The “American dream” of Nixon Pérez Paz and Glendy González de la Cruz ended in a sugarcane field in southern Guatemala.
Their bodies were found there, each with gunshot wounds, on July 21.
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It had been just over a year since Pérez Paz, 43, had been deported from the United States, and barely a month since González, 25, decided to return to her native country with their three daughters to reunite with him and continue their family life there.
Next to the bodies, the police found the youngest of the girls, Giovanni, 14 months old, alive but severely dehydrated.
“This is how many immigrants in the U.S. fear they will end up,” a friend of the couple named Liliana, who prefers to be identified only by her first name, tells BBC Mundo.
“We live with the fear that we might be caught and separated from our husbands, our children, or sent back to the dangerous country we fled from,” she adds.
Detention and deportation
In 2019 they left Guatemala to seek an alternative to poverty and violence in the U.S. He emigrated first, crossing the border from Mexico irregularly, and she followed months later with their then only daughter, Marisol.
After a brief stay in Texas, they found stability in Overland, a quiet city of about 15,000 inhabitants in the state of Missouri, in the U.S. Midwest.
There they had their second daughter, while Pérez Paz worked as a roofer and González alternated jobs in fruit packing plants, bottling plants, and other factories.
In March 2021, his brother, Rolando Pérez Paz, joined them, as he told BBC Mundo.
The family’s ordeal began on April 15 of last year, when at the start of their workday, both brothers were intercepted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Several agents got out of an unmarked vehicle and surrounded us,” Pérez Paz recalls by phone from Guatemala.
After forcing them out of their work truck, they were handcuffed and shackled and first taken to a detention center and then to the Phelps County jail.
“They told us we were being arrested for entering the country irregularly and that we were going to be deported,” Pérez Paz says, confirming that neither he nor his brother had legal status.
When asked by BBC Mundo, ICE confirmed the detention.
“Nixon Pérez Paz, a criminal illegal immigrant from Guatemala, was arrested during a targeted immigration enforcement operation,” reads the message attributed to a spokesperson for the agency and sent to this media outlet by email.
“He had been convicted twice for driving under the influence in Overland, Missouri, once in 2020 and again in 2024,” it continues. “He received due process, was issued a final removal order on April 21, 2025, and was deported to Guatemala in May” of that year.
His brother was also deported a month later. “I stayed fighting my case with the help of an organization, but there was no way,” he laments.
Pregnant again, González de la Cruz remained in Overland, where a month later she gave birth to their third daughter.
“After being left alone in charge of the family, Glendy struggled for a whole year to make ends meet,” says the Missouri Workers Center (MWC) on its social media.
The Guatemalan collaborated with this group, advocating for migrants’ rights through its organizing committee called Fuerza.
“Glendy started coming to Fuerza meetings three weeks after giving birth. Despite having two jobs, she showed up, brought new members, even when she saw her world falling apart,” MWC recalls in its message.
“In June, to protect her daughters and keep the family together — and fearing she might lose custody of the girls — Glendy made the difficult decision to return to Guatemala, despite having an asylum process appointment set for 2027,” the organization adds, something BBC Mundo has not been able to verify.
Thus, the Pérez González family joined the growing number of Guatemalans deported from the U.S. since Donald Trump took office in January 2025 with the promise to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.”
So far this year, the Central American country has received 38,720 deportees, according to the latest figures from the Guatemalan Institute of Migration (IGM), a 47% increase compared to the same period last year. More than 90% of the deportees were sent from the U.S., and the rest from Mexico.
With gunshot wounds
Back in their native country, the family settled in the municipality of San Andrés Villaseca, a rural area in the department of Retalhuleu, 175 kilometers west of the capital.
The last time they were seen alive was on July 20, when they left their home to carry out some errands.
“When we saw they didn’t return, we reported the disappearance to the police and the community authority,” recalls Rolando Pérez Paz. “Thank God the communities here were willing to help.”
Alerted by the cries of a baby, the next day neighbors discovered the couple’s bodies in a nearby sugarcane field.
Upon arrival, according to confirmation from the National Civil Police (PNC) to BBC Mundo, the agents found them with their hands tied behind their backs and gagged, without belongings and with possible gunshot wounds to the neck and head.
In the area, they also found shell casings, a towel, and a white and pink Champion brand shoe cataloged as evidence, and seized a red motorcycle at the scene.
The PNC did not respond to BBC Mundo’s question about whether the couple had been targets of violent incidents in the past or had reported threats, and according to local media, it is now working with the prosecutor’s office to try to clarify what happened.
“This case reflects how broken the system is”
Guatemala went from 16.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024 to 17.65 in 2025, more than double the global average, according to the Center for National Economic Research. And although there was a decrease in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, the numbers rose again in June.
Experts mainly attribute this to power struggles between different gangs, as well as drug trafficking.
Already at the beginning of last year, a wave of violence that started with simultaneous riots in three prisons revealed the power these groups still have in Guatemala, especially Barrio 18, which fights for control of the streets of the capital and other localities with its eternal rival, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
This forced President Bernardo Arévalo to declare a state of siege, accusing “political-criminal mafias” of trying to destabilize a government besieged by violence and growing institutional tension.
The identity of those responsible for the deaths of Glendy González and Nixon Pérez in Retalhuleu and their motives remain to be clarified.
Whoever it was, “they took away what I loved most,” laments Rolando Pérez Paz today.
“My brother, my sister-in-law, (they were) people who wanted to work, who wanted to fight,” he emphasizes. “In recent months we always lived in fear of raids, of being caught,” he acknowledges.
<p“Now what constantly comes to my mind is that if immigration hadn’t detained my brother, my sister-in-law might still be alive and the girls wouldn’t be going through this pain.”To help with the maintenance and education of the minors, who were left in the care of the extended family in Guatemala, funds are being raised through the GoFundMe platform.
A vigil has also been organized on Sunday in front of the Overland city hall to honor the couple’s memory.
“This case reflects how broken the system is,” Zachary Mueller, strategist at States at the Core, a nonprofit that promotes inclusive democracy and works with organizations like MWC, tells BBC Mundo.
“It disproves the idea that any of this [the deportations] has to do with public safety. Now there are two dead people and three young girls left without their parents for the rest of their lives.”
