Carlos Navarro was eating takeout outside a restaurant in Virginia recently when immigration officers apprehended him and said there was an order for his removal from the country.
He had never had an encounter with the law, said Mr. Navarro, 32, adding that he worked at poultry plants.
“Absolutely nothing.”
By last week, he was back in Guatemala for the first time in 11 years, calling his wife in the United States from a reception center for deportees in the capital, Guatemala City.
Mr. Navarro’s experience may be a preview of the kind of swift deportations coming under President Donald J. Trump to communities around the United States, which is home to as many as 14 million unauthorized immigrants.
The administration, which has promised the largest deportations in American history, was said to be starting them as soon as Tuesday. In his inaugural speech on Monday, Mr. Trump promised to “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”