I’ll be difficult to contact today. (How to contact me)
I’ll be in a meeting with visiting Colombian human rights defenders in the morning. Then attending an event hosted by WOLA’s Colombia program with some of those visitors. Then, at 3:00 today, hosting an event of my own, with authors of a new book on the origins of coca in the Andes.
We’re proud to release “The Zero Tolerance Policy,” the first installment in what will be (probably) 3 reports on the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This one covers the incredible institutional train wreck that Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions caused when they decided in April that every person caught crossing the border improperly should be charged in criminal courts, as a 1952 law dictates. The next one will look at all aspects of family separation. The third will go over what has happened at the border’s ports of entry. A possible fourth one will look at the National Guard deployment at the border, but that’s sort of a different theme and I might put it out separately.
I’m very happy that only 24 days passed between flying home from fieldwork in Arizona and releasing a 4,000-word, 54-footnote document about it. Twenty-four days during which we’ve been working on other stuff, too. Spending February in Colombia evaluating a USAID project ended up teaching me a lot of tips and tricks for turning fieldwork into a report very quickly. Glad I was able to apply them here.
My responses may be delayed as I’m writing on a deadline. (How to contact me)
Working at home this morning as I scramble to finish testimony about Colombia that I’ll be giving Thursday morning at the Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. I should be in the office after lunch; I have a late-afternoon meeting with my fellow panelists.
Matt York / AP photo at The Washington Post. Caption: “Detainees are seen inside a facility where tent shelters are being used to house separated family members at the Port of Entry in Fabens, Tex., on June 21.”
Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case
The procedural hearing for “Case No. 001” lasted three hours and was attended by just three of the 31 leaders of the disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
En la primera audiencia ante la JEP, se entregaron expedientes de casos de secuestros para que Farc los analice y expliquen qué sucedió. A la diligencia asistieron tres exjefes guerrilleros
In the year since the powerful Marxist guerrillas disarmed, drug gangs like this one have battled each other and the state for control of the booming cocaine trade in remote regions
El ‘clan del Golfo’ es una organización de tercera generación, es decir, funciona en red, con nodos territoriales y los mandos son reemplazables fácilmente
“Para contribuir a la solución de la crisis en Venezuela, le pido al presidente Trump que le solicite a Putin dejar de apoyar al régimen de Maduro”, indicó el mandatario en su cuenta de Twitter
The intention of the proposed reforms is to constitutionally formalise the island’s economic and social opening-up while maintaining this “irrevocable” socialist system
Managing this migration effectively and humanely requires a legislative solution outside the asylum system, a solution that establishes a legal process based on the specific circumstances of this migration
Ahora está en curso una investigación penal por el viaje que en el avión de un magnate americano-israelí sancionado por corrupción
With one year remaining in its mandate, now is the time to discuss the strengthening and extension of CICIG’s mandate, not to negotiate its death by a thousand cuts
La Fuerza Nacional Antimaras y Pandillas (Fnamp) se conformó hace tres semanas. El anuncio lo hizo el presidente Juan Orlando Hernández
By 10:30 p.m., the Catholic Church and the U.S. State Department had prevailed upon the Nicaraguan government to allow a convoy of ambulances and negotiators to cross police lines and ferry three wounded students and me out of the church
There is no clear-cut definition of what constitutes a mafia state, but the fact that organized crime touches the daily lives of every Venezuelan, and has penetrated the highest level of state institutions, easily qualifies Venezuela
We’ve got an internal staff meeting in the morning. I’ve scheduled a lunch with a longtime colleague from Capitol Hill, and an end-of-day meeting with folks from a faith-based organization who’ve worked on Colombia for years.
In between, we should be releasing a report today about the border and the “zero tolerance” policy, based on fieldwork we did in Arizona a few weeks ago. I’ll also be working on my testimony for Thursday morning’s Colombia hearing in the House’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
The usual work will be bookended this week by three events:
(This covers the week of June 24-30—a very eventful period. Sorry this is so behind schedule, but there’s no way around it with the present workload. Last week’s update is coming soon.)
On June 27 Colombia’s Congress passed a Procedural Law for the Special Peace Jurisdiction (JEP), the separate justice system that will confer lighter penalties (“restriction of liberty”) on those who committed war crimes during the conflict, in exchange for full confessions and reparations to victims. The new law is necessary for the JEP to function properly, and its long-awaited passage is an important step.
However, the congressional bloc supporting Iván Duque, the rightist president-elect who is a critic of the FARC peace accord, added some last-minute changes that—if ruled to be constitutional—would diverge from the accord’s vision and intent.
Before going into that, a quick overview of the JEP legislative process so far. The new system, enshrined in chapter 5 of the peace accord, requires three laws to function:
Even without all of its laws in place, the JEP is starting to operate, though it is a long way from issuing its first verdict and sentence to a war criminal.
Congress passed the procedural law troublingly late, as the JEP has been working without clear regulations. Legislators from the party of President-Elect Duque, led in the Senate by Senator and former president Álvaro Uribe, had been holding up its consideration.
On June 26, with the legislative session nearing its end, the UN Mission in Colombia put out a statement voicing alarm about “obstacles” to the JEP’s functioning: “the victims are still awaiting the first hearings and appearances of those who were involved in serious human rights and international humanitarian law violations.” A harsh reply from Uribe and Duque’s rightist party, the “Democratic Center,” made clear that it “rejects and doesn’t accept their demands.” The party’s proposed modifications to the JEP, it said, “can’t be viewed as obstacles” but as a reflection of “the desire of the majority of Colombians” as reflected in the October 2016 plebiscite rejecting the peace accord’s first version, and by Duque’s June 2018 election.
The following day, though, Colombia’s Senate considered and approved the new procedural law. It passed, though, with two amendments introduced by the Democratic Center, which passed thanks to votes from several senators who until recently had been part of President Juan Manuel Santos’s pro-peace coalition. The uribistas’ (Uribe supporters’) changes are, in the words of La Silla Vacía analysts Juan Esteban Lewin and Julian Huertas, “a first indication that, while [Duque’s party] won’t destroy the accord, it will seek to remove its teeth and make it resemble FARC surrender terms.”
The FARC political party put it even more starkly:
The elites that have historically covered themselves in impunity and made the war into an immense business for corruption and land theft, took advantage of the delayed and chaotic consideration of the JEP’s procedural norms to render ineffective the basic pillars of the peace accord.
“Welcome to the Iván Duque government” is how uribista Senator Paloma Valencia, who led the legislative push for the two amendments changing the JEP, greeted their approval.
Changing the JEP’s role in extraditions of former combatants
The first amendment would restrict the JEP’s role in determining whether a former combatant can be extradited to another country. The JEP is currently required to determine, within 120 days, whether the crime triggering the extradition request happened before or after the November 2016 ratification of the peace accord (if it took place before, it is likely subject to amnesty and non-extradition). It wasn’t clear, though, whether the JEP could actually consider whether a criminal allegation is built on solid or flimsy evidence.
The uribistas’ amendment says that no, the JEP cannot consider the quality of the evidence, only the date on which the crime allegedly occurred. If the alleged crime took place after November 2016, it must send the ex-combatant’s case to Colombia’s Supreme Court, which rules on extraditions. If the Court green-lights an extradition, the President has discretion about whether or not to hand over the accused individual.
This issue has already come up. On April 9, following an indictment by a U.S. grand jury, Colombian authorities arrested Jesús Santrich, one of the FARC’s negotiators in Havana, on charges of conspiring to send 10 tons of cocaine to the United States starting in 2017. Rather than simply rule on the date of this alleged conspiracy, the JEP had frozen Santrich’s extradition process and asked Colombian criminal prosecutors to provide more evidence. On June 12, the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the regular justice system, “un-freezing” Santrich’s case and ruling that the JEP does not have the power to delay an extradition process.
The new amendment, according to Sen. Valencia, guarantees that “extradition requests won’t be unjustifiably delayed when the Supreme Court is empowered to investigate.” Sen. Roy Barreras, a Santos supporter who led the procedural law’s passage in the Senate, opposed the amendment on grounds that it places U.S. counter-drug interests above the stability of peace. “To extradite those who signed the peace sends a terrible message to those who did the work of breaking up a guerrilla group.” The response from super-hardline uribista Sen. José Obdulio Gaviria: “Don’t distinguish between Colombia’s peace and illicit crops, doctor Roy. You [peace supporters] filled Colombia with the damned manure of coca money. That’s the main result of the peace policy that you all pushed.”
Separating out members of the security forces, and freezing their trials for 18 months
The Democratic Center at first sought to change the procedural law so that members of the military and police could be tried in a new, separate chamber of the JEP. Its legislators argued that soldiers shouldn’t be tried on equal footing, in the same tribunals, as former guerrillas. Critics suspect that they are in fact seeking to protect the armed forces from accountability by delaying and weakening efforts to bring their war crimes to justice.
The uribista legislators didn’t quite get a new tribunal, which would be a change too fundamental to be made through the procedures of an “ordinary law.” Senator Valencia and her colleagues instead got an amendment stating that current and former members of the armed forces and police awaiting judgment before the JEP do not have to appear before the new system until a new “special and differentiated process” exists to judge them, a change that would probably require a constitutional reform. The text gives 18 months to do that, during which the military and police perpetrators’ cases are suspended.
Currently, 2,159 active or former members of Colombia’s security forces have signed up to have their cases tried before the JEP. (2,109 from the Army, 34 from the National Police, and 16 from the Navy.) 1,578 of them have been released from custody pending trial.
Sen. Barreras, the pro-peace legislator who managed the JEP bill in the Senate, called the amendment a “serious error,” as it weakens the “judicial certainty” the armed forces had achieved in negotiating the JEP’s design. The appearance of a “self-pardon,” he said, will attract the attention of the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Senator added,
while the FARC submit now to the JEP and begin to tell the truth in favor of the victims, other victims, like the Mothers of Candelaria [a Medellín-based victims’ organization] for example, have to wait 18 months to be able to know the truth, and the families of the disappeared also have to sit and wait. This is called re-victimization, and it implies that there is an indifference and a lack of consideration for the victims. These 18 months of waiting are truly unacceptable.
The amendment favoring military and police personnel is probably unconstitutional, opponents said, predicting that it will not survive Constitutional Court review. “At the end of last year, the Court stated that the participation of ex-combatants from the FARC and members of the security forces had to be mandatory. On this issue it will be the Constitutional Court that has the last word,” said Interior Minister Guillermo Rivera.
Though it was purportedly designed to favor them, Colombia’s armed forces, in fact, opposed the uribistas’ amendment. On June 26, the Minister of Defense, the Director of the National Police, and the Commander of the Armed Forces sent a letter to Sen. Valencia asking her to allow the procedural law to pass without her proposed language. The officials are concerned that the Democratic Center’s changes prolong judicial uncertainty for more than 2,000 accused soldiers and police, and may cause the International Criminal Court to involve itself more deeply in their cases. “We need the Congress to advance in approving this regulation,” said armed-forces chief Gen. Alberto Mejía. “We need to mark out the playing field of the JEP, because if we don’t do it, we’ll end up being exposed.”
One major who was given conditional release from prison last November so that the JEP could consider his case, told El Colombiano that having to wait another 18 months complicates things for him. “This keeps us in a ‘sub judice’ situation [not yet judicially decided], which worries us, given that nobody is giving us job opportunities because we still have criminal records, which would only be lifted once we pay the penalty that the JEP procedures impose.”
Colombia’s BLU Radio reported that two active-duty generals, who asked that their identities not be revealed, had received pressure from uribista legislators to support the proposed changes to the JEP. “People from the Democratic Center are saying ‘you’re all pro-Santos generals, bought off, fond of the peace process, and you forget that there’s a new president now,’” the radio cited the generals as saying.
Retired officers, who tend to be harder-line and commanded the military during a time of more frequent human rights issues, were more favorable toward the uribista amendment. Retired Gen. Jaime Ruiz, president of the powerful association of retired officers ACORE, praised the Senate’s move:
Ever since the list of [JEP] magistrates was announced, we saw that they were no guarantee of justice because of their ideological leanings. The approval of this provision, to remain within the JEP but not to appear until a new reform is made, favors us. We hope there may not be any problem with the [International Criminal] Court.
The Court in The Hague (ICC) does have Colombia under preliminary investigation, and is alert for any sign that Colombia’s justice system may fail to hold accountable those who committed crimes against humanity during the armed conflict. The ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has shown particular interest in the “false positives,” thousands of military murders of civilians especially during the 2002-2008 period, who were then falsely presented as combat kills in order to claim high body counts. Delaying such cases for 18 months pending the uncertain creation of a new judicial chamber will certainly attract the prosecutor’s attention.
Interior Minister Rivera, as well as at least two Colombian human rights NGOs (the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyer’s Collective and the Colombia-Europe-U.S. Coordination), filed lawsuits before the Constitutional Court to challenge the constitutionality of the amendments that the uribistas inserted.
President-Elect Iván Duque visited Washington on June 27 through July 5. It is a city he knows well: he did coursework at both American and Georgetown Universities, and worked at the Inter-American Development Bank for 12 years. He was accompanied by veteran politician-diplomat Carlos Holmes, a longtime Álvaro Uribe supporter who is Duque’s likely choice for foreign minister. Senator and ex-president Uribe was not present.
The visit came two days after Duque received a telephone call from President Trump to congratulate him on his victory and to discuss unspecified “security challenges” that Duque’s government is likely to face. No details about that call have emerged, and Trump was outside of Washington for most of Duque’s visit.
According to media reports, Duque’s meetings included:
Support for peace accord implementation did not seem to be a frequent topic in these meetings. The State Department’s spokeswoman said that “Secretary Pompeo reaffirmed U.S. support for a just and lasting peace in Colombia.” Speaking to reporters while in Washington, Duque reiterated his call for the ELN to agree to a “suspension of all criminal activity” and “a prior concentration of forces with international supervision” as pre-conditions for continuing peace talks begun under the Santos government. The ELN are highly unlikely to agree to the second condition, a cantonment of forces.
The crisis in Venezuela was a frequent subject of Duque’s meetings. Sen. Rubio tweeted that they talked about “regional efforts to help the Venezuelan people put an end to their crisis and restore democracy.” After meeting with OAS Secretary-General Almagro, a vociferous critic of Venezuela’s authoritarian government, Duque recommended that Latin American presidents denounce the Maduro regime before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. (In July 2017, then-senator Duque led an effort to send the ICC a 56-page petition asking its prosecutor to “place Venezuela under observation and open a formal investigation.” The document bore the signatures of 76 Colombian and 70 Chilean senators.) Duque also recommended that South American governments permanently abandon the fading UNASUR political bloc, which he called an “accomplice of the Venezuelan dictatorship,” and strengthen the OAS.
Drug policy was perhaps the most frequent topic addressed at Duque’s meetings. The White House’s June 25 release of its 2017 estimate of Colombian coca cultivation—which showed a further 11 percent increase in the crop last year—guaranteed that this would be the top priority of the incoming president’s Washington discussions.
On June 28 Duque told reporters he had received expressions of support for his anti-drug strategy, which though lacking in specifics would rely more heavily on forced coca eradication than did the Santos government during its second term. “Obviously the backsliding has been very large in the last few years, and that’s why we have to seek effective and fast mechanisms,” he added. “They showed much confidence in the agenda we presented,” Duque said of the Americans, noting that his objective is to show measurable results against the coca crop within two years.
In an interview that El Tiempo published July 1, Duque said his government’s approach to coca would have a large alternative development component. He hinted, though, that unlike the model laid out in chapter 4 of the FARC peace accord, he sees oil palm—a capital-intensive crop favorable to large landholdings—as a promising legal alternative to coca.
In some places, coca is almost the only crop that offers opportunities. Nobody can deny it. But exactly what we want to do is alternative development and productive development. We should begin from this baseline: as it is going to be very hard for a licit crop to be more profitable than an illicit crop, substitution and eradication must be made obligatory, but while opening new opportunities leading to labor formalization and stable incomes. There are important substitutions of coca crops with palm crops.
Asked in Washington whether he would prefer to eradicate crops by spraying herbicides from aircraft or from drones (discussed in the next section), Duque said, “at this moment we have to look at all the options, and they have to be the options that guarantee greater precision, greater effectiveness, and that minimize damage to third-parties to the greatest extent possible.”
On June 25, about three months later than usual, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy released its estimate of Colombia’s coca crop during the previous year. The U.S. government reported finding 209,000 hectares of coca in Colombia in 2017, 11 percent more than the 188,000 measured in 2016. Both figures were the highest the United States has ever reported. The 2017 increase was the fifth annual uptick in a row. However, 11 percent is the smallest percentage increase of the five, which may at least indicate some leveling off in a year that saw forced manual eradication triple from 18,000 to 53,000 hectares, along with the launch of the peace accords’ crop substitution effort, which eradicated at least 7,000 more hectares.
The White House estimated a 19 percent increase in potential cocaine production, from 772 to 921 tons. Both are records, and the 2017 figure is quadruple the U.S. government’s 2013 estimate. This indicates U.S. estimators see a sharp increase in yield—the number of kilograms of cocaine being produced from each hectare—as plants grow taller and more mature.
“President Trump’s message to Colombia is clear: the record growth in cocaine production must be reversed,” the White House release cites ONDCP Deputy Director Jim Carroll. “Even though Colombian eradication efforts improved in 2017,
they were outstripped by the acceleration in production. The Government of Colombia must do more to address this increase. The steep upward trajectory is unacceptable.”
President Juan Manuel Santos argued that the increase owed to short-term factors and will be reversed by the government’s strategy, which includes the National Integral Crop Substitution Plan foreseen in chapter 4 of the peace accord (whose implementation, like so much of the accord, is underfunded and behind schedule). “It’s very easy to come and criticize Colombia because illicit crops increased,” Santos said. “But measure the other circumstances and the other indicators: the effectiveness of drug seizures, how many members of the mafias we have extradited, the immense effort that we have made and will continue making.”
In an interview, Vice-President Óscar Naranjo, a former National Police chief, pointed out that because Colombia’s cocaine seizures—much of them in coastal areas—have increased from 148 tons in 2014 to 432 tons in 2017, the amount of the drug actually making it into world markets has increased only somewhat and may still be less than it was during the early years of “Plan Colombia,” instead of the quadrupling of supply that the U.S. tonnage estimate might indicate. Increased interdiction may explain why data about cocaine abuse in the United States show an increase that is far less steep than data about cocaine supply. Another explanation is greater cocaine consumption outside the United States. In 2000, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report estimated that North America accounted for 50 percent of world cocaine consumption; its 2018 report, released in June, attributed only a 32 percent share to North America.
As past analyses from WOLA, the Ideas for Peace Foundation, InsightCrime and others have pointed out, Colombia’s coca boom owes to several factors. Proponents of vastly increased forced eradication point to the 2015 suspension of aerial herbicide spraying, and to the peace accord’s promise of cash for those who planted coca, as the main reasons for the increase. These undeniably contributed, but the Colombian government’s failure or inability to replace eradication with state presence and development assistance in rural areas—effectively leaving most coca-growing areas in a state of neglect—gets at least as much blame. So does a decline in gold prices, as many coca-growers had turned to artisanal mining in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, when sky-high prices caused the metal to be more profitable than the crop.
Last September, due to rising production statistics, President Trump sought to decertify Colombia for failing to cooperate fully in anti-drug efforts, a move that would cut some forms of aid and place Colombia in the same category as Venezuela or Burma. Top advisors talked him out of it, but the White House’s statement noted that decertification remains “an option.” Despite the unencouraging 2017 numbers, the White House is unlikely to greet Iván Duque with a decertification six weeks after his inauguration.
Two days after the White House announcement, Colombia’s National Drug Council, an advisory body of ministers and high officials, approved the use of drones to apply herbicides to coca plants. The move comes after several months of pilot testing of the remote-controlled craft. Each of the chosen models costs about US$10,000. It flies about one meter above the plants, and can spray about 1 liter of herbicide mixture at a time in 10 minutes of operation between recharges. Spraying began in the final days of June in Putumayo, Meta, Caquetá, Guaviare, and Nariño departments.
For now at least, the herbicide will continue to be glyphosate, marketed by the U.S. chemical giant Monsanto, but at a concentration about 50 percent weaker than that used by U.S.-funded, contractor-flown aircraft during the years of the now-suspended aerial eradication program (1994-2015). Since that program’s suspension, much manual eradication has been carried out by eradicators wearing backpack-mounted herbicide sprayers applying this weaker mixture. This is a dangerous practice, as hundreds of eradicators or their police escorts have been killed or injured in the past 15 years by landmines, booby traps, ambushes, and sniper attacks. The idea is that using drones would curtail that risk, while applying the herbicide more accurately than aircraft flying 50-150 meters above the ground.
The aircraft-spraying program was suspended in October 2015 after a World Health Organization literature review found that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Colombia’s Constitutional Court later ratified this suspension because of the possible risk. However, glyphosate has not been banned for agricultural use in Colombia, and officials expect that application by more accurate drones, which poses less risk of spraying residential areas or legal crops, gets around the Court’s restrictions.
While critics of the drone decision acknowledge a reduced risk to human health, they lament that this method of eradication will probably be carried out with no permanent state presence in abandoned rural areas, little face-to-face dialogue with coca-growing families, and perhaps with little coordination with food security and other assistance. “They’re making decisions from a desk without caring about the territory,” Nariño governor Camilo Romero tweeted in response to the drone decision. “I’ll say it clearly: any anti-drug policy that doesn’t involve the dozens of thousands of families that lack opportunities today, is condemned to failure. You can’t fumigate people only to have them plant again!”
A State Department spokesperson told EFE that the drone plan is up to Colombia: “The choice of eradication methods is a sovereign decision of the Colombian government. However, the United States believes that all tools should be used to turn back the sharp increase in cocaine production.”
Under new guidance given Wednesday to the officers who interview asylum seekers at the US’ borders and evaluate refugee applications, claims based on fear of gang and domestic violence will be immediately rejected
The other 46 were deemed “ineligible” for a variety of reasons. Some of their parents had been accused of crimes. One parent had a communicable disease. In a dozen cases, the parents had been deported already
The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy has been a financial boon for GEO Group, which along with its affiliates contributed more than half a million dollars to then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign
They are trapped in limbo by the Trump administration’s ever-shifting immigration policy, with officials now widely employing a controversial deterrence tactic: making migrants wait in Mexico, indefinitely
Known as “militias”, paramilitary groups – which often include former and serving police officers and firefighters – have quietly taken control of swathes of Rio’s western suburbs
El presidente Juan Manuel Santos le ordenó al Ministerio de Defensa que le entregara los archivos reservados de inteligencia a la Comisión de la Verdad, salvo aquellos que puedan comprometer la seguridad nacional
A veces pienso que es mejor tirar la toalla y dejarle todo a los corruptos, al fin y al cabo eso es lo que eligen los colombianos. Votan por los mismos políticos de siempre
Backed by international actors, the current government and guerrilla negotiators should aim for rapid progress in negotiations to minimise the chance of a sceptical incoming president abandoning the peace process
Desde la elección presidencial del pasado 17 de junio se han asesinado a 22 líderes. Es decir, uno diario hasta la fecha de corte
The U.S. government plans to co-host with the Government of Mexico in the near future a major summit in the U.S. to discuss implementation of an ambitious, action-oriented agenda to reduce illegal migration flows
In April, the U.S. government said Mexico had requested to buy eight MH-60R Seahawk multi-mission helicopters
Mexico views the proposal as a red line it will not cross, according to the briefing note prepared for Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray for a meeting he had with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
Pompeo will be accompanied by President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, who is nominally in charge of the Mexico portfolio
The next few weeks will be crucial. Venezuela shows that a regime which is heedless of the human cost can survive sustained national protests and international pressure
I’ll be very hard to reach today. (How to contact me)
WOLA is holding its annual staff retreat Thursday and Friday, which means my schedule is full and I’ll be hard to contact.
Photo from El Universo (Ecuador). Caption: “Diriamba, Nicaragua. Paramilitares rodearon este lunes la basilica de San Sebastian en esta ciudad.”
The agent told them they’d crossed the border illegally and asked them to remain there while he got a supervisor and took them to an official crossing for an inspection per federal law
In the first nine months of this fiscal year, 68,560 families and 37,450 unaccompanied children were apprehended at our southern border. That’s not a “flood.” It’s one football stadium of people
The ORR’s budgeting exercise is premised on the possibility it could need as many as 25,400 beds for immigrant minors by the end of the calendar year
Los desplazamientos ocurrieron el pasado 4 de julio tras los enfrentamientos entre el grupo disidente de las FARC autodenominado “Frente Oliver Sinisterra” y la organización “Gente del común”
Aunque Duque está alineado en los dos temas que le importan a Trump en América Latina, que son las drogas y Venezuela, eso automáticamente no va significar ni más plata ni más atención de la Casa Blanca
The Migration Talks, which began in 1995, provide a forum for the United States and Cuba to review and coordinate efforts to ensure safe, legal, and orderly migration between Cuba and the United States
The addition of CDC reflects the ongoing trouble the United States is having trying to determine the cause of the incidents that have left more than 25 Americans and U.S. personnel experiencing headaches, hearing loss, and other mysterious ailments
There were more than 296,000 new displacements due to conflict and violence in El Salvador in 2017, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
After Guatemala joined the United States in moving its embassy to Jerusalem, the Trump administration has been working to weaken an international commission on corruption targeting the Guatemalan president
Each week since February, about 100 military police officers take the 40-hour course. The course includes an introduction to human rights and instruction on the use of force and firearms
A $3 million donation from U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) financed the new center
El Ejercicio Multinacional “RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) Cuenca del Pacífico 2018” en la Base de Camp Pendleton en el Sur de California, EE.UU.
De los 154.557 asesinatos cometidos en el país de 2010 a 2016, el 94,8 por ciento permanecen impunes
Some in the Foreign Ministry who want to improve ties with the United States remain in favor of at least a pilot project, while others in the Interior Ministry, who would have to handle resettling thousands of Central Americans, stand opposed
Opositores, entre los que se cuentan exmilitares, han denunciado la supuesta presencia de miembros del Ejército en los grupos armados ilegales
The best vehicle for that would be a coalition led by other Latin American nations to put pressure on Mr. Ortega and to support talks between him and the opposition
El ataque del domingo de policías y paramilitares armados con fusiles de guerra contra la población fue una masacre
It was hard to suppress a nauseating sense of dread upon hearing that President Trump repeatedly pressed aides on why the United States couldn’t just invade Venezuela
Photo from Proceso (Mexico). Caption: “Cuatro de las personas heridas eran personas civiles que quedaron atrapadas en la balacera.”
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed as “tortured” the Trump administration’s legal argument to get out from under the so-called Flores consent decree
The Pentagon confirmed last week that Fort Bliss in El Paso could take up to 12,000 undocumented families and Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo could take up to 20,000 minors who crossed the border without a parent
Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles held that there was no basis to amend a longstanding consent decree that requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days
Asylum seekers like Gomez who arrive at legal entry points — where the Trump administration says they should go — are forced to wait on bridges for hours or days. Some have been turned back before reaching U.S. soil and told to come back later
About 40 other very young children will not be returned to their parents yet, despite a court-imposed deadline
In Barbados, Chile, and Uruguay, first-rate female career ambassadors are being pushed aside prior to the end of their term to make way for male political appointees
El general retirado del Ejército de Colombia Henry Torres Escalante pidió perdón a las víctimas del conflicto armado en el país durante su audiencia de sometimiento a la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz
Las reglas de procedimiento de la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP) que aprobó el Congreso la semana pasada minan gravemente la posibilidad de hacer justicia por los crímenes de Estado
Ahora los homicidios casi triplican los de todo el año pasado (en 2017 hubo 14 y en lo que va del 2018 van 41, según datos de la Policía Nacional)
Activists are being gunned down at a rate of one every three days in the Latin American country
The Honduran Armed Forces reaffirm interagency cooperation with regional partner nations to counter narcotrafficking and other criminal activities Army Major General René Orlando Ponce Fonseca, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, is committed to interagency operations to combat transnational criminal organizations
At 62, she’s not ready to retire. And with the Guatemalan general elections less than a year away, a source close to her team and with knowledge of her plans told AQ she will run for president
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is planning his own border police force to stop undocumented immigrants, drugs and guns from crossing into the country from Central America
Quizá, en forma tímida o titubeante por las declaraciones posteriores, de concretarse, sea el preámbulo de un cambio sustantivo en las relaciones civiles-militares en México
La dependencia no ha podido resolver con éxito algún caso, pese a que hay denuncias que ya tienen hasta diez años de haberse presentado
Mauricio Fernández de la Mora, el magistrado que trabajó esta decisión, explicó que “si bien el derecho nacional no regula la creación de un mecanismo extraordinario, no por ello es un impedimento a que este exista y se proponga”
Over the course of three weeks our team surveyed and interviewed more than 200 returning Mexican migrants, the vast majority of them deportees
Lopez Obrador has indicated a desire to return to what’s known as the Estrada Doctrine, a stance dating from the 1930s by which Mexico long refused to judge foreign governments for fear of inviting meddling by the U.S.
Videos subidos a las redes sociales por la población demostraron las armas de guerra que portaban los paramilitares
Radio Darío workers are, understandably, spooked. About a dozen of them were caught inside the station’s original headquarters on April 20 when it was set on fire by a pro-government mob
It has become clear that UNASUR’s implosion has limited the U.S. ability to encourage stricter measures against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
I’ll be difficult to reach today. (How to contact me)
We’ve got a few meetings today with congressional staff to talk about the situation at the border and what we saw in Arizona 3 weeks ago. (We’ve now got a very long report about that drafted out, and may put out a bit of it tomorrow as a short piece.) When not on the Hill, I hope to attend some of an [[event]] about Colombia with WOLA alum Anthony Dest, and later there’s a meeting of groups working on Colombia.
So I’ll be hard to contact and doing little writing or corresponding today, at least until evening.
Chang W. Lee photo at The New York Times. Caption: “The agents and their dogs have to contend with extreme heat and dizzying fumes.”
Getting through the heavily patrolled 100-mile zone beyond the border can be just as difficult as getting into the country
There were no illegal-entry cases in February, only four in March and 16 in April, according to the clerk’s office. But when zero tolerance took full effect, the caseload skyrocketed to 513 in May and 821 in June
A pesar de la evidencia científica, es muy probable que Washington imponga una lectura unilateral al uso problemático de las drogas para ocultar así su propia responsabilidad en tomar medidas preventivas
La situación es tan grave que, en Colombia, el riesgo y el miedo son elementos normales e interiorizados en la defensa de los derechos humanos y el ejercicio de otras libertades (como organizarse, expresar opiniones o participar en reuniones)
With the return to power of Álvaro Uribe, some Colombians wonder whether either case will really be pursued
The US got Ecuador to back down from a breastfeeding resolution by threatening trade retaliation and pulling military aid
El especialista en seguridad nacional Erubiel Tirado señala que éste se ha constituido en un cuerpo militar privilegiado que no rinde cuentas a nadie y ha sido utilizado en misiones cuestionables, como la represión del movimiento estudiantil de 1968 y la guerra sucia
Para el pueblo autoconvocado que ha puesto los muertos y que está comprometido con lograr la salida de Ortega y abrir el camino a la justicia y la democratización, solo hay cuatro cursos posibles de acción
Basta ver los números de las muertes de estos últimos meses en Nicaragua para saber que estamos frente a una masacre, una cacería de tiradores contra ciudadanos sin alternativa para defenderse
Daniel Ortega’s speech came as opposition leaders prepared to increase pressure on the former revolutionary hero with three days of protests
I should be reachable much of the day. (How to contact me)
Except for lunch with a longtime colleague, I should be in the office all day writing about both Colombia and the border, hopefully finishing a Colombia update. And catching up on correspondence, which is behind because I’ve been writing pretty intensely over the past two weeks.
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