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Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
This one links to the latest Border Update, media of two interviews about the border and migration, and a joint statement with colleagues at the border. It has links to events and some recommended readings.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
Take a moment today and sit with the fact that 48 percent of our fellow Americans favor taking any category of people and “establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held.”
Source is a CBS News poll.
Thank you to Luz Mely Reyes of the independent Venezuelan media outlet Efecto Cocuyo for hosting and sharing this conversation about the Trump administration’s ongoing anti-immigration offensive and the outlines of what a better policy would look like.
It is in Spanish, as is the site’s writeup of the interview. Here’s a quick English translation of that page:
The United States’ immigration policies, now based on a promise from a president who pledged to carry out the largest deportation in history, has generated a devastating impact on the community of migrants living in the United States, whose stay in that country is threatened by a system that makes it difficult for them to apply for asylum and regularize their immigration status through policies that have become obsolete.
To analyze the role of asylum, the causes of migration, the impact of U.S. policies, and recommendations for a more effective and humane management of the migratory phenomenon, Luz Mely Reyes, director of Efecto Cocuyo, spoke with Adam Isacson, director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
From the “stick and the carrot to just the stick”.
According to Isacson, the Biden administration adopted a mixed strategy, combining incentives (the “carrot”) such as humanitarian parole and the use of CBP One to schedule appointments at the border, with restrictive measures (the “stick”) such as the continuation of Title 42 to remove migrants and rules limiting access to asylum for those without prior appointments. “So, Biden chose something of a carrot and stick arrangement for the many migrants who were arriving.”
The Wola executive describes Trump’s policy as exclusively punitive (“stick only”), with the elimination of humanitarian parole, making access to asylum more difficult, and increasing deportations. He highlights the use of deportation flights, including with military aircraft. “In its two weeks, it has chosen only the stick and ended the carrots. CBP One no longer exists,” he explained.
A “broken and rickety immigration system”
Isacson emphasizes that the U.S. immigration system is “broken” and has a “rickety” capacity to receive, process and evaluate asylum claims. This is despite the fact that the majority of migrants are asylum seekers.
The executive explains that, currently, most migrants’ cases are handled by about 700 immigration judges who must hear more than 3 million cases that take years to resolve.
Isacson explains that although many migrants are fleeing insecurity and violence, for the most part their applications do not meet the strict requirements for asylum in the United States. “One cannot flee, no one cannot get asylum statuses in the U.S. just for being a victim of widespread violence or just for not being able to feed their children because of the situation of bad governance.”
WOLA’s recommendations for more effective immigration management
Isacson also advocates for fair, faster, more efficient, more just decisions with better processing. “There are so many things we have to do right now just to get to common sense and basic legality, that talk of reform is an issue for the future at this point.”
See also:
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
I had a great conversation with Greg Sargent at the New Republic for his popular “Daily Blast” podcast, which he released on February 6. The audio is here and a transcript is here. We talked about migration through Mexico and the futility of blowing up a multifaceted bilateral relationship by threatening tariffs over it.
The introductory text for the podcast reads:
Stephen Miller privately worried about imposing overly aggressive tariffs on Mexico because it could imperil Mexico’s effort to apprehend migrants traveling north to our southern border, reports The Wall Street Journal. That revelation is striking. Understood correctly, it’s an acknowledgment that Mexico had already been cracking down on migration, due to an arrangement secured by President Biden. That badly undermines Trump’s scam that his threat of tariffs forced Mexico to do his bidding on the border. We talked to Adam Isacson, an expert on Latin America, who explains what Mexico has actually been doing on immigration, and why it undercuts Trump’s biggest claims about immigration, tariffs, Mexico, and more. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.
The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
This one links to the latest Border Update and our analysis of the USAID aid freeze. It has a video I made while walking around a deserted downtown Washington looking at all the hotspots where a coup is reportedly taking place inside. It has links to events and some recommended readings.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
Here is a piece that WOLA published last Friday (January 31) in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on most foreign aid. It’s even more urgent now: since we published it, the President and Elon Musk (which is which isn’t always clear) have been on a full-bore offensive to abolish USAID.
Here’s the intro, but you can read the whole thing at WOLA’s site.
The unprecedented pause and potential elimination of many U.S. foreign assistance programs, announced in President Trump’s executive order “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” has caused shock waves worldwide. The State Department has since backtracked and taken the welcome move to exclude “life-saving humanitarian assistance” from this freeze. Still, most programs remain on long-term hold even though they support priorities that the Trump administration claims to uphold, like curbing mass migration, reducing illicit drug supplies, and fostering economic prosperity.
State Department and USAID-managed foreign assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean totaled a little over $2 billion in FY 2023, the most recent year for which an actual amount is available. While this is a fraction of the $45 billion in base U.S. foreign assistance obligated for State and USAID programs that year, it is enough to guarantee that great harm will result from the 90-day pause in use of funds and the possibility that agreed-upon programs might be modified or discontinued. That is causing great uncertainty and alarm among “implementing partners”—civil society organizations, international organizations, and contractors region-wide- : they are being forced to cancel events, lay off staff, and determine how or if they will be able to honor commitments.
The freeze applies beyond development and human rights efforts to encompass programs that groups like WOLA have often critiqued. Much U.S. military and police aid, including training programs and counter-drug eradication and interdiction funded through the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Bureau, is now on hold.
Far from making the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous, the pause in funding and uncertainty about future funds undermine fundamental U.S. interests to an extent that is difficult to comprehend. It is actively weakening efforts to address the reasons millions are fleeing Latin America and the Caribbean, like armed conflicts, violent organized crime, rampant corruption, democratic backsliding, closing civic space, weak justice systems and rule of law, inadequate policing and public security, gender-based violence, exclusion from formal markets, and vulnerability to climate change. The aid freeze is an exquisitely wrapped gift to the United States’ regional adversaries, from dictators to drug lords to human smugglers to great-power rivals like China.
I heard there’s a slow-motion coup happening in Washington this weekend, and I needed some exercise, so I visited some of the scenes where it’s all going down right now.
The result: it was lonely.
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
This Update is the product of interviews and the review of over 270,000 words of source documents since January 23. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.
The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
This one is jam-packed because between testifying in the Senate, taking my kid to college six states away, and dealing with Trump’s first days and Colombia deportation fiasco, it’s been hard to find the time to assemble an email. So this edition has some serious accumulated density.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
Here’s an explainer WOLA posted on Friday, sounding alarms about the likely impact of these changes from the second Trump administration’s first few days. This is all before the feud with Colombia and the effort to halt a huge amount of federal spending.
It covers the following changes that will, if implemented, gravely harm Latin America:
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro got himself sworn into office again 2 weeks ago, despite losing an election, riding a wave of repression. WOLA’s latest podcast episode is a situation report from my colleague Laura Dib, who runs our Venezuela program.
Here’s the text of the podcast landing page at wola.org.
The director of WOLA’s Venezuela Program, Laura Dib, joins the podcast to discuss the political, human rights, and diplomatic reality following Nicolás Maduro’s January 10 inauguration. Maduro’s new term begins amid severe tensions, as he plainly lost July 28, 2024 presidential elections and has employed waves of repression, including rounding up and in some cases forcibly disappearing political prisoners, to deny the result.
Despite the context of repression and intimidation, Laura underscores that on January 9 Venezuelans still took part in 157 reported protests, including one with the participation of opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is in hiding. The response was further crackdowns, including the temporary detention of María Corina, the enforced disappearance of the son in law of the election’s true winner Edmundo González Urrutia, and the enforced disappearance of Carlos Correa, director of NGO Espacio Público, who was recently released after being missing for nine days.
With repression worsening and space closing for civil society—particularly through implementation of a harsh new NGO law—it is difficult to perceive a path forward. Laura emphasizes, however, the remaining areas of hope; possible cracks within the ruling coalition, significant consensus within the international community, and the persistent bravery of Venezuela’s civil society and diaspora. Laura acknowledges the complexities of the deep-rooted corruption and private sector ties that make Maduro’s hermetic regime difficult to assess and counter.
She also discusses the confused and contradictory nature of the new Trump administration’s likely approach to Venezuela. A transactionally minded president uninterested in democracy promotion is leading a group of officials with different, and potentially clashing, priorities: some are staunchly “anti-communist” but others are focused on stopping migration and enabling deportations to Venezuela.
Laura also discusses the complexities of sanctions, economic collapse, and Venezuela’s relations with its neighbors. The episode ends with a strong call for the international community to focus its efforts on supporting Venezuelan civil society and preserving the civic space that exists.
For more up-to-date information, read Laura Dib’s commentary “Venezuela: Authoritarianism and Resistance”; a commentary by Carolina Jiménez, President of WOLA, “Venezuela between repression and resistance,” and watch WOLA’s recent event, “Autoritarismo y Resistencia: Análisis de la Situación en Venezuela.”
Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
This Update is the product of interviews and the review of over 210,000 words of source documents since January 18. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.
The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in the format of this week’s Border Update. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
This update is later than usual because of staff travel and congressional testimony in recent days. It reflects events as of the end of January 17, making it slightly out of date. Weekly publication will resume on time on Friday, January 24.
Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.
Media are reporting that about 100 executive orders will follow Donald Trump’s inauguration, many related to the border and migration. We can expect an end to the CBP One mobile phone app and humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicarguans, and Venezuelans. We can expect a push to renew “Remain in Mexico,” possibly Title 42 and “safe third country” agreements: programs that require the cooperation of Mexico and other nations. A gigantic piece of spending legislation to fund this, plus a mass deportation plan, may soon move in Congress.
The Wall Street Journal reported that ICE may begin raids seeking to detain undocumented migrants in Chicago immediately after Inauguration Day. Near Bakersfield, California, Border Patrol agents spread fear among farmworkers by carrying out a large-scale operation of their own. Officials like “Border Czar” Tom Homan are promising conflict with so-called “sanctuary cities” as they call for more detention and deportation capacity, while Mexico prepares to receive large numbers of people.
Enough Democratic senators voted “yes” to break a filibuster and permit likely passage of the Laken Riley Act. The Republican-led bill, named for a woman murdered by a Venezuelan migrant, would allow migrants with pending immigration cases to be detained even if just arrested and charged with a petty crime, and would empower state attorneys-general to challenge aspects of U.S. immigration law in court. The Senate’s cloture vote passed with the votes of 10 of 45 Democratic-aligned senators present, all of them from electorally competitive states.
December 2024 saw the fewest Border Patrol apprehensions per day of the entire Biden administration. The administration’s June rule barring most asylum access between ports of entry is the main reason. For the second time ever, more migrants were encountered at the official border crossings than apprehended by Border Patrol between them. Texas’s Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector measured the most apprehensions, edging out San Diego, which had been number one since June 2024.
Another congressional hearing testimony, another nasty shouting match. These aren’t fun because you don’t have the floor, but you have to stand up to bullies.
If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s how the Fox News website covered it:
“Here’s Laken Riley,” said Hawley as her picture was posted behind him. “Her murder, her horrific murder at the hands of this illegal migrant who was also unlawfully paroled in the United States. [Is] her death not an actual issue?”
The activist, Adam Isacson, who works as director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, responded by saying: “Of course it’s an issue, it’s a tragedy.”
“I didn’t say that Laken Riley’s death was not an actual issue, I said that migrant crime is not an actual issue,” said Isacson. “Migrant crime is much less of an issue than U.S. citizen-committed crime.”
To which Hawley answered, “[Riley] is dead because of migrant crime.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) was citing these two sentences from a March 1, 2024 “Border Update” video. (It took me a while even to find it, because things said in videos don’t show up in online searches. That’s good opposition research.)
The horrific murder of a nursing student in Georgia has a lot of people on the right talking about ‘migrant crime’ like it’s an actual issue. But the data, in fact, show that migrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens.
Of course I stand by that. I’m telling the truth. Evidence shows that migrants—undocumented, asylum-seeking, and otherwise—commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens. If you’re governing a community and want to make sure it’s protected from crime, you’re doing it wrong if you divert law enforcement resources to targeting immigrants, who (with tragic exceptions because all humans commit crimes) break laws less often.
Here are some of the sources I was drawing from at the time:
In full smarm mode, Sen. Hawley feigned shock that a witness invited by the Democrats might oppose the Laken Riley Act, a bad bill. In fact, more than three-quarters of Senate Democrats voted against it on Friday: it avoided a U.S. Senate filibuster due to just 10 Democratic senators’ votes.
This bill is almost certainly unconstitutional and could harm innocent people, some of them people seeking protection in the United States:
The hearing episode got me a wave of insults on social media and in my comms accounts from people who hate migrants or think I somehow don’t care about a tragic murder. Most of the insults are lame and probably written by people in Belarus, but some of them (like “beta-male f*ckstick”) are sheer poetry and I plan to use them.
It was fun—at times—to engage with senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this morning on Republican-led proposals to revive the “Remain in Mexico” policy. There’s a lot to say about it and I’ll post more later. For now:
WOLA’s landing page is here. Here’s the text of my opening statement:
Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today.
I did a lot of fieldwork and data work along the U.S.-Mexico border when Remain in Mexico—MPP—was first implemented. The evidence I saw is clear: Remain in Mexico enriched cartels. It failed to meaningfully deter migration. And it soured relations with a key ally. Pursuing it again would harm U.S. interests.
Instead, I urge this Committee to focus on fixing our asylum system. That system saves tens of thousands of lives each year, but we need it to be both fair and efficient. No one supports the idea of five-year waits for asylum decisions: the backlogs create a pull factor of their own. But this is an administrative challenge, and the U.S. government is good at handling administrative challenges. It’s just a question of processing, case management, and adjudication.
People truly did suffer while remaining in Mexico. I personally heard harrowing accounts of torture and abuse. Nearly all of that abuse was the work of organized crime groups, or cartels.
The cartels’ cruelty and sadism wasn’t just a human rights issue, though. These criminals aren’t barbaric just for its own sake. This is their economic model, and that makes it a national security issue.
Organized crime is trying to extract as much money out of migrants and their loved ones as it can while those migrants are present on the “turf” that they control. Cartels fight each other for this business.
“Remain in Mexico” kept migrants on cartels’ turf for very long periods of time: months or even years in Mexican border cities waiting for their hearings. MPP created a new market opportunity for cartels.
That’s a big difference from CBP One. The app also requires months-long waits to come to a U.S. port of entry, but it makes it easier to wait elsewhere, in parts of Mexico that are safer than its northern border zone, where states are under State Department travel warnings because of cartel crime and kidnapping.
When outsiders are waiting for months in Mexico’s border zone, they are sitting ducks for the cartels:
The financial scale of this exploitation is staggering. Let’s consider it. Take a conservative estimate of $1,000 per migrant in extortions, ransoms, or coyote fees—I ran that figure by some border-area experts and they laughed at how low that estimated amount is. Multiply that by 71,000 people in MPP, and you get $71 million in cartel profits, an amount equal to the annual base salaries of 1,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents.
For all that, Remain in Mexico didn’t really do that much to reduce or control migration.
For more than 10 years now, there’s been a series of crackdowns on asylum seekers. My testimony maps them out in a graphic. These crackdowns follow the same pattern: you get an initial drop in migration numbers, it lasts a few months, and then there’s a rebound.
Title 42 and its expansions? A classic example. So was “Remain in Mexico.”
After it expanded in June 2019, Border Patrol’s apprehensions did fall for four months. Then the migration numbers plateaued—at the same level they were in mid-2018. In fact, at the same level as the Obama administration’s eight-year monthly average. And that’s where the numbers stayed.
And then in the first months of 2020, Border Patrol apprehensions started rising. They were on pace to grow by a double-digit percentage from February to March. But then COVID came, and all but ended March 10 days early.
Title 42 ended up eclipsing Remain in Mexico: no more hearing dates; asylum seekers got expelled. Remain in Mexico became irrelevant and the Trump administration rarely used it again.
MPP also strained relations with Mexico. The Mexican government at first resisted the program, agreeing to it only after very heavy diplomatic pressure. This complicated cooperation on other shared priorities.
There are a lot of those priorities, from trade to fentanyl. Mexico is one of the ten largest countries in the world, with the 14th-largest economy. The border is just one reason why the United States needs good relations with Mexico.
Compelling Mexico to agree to a new Remain in Mexico takes bandwidth away from those priorities. Why do all that for a policy that actually enriches drug cartels? Why do all that for a policy that doesn’t even have a clear and lasting effect on migration?
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
My posting schedule is all thrown off by travel and testifying in Congress, so this one is late and the next one probably will be, too. But when a lot is going on, there’s a lot to inform about, so I’ll keep these coming.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
The first WOLA podcast of 2025 is with my colleague Ana María Méndez, who runs our Central America program. The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, finished his first year in office on January 14. He’s one of the most unlikely of 2020s Latin American presidents: a mild-mannered democratic institutionalist. So of course he’s having a rough time of it. Listen here, Ana María is a native of Guatemala and a great explainer. Here’s the text of the landing page at WOLA’s site.
In this podcast episode WOLA’s Central America Director, Ana María Méndez Dardón, reflects on Bernardo Arévalo’s first year in office, as January 14, 2025 marks one year since the inauguration that followed his unexpected election.
As we discussed with Ana María in a podcast episode shortly after his inauguration, Bernardo Arévalo and his Semilla party had a very difficult time reaching inauguration day, notably due to active obstruction from Guatemala’s traditional, ruling elites, including the Attorney General’s Office. While citizen mobilization, largely indigenous groups’ mobilization, made it possible for Arevalo to democratically take office, the difficulties he and his party faced back then have remained, making it difficult to govern and, in turn, negatively affecting his popularity due to unmet expectations.
Three prominent obstacles that the Arevalo administration will continue to face from his first year to his second, Ana María highlights, are the office of the Attorney General and the powerful presence of other known corrupt actors within the government; the instability of his cabinet paired with a small presence of his party in Congress; and the powerful private sector’s ties to corrupt elite groups.
The Attorney General’s office has played an active role in blocking access to justice and promoting the persecution and criminalization of those who have been key to anti-corruption and human rights efforts, while maintaining the threat of forcibly removing Arévalo from office. Although Attorney General Consuelo Porras was sanctioned by the United States, along with 42 other countries, for significant corruption, Arévalo has determined that removing her would violate constitutional norms. (Her term ends in May 2026.) Ana María also notes alliances that Porras has cultivated with members of the U.S. Republican Party.
Despite the obstacles, Ana María notes possibilities for growth, including the launch of an alternative business association, a new national anti-extortion effort, and negotiation efforts with Congress.
Ana María also touches on the U.S.-Guatemala bilateral relationship during the Biden administration and expectations for the Trump-Arevalo relationship. During the Biden administration, it was evident that security and economic issues were top priorities, with notable bilateral engagement including multi-sectoral and multi-departmental efforts led by the Office of the Vice President to address the root causes of migration. It is uncertain whether the Trump administration will continue these efforts, and while some Republicans regard Arévalo as a strong democratic ally, the migration issue, particularly the incoming Trump administration’s plans to deter and deport migrants, may be the topline item in the bilateral relationship.
To follow Guatemalan developments, Ana María recommends independent media including Plaza Pública, Con Criterio, and Prensa Comunitaria.
Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.
Tune in at 9:00 Eastern on Thursday when I testify in the Senate Homeland Security Committee in opposition to proposals to restart the “Remain in Mexico” program.
Remain in Mexico was a human rights travesty. It enriched Mexican organized crime. It complicated U.S.-Mexico relations. And in the end, it didn’t do much to deter migrants.
I look forward to making all of those points in a few days. Wish me luck—and I apologize if not much gets posted here over the next few days while I prepare testimony.
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.
Panama reported 4,849 people migrating through the Darién Gap in December 2024, the fewest since March 2022. It is a likely sign that people have begun delaying their migration plans, for now, after Trump’s election.
Though the number of people transiting the jungle region dropped 42 percent from 2023’s record levels (from 520,085 to 302,203), 2024 was the second heaviest year ever for Darién Gap migration.
Note that the chart above shows that an important increase in Darién Gap migration happened from 2018 to 2019, when Donald Trump was in the White House. This migration flow, mostly citizens of Haiti and Cuba, was curtailed by the pandemic in 2020—but it shows that Trump’s first-administration policies didn’t deter people from trying to migrate after an initial “wait and see” phase.
See also:
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
Due to end-of-year staff vacation time, WOLA will not publish Border Updates for the next two weeks. Updates will resume on January 10, 2025.
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.
November data showed migration levels at the border continuing to decline following Donald Trump’s election, to such an extent that, for the first time, port-of-entry arrivals exceeded Border Patrol apprehensions. Still, some reports from Texas point to an increase in mid-December as some people try to reach U.S. soil before Inauguration Day. Rumors sent some migrants to attempt to turn themselves in at a border wall gate in El Paso, where state forces repelled them violently. Caravans continue to form in southern Mexico, but none remain intact beyond Mexico’s southernmost states.
As Trump administration officials ramp up plans to deport undocumented migrants on a massive scale likely requiring the use of military aircraft, concern is sweeping throughout communities where many families are “blended”: citizens living with non-citizens. Fear is spreading in south Texas, while council members and law enforcement in San Diego disagree on cooperation.
Conservative media and Donald Trump complained bitterly about the Biden administration’s auctioning off of border wall parts left over when construction halted after Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. In fact, the selloff was mandated by the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
It may be the last update I’ll send until the weekend of January 11-12. Next week, the last full week before Christmas, is a slow one, and I hope to hunker down and finish a big project (coding, not writing) that I’ve had on the shelf for months. I’ll unveil it at some point next year. So I don’t plan to produce much next week, other than a Border Update. If I do send another message next weekend, it will be thin.
This one is reasonably thick, though: in addition to the Border Update, below you’ll find a great podcast about Colombia, an exploration of the myth that Joe Biden was “soft” on border security and migration, a dig into migration data from the Darién Gap, links to some good readings, and links to three Latin America-related events that I know of during this last working week of 2024.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
I appreciated this opportunity to catch up on Colombia’s peace processes, confusing political dynamics, and inspiring civil society struggles in a podcast interview with Gimena Sánchez, WOLA’s Colombia program director, who just returned from a visit there with a congressional delegation. Here’s the text of the landing page at WOLA’s website:
WOLA’s director for Colombia, Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, is just back from taking a U.S. congressional delegation to Colombia. In addition to Bogotá, the group visited Cali and the Pacific Coast port of Buenaventura.
The latter two cities are in the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s third most populous. Much of the population is Afro-descendant, and Buenaventura, on the coast, is majority Black.
Buenaventura has a vibrant and resilient collection of community organizations, which have played a greater role in local governance since a 2017 general strike. The government of Gustavo Petro, which took office in 2022, has fostered a negotiation between gangs operating in the city, part of its nationwide “total peace” policy.
As at the national level, the results are mixed. The Petro government has sought to move forward many negotiations at once, and some are stalled. Implementation of the 2016 peace accord with the FARC suffers from bureaucratization and lack of organization more than from lack of political will—but it remains behind schedule. Rural areas are especially challenged: armed groups are strengthening in some areas, and the humanitarian situation has hit emergency levels all along Colombia’s Pacific coast. The election of Donald Trump may presage a U.S. administration urging a return to failed hardline approaches of the past.
Still, Gimena sees hope in urban, participatory peacebuilding efforts in places like Buenaventura, Medellín, and in Quibdó, the capital of Chocó. The remarkable resilience and persistence of Colombia’s civil society, including Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities in and near Valle del Cauca, continue to be a source of inspiration and innovation.
Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
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