Deportation, Murder and a Baby’s Survival Shame America
By David LaGuerre
A Missouri family’s search for safety ended in a Guatemalan sugarcane field, leaving three young children without their parents.
A Guatemalan couple killed after deportation has become a painful symbol of what can happen when immigration policy treats family unity as an obstacle rather than a human need. Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz were found bound and fatally wounded in a sugarcane field in southwestern Guatemala. Their 14-month-old daughter was found alive beside them. The people who committed these killings remain responsible for the crime, but the events that forced this family apart demand serious national reflection.
A Family Found in a Sugarcane Field
Guatemalan authorities found Pérez Paz, 43, and González de la Cruz, 25, in a field outside Retalhuleu, about 112 miles west of Guatemala City.
Reuters reported that their hands had been tied behind their backs. Police said Pérez Paz appeared to have suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, while González de la Cruz had a wound to her head. Shell casings were recovered nearby.
Local reporting said the couple had also been gagged and had their hands and feet bound. Both showed signs of physical trauma.
Their 14-month-old daughter was discovered crying beside her mother. The child showed signs of dehydration and was taken for medical care. The couple’s three daughters are now being cared for by extended family members.
The couple had been reported missing on July 20 after leaving home to register a motorcycle in a nearby community. Investigators have not publicly identified a motive or named any suspects.
That uncertainty matters. It would be irresponsible to claim that the couple was killed because of Pérez Paz’s deportation without evidence from investigators. What can be said is that deportation placed the family back in a country they had reportedly fled because of violence and poverty.
An ICE Arrest Broke the Family Apart
Pérez Paz had lived with his family in Overland, Missouri, near St. Louis.
According to his brother, Rolando Pérez Paz, the two men were traveling to roofing jobs in April 2025 when immigration agents stopped them near their home. Agents reportedly removed them from their work van, handcuffed and shackled them, and took them to the Phelps County Jail.
ICE confirmed that Pérez Paz was arrested for being unlawfully present in the United States. The agency also alleged that he had two drunken-driving convictions. However, St. Louis Public Radio reported that it could not find Missouri court records supporting that claim.
Court records did show that Pérez Paz pleaded guilty in May 2024 to driving without a valid license and paid a fine of about $200. A separate 2010 open-container ordinance charge in Florida had been dropped.
ICE defended its enforcement program by saying it remained committed to removing people who violate immigration laws and protecting public safety.
That is the government’s argument: immigration law must be enforced, and people without legal status may be removed.
Yet this case raises a difficult question. Was removing a working father with no publicly verified record of violent crime truly the best use of federal power?
Glendy Faced an Impossible Decision
After her husband’s deportation, González de la Cruz remained in Missouri with their children.
She had given birth to their youngest daughter in June 2025. Organizers said she worked two manual-labor jobs while raising the children and participating in an immigrant rights group.
She also had an active asylum case, with a court date reportedly scheduled for 2027. Still, financial pressure grew, and she feared that immigration agents could detain her and separate her from her daughters.
In June 2026, she returned to Guatemala.
The Missouri Workers Center described the decision as an effort to protect her children and keep the family together.
“Glendy came to our Fuerza meetings three weeks after giving birth,” the organization said. “She was working two jobs, bringing new members, showing up, even as her world was being torn apart.”
Her return has often been called a self-deportation. That legal term can sound voluntary. Her circumstances suggest something far more complicated.
A choice made under fear, poverty and the threat of family separation is not the same as a free choice.
Three Children Are Left Without Their Parents
Rolando Pérez Paz is now caring for the couple’s daughters.
“I felt that they took the thing I wanted most,” he told St. Louis Public Radio. “I felt a huge pain because it was my brother, my sister-in-law, people that wanted to work, to fight.”
He placed part of the moral blame on U.S. immigration enforcement.
“If immigration hadn’t picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn’t be going through this sorrow,” he said.
His statement reflects grief, not a proven legal finding. The people who bound and killed Pérez Paz and González de la Cruz are responsible for their deaths.
Still, Rolando’s words cannot be dismissed.
Government policies create consequences beyond arrest records and removal statistics. Deportation can separate spouses, eliminate household income, traumatize children and return people to places where they believe they are unsafe.
Nearly 32,000 people were deported to Guatemala during the first six months of 2026, according to United Nations data cited by Reuters. That was a 47 percent increase from the same period in 2025. More than 90 percent were returned from the United States.
Each number represents a person. Many also represent a family divided across borders.
What Supporters of Deportation Say
Supporters of stronger immigration enforcement argue that a nation has both the authority and responsibility to control its borders.
The White House says its deportation campaign protects jobs, saves public resources and improves safety. The administration has repeatedly emphasized the removal of people convicted of serious crimes.
Those concerns deserve to be addressed honestly. Every nation needs enforceable immigration laws. Violent offenders and genuine security threats should not be ignored.
But a serious immigration system must distinguish among:
- People convicted of violent crimes.
- Workers accused only of lacking legal status.
- Parents with pending asylum claims.
- Long-term residents supporting American families and communities.
- People who may face credible danger if returned.
When government messaging places all undocumented immigrants beside murderers, gang members and terrorists, it can erase those vital differences.
Public safety should be based on a person’s conduct, not on language designed to make an entire population appear dangerous.
A Nation Must Confront the Human Cost
The White House has made mass deportation a central measure of political strength. It publicly celebrates rising removal totals and describes deportation as a way to place Americans first.
But national strength is not measured only by how many people the government can expel.
It is also measured by restraint, fairness and respect for human dignity.
Pérez Paz and González de la Cruz appear to have wanted what millions of families want: steady work, safety and a better future for their children. That aspiration is not foreign to the American experience. It is one of the ideas Americans most often celebrate about their own ancestors.
The White House did not pull the trigger in that sugarcane field. The killers did. Investigators must find them and establish the motive.
Yet the administration cannot escape every moral question by pointing to the final criminal act. Its policies helped create the chain of separation, financial desperation and forced return that preceded this tragedy.
That does not establish legal responsibility. It does establish a duty to examine whether the policy is producing needless suffering.
The Shame of Sanitizing Cruelty
There is another reason this moment should trouble the nation.
America is still debating whether its history of cruelty should be taught plainly. Florida’s official social studies standards instruct students that enslaved people developed skills that, in some cases, “could be applied for their personal benefit.” The standard has been condemned by educators and civil rights groups for minimizing the violence and theft at the heart of slavery.
It would be inaccurate to say that all conservatives believe slavery was good for Black Americans. Some prominent Republicans, including Black conservatives, criticized Florida’s wording.
But it is shameful that any government standard invites children to search for a “personal benefit” inside a system that kidnapped, sold, raped, tortured and exploited human beings.
That same moral failure appears whenever cruelty is softened by official language.
Family separation becomes “enforcement.”
A frightened return becomes “self-deportation.”
Human beings become removal totals.
Suffering becomes proof that a policy is working.
A nation cannot heal what it refuses to name.
Their Story Must Be More Than a Statistic
Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz should be remembered as more than two entries in an immigration debate.
They were parents.
They worked.
They cared for their daughters.
They tried to keep their family together.
Now three children must grow up without them, and one little girl will someday learn that she was found alive beside her mother in a field.
Americans should demand a full investigation of the killings. They should also demand an immigration system that separates dangerous offenders from working parents, respects valid asylum proceedings and considers the safety of people facing removal.
Border security and compassion are not opposites. Accountability and due process can exist together.
The shame is not in admitting that policy has gone too far. The shame would be seeing the human cost, hearing the cries of a surviving child and refusing to change anything.
Source Note: Reporting was verified through Reuters, St. Louis Public Radio and KCUR, official White House and DHS materials, Florida’s published education standards, and civil rights responses. The motive for the couple’s killing and the identities of those responsible remain under investigation.
