An Overland, Missouri, couple who had recently returned to Guatemala was found bound and shot dead in a sugarcane field.
Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz were killed just weeks after González de la Cruz self-deported to be with her husband, who was deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year.
Their 14-month-old daughter, Giovanni, was found crying beside her mother's body in southern Guatemala. The child showed signs of dehydration and was taken to a medical center, where she is recovering, according to Guatemalan news outlet ABC Stereo.
Guatemala's National Civil Police told local news outlets that Pérez Paz, 43, and González de la Cruz, 25, had been gagged and had their hands and feet bound. Authorities said both showed signs of physical trauma. Prosecutors are investigating the killings, including a possible motive and who was responsible.
"I felt that they took the thing I wanted most," said Rolando Pérez Paz, Pérez Paz's 51-year-old brother. "I felt a huge pain because it was my brother, my sister-in-law — people that wanted to work, to fight."
The couple was reported missing July 20 after leaving home to register a motorcycle in a nearby town, according to Rolando Perez Paz. The deaths were the culmination of several months of struggles with financial hardships, run-ins with the federal government and violence.
In the early hours one morning last March, Pérez Paz was driving his 51-year-old brother, Rolando Pérez Paz, to their roofing job when they were stopped near their home by ICE.
A large group of agents exited an unmarked vehicle and swarmed them, taking them out of their white work van and later putting them in handcuffs and shackles before taking them to the Phelps County Jail, Rolando Pérez Paz told St. Louis Public Radio on Monday from his home in Guatemala.
The agents didn't explain much other than telling him there wasn't a warrant out for their arrests but that they were being arrested for entering the county illegally and they would be deported.
The two men were in the country without legal status, fleeing violence and poverty from the Central American country, said Rolando Perez Paz. A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Overland Police Chief Andy Mackey said the department was not involved in the two men's stop, detention and deportation last year. In an unrelated May 2024 incident, court records show Pérez Paz had pled guilty to driving without a valid driver's license after being pulled over by Overland police and subsequently paid the roughly $200 fine.
David Diamond, Pérez Paz's Brentwood-based traffic attorney listed on the 2024 court docket, would not answer questions about him. When STLPR informed him that Pérez Paz had been shot and killed alongside his wife, the attorney said it "doesn't matter" before hanging up the phone.
González de la Cruz remained in Overland, a small city in St. Louis County, where she gave birth to the couple's third daughter in June 2025. She worked two manual labor jobs while raising their children but eventually decided to return to Guatemala with her girls as financial pressures mounted — and grew increasingly fearful that she would be detained and separated from them despite working through an active asylum case, according to organizers with Fuerza, a St. Louis-based immigrant rights group she was a part of.
"I think this is indicative of the problem and the broken process," said Zachary Mueller, a Kansas City-based strategist at States at the Core, a nonprofit helping local communities fight authoritarianism and political violence. "It belies that idea that any of this is about public safety because now two people are dead and three young girls are without parents for the rest of their lives."
Rolando Pérez Paz said he is caring for Nixon and Glendy's three young daughters but has had difficulty explaining the tragedy to them.
"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. "Unfortunately, immigration — the (U.S.) government — doesn't see that. It makes no difference to them."
A spokesperson for ICE, Guatemala's National Civil Police and Overland Mayor Marty Little did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A candlelight vigil for the couple is planned at 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2, at Overland City Hall.
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