries deported from the US since Trump took office. She said Mexico accepted them for humanitarian reasons and helped them return to their home countries.
