Adam Isacson

Still trying to understand Latin America, my own country, and why so few consequences are intended. These views are not necessarily my employer’s.

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November 2020

November 24, 2020 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Mark Lambie photo at The El Paso Times. Caption: “Workers line the top of the border fence between El Paso and Juarez with two layers of concertina wire Thursday, November, 19, 2020 near the Bridge of the Americas.”

(Even more here)

November 24, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

This summer, ICE gave the parents the choice between keeping their children with them in detention or releasing their children from detention without them

President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Alejandro Mayorkas to lead the Department of Homeland Security thrilled immigrant advocates

Mr. Mayorkas was seen as the candidate who could best stabilize the department, which has spent much of the last four years in turmoil

Bolivia

El viceministro Gonzalo Rodríguez expuso que se detectaron irregularidades por parte del anterior personal y que los nuevos responsables son “militares honestos”

Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador

El lector encontrará aquí un total de 14 piezas escritas por otras tantas autoras y autores que, con distintos tonos y registros, cubrieron los cuatro países que portagonizaron más intensamente las movilizaciones: Ecuador, Chile, Colombia y Bolivia

Brazil

Demonstrators enraged by Freitas’ death painted “Black lives matter” on the pavement of Paulista Avenue, one of the most famous in São Paulo, following a series of protests across the country

Central America Regional

“Corruption kills,” a former United States ambassador in Guatemala once told me, and nowhere is that more evident than when natural disasters strike

Central America Regional, Guatemala

Any migrants displaced by these storms that seek to reach the United States continue to face an aggressively protected border blocking them from their destination

Central America Regional, Mexico

This report puts forward another approach, one that reflect the many faces of migration through the region and that is rooted in closer cooperation with Mexico and Central American countries

Colombia

Un grupo de excomandantes liderados por Iván Márquez se rearmó, se hundieron las curules para las víctimas y ya son 242 los exguerrilleros asesinados en el país

Los acusados rompen el silencio y aseguran ser víctimas de entrampamientos, con el fin de ponerle palos en la rueda a los acuerdos

Sergio Jaramillo, ex Alto Comisionado de Paz, hace un balance de la firma del acuerdo, tras 4 años

It has so far destroyed 111,131 hectares in 2020

A partir de este lunes y hasta el próximo jueves, varios expertos de la región analizarán los desafíos de seguridad, democracia y globalización para los países latinoamericanos en medio de la pandemia

A new report by international forensic experts commissioned by Human Rights Watch points to the intentional killing of detainees during a prison riot in March 2020

Ha surgido un movimiento de jóvenes alrededor de las dos tragedias que comienza a arrojar una luz de esperanza en ambos municipios de que algo podría cambiar para bien

El pasado fin de semana, el grupo de origen paramilitar decretó el cierre del comercio y el tráfico de vehículo, luego de que su jefe máximo muriera en medio de un operativo de la fuerza pública

Colombia, Venezuela

Forecasts indicate that migration flows will not decrease in the medium term despite the COVID-19 pandemic

Cuba

El cierre desde este lunes de todas las sucursales de Western Union en Cuba por las últimas sanciones de Estados Unidos cercena la principal vía legal de envío de remesas a la isla y amenaza con dificultar la subsistencia de sus ciudadanos

El Salvador

Though the Bukele government has previously found itself embroiled in corruption scandals, this is the first time that the Attorney General’s Office has levied a major investigation into alleged malpractice

Guatemala

Corruption is at the center of it all. But the protest movement still lacks adequate political organization and a consolidated program to fundamentally reconfigure the antidemocratic postwar political system

La represión es la nueva carta con que se presenta este gobierno

Some of Trump’s actions can be undone relatively easily, legal scholars and former judges and justice officials say. Others require laborious rule-making or slow-moving litigation

Honduras

Muchos de los refugios habilitados para familias damnificadas en la capital no cuentan con presencia de las autoridades, sino que han sido delegados a activistas del partido de gobierno, las familias piden comida y ayuda

Mexico

El titular de la Secretaría de Marina (Semar), Rafael Ojeda Durán, refrendó su lealtad “incondicional” no solo al presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sino también al Ejército “como nuestro compañero de armas”

El estado de Jalisco ocupa el primer lugar nacional en el número de cuerpos exhumados de fosas clandestinas

The citizens of both countries have something to worry about when it comes to civil/military relations

Rafael Heredia Rubio, abogado del General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, dijo que había un “sentimiento desagradable” entre los militares mexicanos por la detención del extitular

No fue El Pentágono el que arrestó a Cienfuegos, sino la Agencia Federal Antinarcóticos, dijo Craig Deare, exoficial de inteligencia de El Pentágono

Nicaragua

Family-run media spread state propaganda while Ortega uses state spending and tax laws to squeeze rival outlets

Peru

El periodista refirió que también se pretendía imponer un toque de queda de 24 horas y arrestar a quienes dirigían las manifestaciones contra el régimen de facto de Merino de Lama

Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela

An at­tor­ney is call­ing for a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances in which 16 Venezue­lan chil­dren and nine women were de­port­ed mere hours be­fore their habeas cor­pus hear­ing

U.S.-Mexico Border

The wire is going up along a stretch of now 30-foot barrier between El Paso’s Downtown Paso del Norte bridge and the Bridge of the Americas

GAO’s analysis of USACE data shows that, as of July 2020, the federal government acquired 135 private tracts, or sections, of land and is working to acquire 991 additional tracts

November 24, 2020 — 0

The day ahead: November 24, 2020

I’ll be most reachable late morning and late afternoon. (How to contact me)

There are two panel discussions today, hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, with colleagues talking about expanding military roles in Latin America, a subject I’m extremely interested in. (I’ll be speaking at this conference on Thursday.) So I’ll be tuned into that, as well as into a meeting with border colleagues in the afternoon, and a conversation with the co-organizer of an upcoming event, in the early afternoon.

So I’ll be intermittently available all day, but not impossible to reach if needed.

November 23, 2020 — 0

WOLA Podcast: The Transition: A Rational, Region-Wide Approach to Migration

Here’s a second WOLA podcast in which, as the United States pivots between two very different administrations, we step back and take stock of things. In this one, Maureen Meyer and I talk about a huge topic: migration. In particular, how to adapt to the “new normal” and respond humanely.

The .mp3 file is here. The podcast feed is here. And here’s the text from WOLA’s podcast landing page.

The United States is in the transition period between the Biden and Trump administrations. For U.S.-Latin American relations, this will mean a sharp shift between two very different visions of how Washington should work with the hemisphere.

Nowhere is this shift likely to be as sharp as on migration policy, with Trump’s hardline giving way to what promises to be a more humane and managerial approach under Biden. How profound that change will be remains unclear, though, as the United States and the rest of the hemisphere adjust to a reality of high levels of migration, and as the drivers of migration region-wide continue to accelerate.

Director for Defense Oversight Adam Isacson and Vice-President for Programs Maureen Meyer have collaborated for nine years on WOLA’s border security and migration efforts. Here, they take stock of the region’s “new normal” of heavy migration flows, and the administrative and policy shifts that the Biden administration—and governments and international organizations regionwide—must undergo in order to adapt.

This is the second of a series of discussions in which the podcast will talk about the transition. Last week, we covered U.S. credibility and the tone of relations. In coming weeks we plan to cover anti-corruption, then the state of human rights and democracy.

November 23, 2020 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Reuters/Luis Echeverria photo at Al Jazeera. Caption: “An office of the Congress building is seen after demonstrators set it on fire during a protest demanding the resignation of President Alejandro Giammattei, in Guatemala City, Guatemala November 21, 2020.”

(Even more here)

November 23, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

A new response to the pandemic and the ensuing economic contraction, together with a deeper push to repair and expand the tattered American social safety net, may provoke a corresponding change in Latin America

Bolivia

Noticias de Bolivia y sus Departamentos, todo el acontecer local

Los observados fueron los dos argentinos. La delegación se completa con un inglés, un brasileño y una colombiana. Su trabajo comenzará el lunes

Bolivia, Western Hemisphere Regional

Taken together, these studies offer a gripping portrait of an increasingly important site of political struggle: the battle within the left over resource extraction

Brazil

Local press reported that the man, 40-year-old welder João Alberto Silveira Freitas, died of asphyxiation, drawing comparisons to George Floyd’s killing in the U.S. earlier this year

Brazil’s president is enjoying a surge in popularity thanks to emergency cash transfers and reduced political tensions. But his fortunes may turn, and the threat he poses to Brazilian democracy rise again

The right-wing wave that swept Brazil in the 2018 elections has brought with it remarkably few proposals to tackle what is arguably the country’s most urgent crisis

Colombia

En esta conmemoración de los 4 años de la firma del AFP en el Teatro Colón, los llamados a garantizar su implementación son urgentes

La bala mató al chico de 18 años, desarmado e indefenso. Hablan la madre de la víctima y el abogado que preside el colectivo jurídico que representa a la familia

De las 7.491 denuncias por abusos policiales que han llegado a la Seccional de la Fiscalía en Bogotá en ese lapso, ni una sola ha llegado a etapa de imputación

El Espectador revela los documentos y los testimonios que probarían que esos jóvenes fueron asesinados por la Fuerza Pública. Entre ellos hay un menor de edad

Todos los sectores sociales, políticos y económicos de la región coincidieron en que lo que se necesita para parar y prevenir la repetición del conflicto es una inversión integral y una articulación profunda

En Betania, suroeste del departamento de Antioquia, fueron masacrados ocho recolectores de café; mientras en Cauca, una de las regiones más azotadas por la violencia política, asesinaron a cinco

Las disidencias de las FARC son un riesgo grande para la seguridad a nivel regional, pero no lo son para el Estado central. Tampoco hay una guerra entre Gentil Duarte e Iván Márquez

En el Bajo Cauca Antioqueño luego de conocerse que Caín había sido dado de baja, también empezó a circular un panfleto en el que ‘Los Caparros’ imponían un paro armado desde hoy, 20 de noviembre

Herederos del paramilitarismo, han consolidado su dominio sobre el narcotráfico y la minería ilegal, así como un control de las carreteras

Esta columna responde al deseo que expresamos hace unas semanas en nuestra cuenta de Twitter de dar nuestra opinión desde un medio de comunicación masivo. Este espacio atendió a ese llamado

Colombia, Venezuela

Since the start of the pandemic, humanitarian organizations say there has been a marked increase in gender-based violence along the border regions

Costa Rica, Nicaragua

Una investigación realizada por la Fundación Arias, de Costa Rica, reveló que tanto policías costarricenses y militares de Nicaragua están siendo involucrados con la trata de personas en la frontera sur

Cuba

More than a hundred pro-government civilians on Sunday mobbed a handful of protesters who showed up at Havana’s Central Park to support a group of dissidents on a hunger strike, while security forces watched on

Guatemala

A contentious budget bill pushed thousands into the streets to demand an end to corruption, among other grievances

The incident on Saturday came as about 10,000 people were protesting in front of the National Palace in Guatemala City against corruption and the budget

Honduras

Honduras sufrió en menos de quince días la furia de dos ciclones que dejaron a su paso muerte y millonarias pérdidas. Uno de los sectores más afectados fue el sector agroalimentario

Mexico

Elementos de la Guardia Nacional (GN) fueron desplegados en la reserva de la biósfera de la mariposa monarca para prevenir y combatir la tala clandestina, la cacería ilegal o la instalación de asentamientos irregulares

Las primeras versiones y testimonios de estudiantes y personas que los auxiliaron en medio de los ataques de esa larga noche de Iguala, dan cuenta de su presencia

The president reneged on his campaign vow to end the military’s involvement in Mexico’s war against drug traffickers while vastly expanding the role of the armed forces in other civilian matters

De acuerdo con especialistas en temas de narcotráfico, la agencia estadounidense ha roto todas las reglas en México y actúa de manera unilateral, generando tensiones a nivel de gobiernos

“México se comprometió a colaborar con Estados Unidos en la captura de un objetivo primordial”, dijo la fuente, quien solicitó el anonimato

November 23, 2020 — 0

The day ahead: November 23, 2020

I’ll be most reachable in the late afternoon. (How to contact me)

I’ve got some internal meetings and checkins through lunchtime, then will be recording a podcast mid-afternoon. I’ll be hard to reach until near the end of the workday when things open up a bit.

November 22, 2020 — 0

Latin America-related online events this week

Monday, November 23

  • 9:00-10:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 12:00-1:30 at Facebook Live: Conversatorio: La verdad es un acto de justicia.
  • 1:00-2:00 at wilsoncenter.org: DOJ’s Role in Fighting Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering in Latin America (RSVP required).
  • 1:30-3:00 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 5:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: Latin America and the Caribbean’s COVID-19 recovery: A conversation with IDB President Mauricio Claver-Carone (RSVP required).
  • 6:30-7:30 at gwu.edu: The Future of US-Latin American Relations Under the Biden Administration (RSVP required).

Tuesday, November 24

  • 9:00-10:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 9:00-10:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Brazil, No Longer the Country of Impunity? The Lessons of Operation Car Wash (RSVP required).
  • 11:00 at Zoom: Deadly Trade: How European and Israeli weapons exports are accelerating violence in Mexico (RSVP required).
  • 1:00-2:15 at brookings.edu: The Biden presidency and the future of America’s ‘forever wars’ (RSVP required).
  • 3:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: Thriving amid COVID-19: Illicit trade in Latin America and the Caribbean (RSVP required).
  • 5:00 at Zoom: Participación Política de Mujeres Afrodescendientes en América Latina y el Caribe: Retos y Oportunidades (RSVP required).
  • 4:00-5:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).

Wednesday, November 25

  • 9:00-10:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 11:00 at Zoom: Coca and Capitalism in Cauca (RSVP required).
  • 2:00 at Zoom: Los Golpistas, la Democracia y los Jóvenes que la Podrían Salvar (RSVP required).
  • 3:00-4:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).

Thursday, November 26

  • 9:00-10:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 4:00-5:30 at Zoom: Segundo Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Seguridad Incluyente y Sostenible “Desafíos de la Seguridad en Tiempos de Crisis Múltiples” (RSVP required).
  • 8:00PM at Facebook Live and YouTube: Las Violencias del Racismo.

Friday, November 27

November 22, 2020 — 0

A few important border graphics

Late Thursday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a pile of data about migration and drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border in October.

Here are some key trends. Click on any graphic to expand in a new window. You can download a PDF packet of more than 30 of these infographics at bit.ly/wola_border.

The Trump administration has been around for 46 months (yes I know). Of those 46, October 2020 saw the 7th largest number of undocumented migrants apprehended at the border. And now they can’t blame it on “loopholes” or agents being constrained. They’re implementing some of the hardest-line anti-migration tactics ever, express-expelling most everybody, including asylum seekers, under a March 2020 CDC quarantine order.
Under the CDC border closure, US authorities have now express-expelled undocumented migrants 266,367 times. (The actual number of individual people is fewer, because some have been caught more than once.) At least 13,000 of those expelled were children who arrived unaccompanied, and were pushed back to their home countries unaccompanied.
Border Patrol is apprehending more single adults than at any time in the past decade. While there’s double-counting here because “expelled” migrants often make a second or third attempt quickly, this is a dramatic change in the profile of migrants. Many of them may be deportees seeking to reunite with spouses, children, or other family members. Nearly all seek to avoid apprehension, which means it’s likely that more will die of dehydration or exposure in deserts and other wilderness areas.
For much of the 2010s, a large number—often a majority—of apprehended migrants were children and families, usually seeking to be apprehended in order to petition for asylum or other protection. Draconian Trump policies like “Remain in Mexico” reduced child and family asylum-seeking migration—but it has been slowly recovering in recent months.
Expulsions mean it’s virtually impossible for a parent or child who needs protection to do so by approaching a port of entry (official border crossing).
Mexico’s migrant apprehensions recovered in September to pre-pandemic levels. The overwhelming majority are from Central America.
After a pandemic lull, applications for asylum before Mexico’s refugee agency COMAR recovered to early 2020 levels in October.
Something is up with drug seizures. I had to increase the y-axis on three of these charts because of a big jump from September to October. Nearly all seizures occurred at ports of entry where CBP officers inspect vehicles, not between the ports where Border Patrol operates.

November 22, 2020 — 0

Two interviews from last Thursday

I enjoyed talking about the border for an hour, on DC poet and all-around-brilliant person Ethelbert Miller’s radio show, on November 19.

And later that same day I was pleased that Cuestión de Poder, on the NTN24 cable network, wanted to dig into the COVID-era expansion of Latin America’s militaries’ roles. We’ll be wrestling with this for a while.

Also, the plants in my home office are thriving right now.

November 21, 2020 — 0

5 links from the past week

  • A country that won’t take dramatic action after 250,000 people die from a pandemic also won’t take dramatic action after 2.5 million weapons are smuggled from its legal gun dealers across the border into Mexico, just over the past 10 years.
  • 5,400 words in English about Colombia’s false positives scandal, the ups and downs of the country’s armed forces, and the struggle of the victims? Yes, please. The Guardian’s latest “long read” is a great piece by Mariana Palau.
  • Two of the profession’s most trusted and cited border and migration reporters, Alfredo Corchado and Dianne Solís at The Dallas Morning News, dig into the likelihood that the Biden administration will truly undo the Trump administration’s hardline policies. This analysis will lower your expectations.
  • It’s more than just climate change. Writing between two brutal hurricanes, El Faro’s Carlos Martínez draws a direct parallel between Honduras’s endemic corruption and the amount of damage that a storm can do. Pair that with this analysis of Honduras’s “murky” police reform and pervasive mistrust of government, by Marna Shorack, Elizabeth G. Kennedy, and Amelia Frank-Vitale at NACLA.
  • In an excellent four-part series, Nicaragua’s Expediente Público talks to experts and social movement leaders to figure out what it would take to reimagine and reform the country’s police force in an eventual post-Ortega context.
November 21, 2020 — 0

Colombia peace update: Week of November 15, 2020

Between now and the end of the year, we’re producing weekly sub-1,000-word updates in English about peace accord implementation and related topics. After that, we will evaluate the experience—both audience response and our own time commitment—before deciding whether to produce these permanently.

Four ex-FARC members killed in a week

Four demobilized FARC combatants were assassinated this week, bringing the total of murdered ex-guerrillas to 242 since the peace accord’s December 2016 ratification. Of those, 50 happened during the first nine months of 2020, according to the UN Verification Mission.

The latest victims are:

  • Heiner Cuesta Mena alias Yilson Menas, shot November 14 in Neguá, Quibdó, Chocó.
  • Jorge Riaño, shot November 15 in Florencia, Caquetá. Riaño had left the FARC demobilization site (ETCR) in Montañita, Cauca, to raise fish and chickens with his wife and young daughter.
  • Enod López, shot on November 15 along with his wife Nerie Penna, a Conservative party municipal council representative and community leader in Puerto Guzmán, Putumayo. The department’s police commander blamed the “Carolina Ramírez” FARC dissident group, part of the 1st Front structure headed by alias “Gentil Duarte.”
  • Bryan Steven Montes alias Jairo López, shot November 19 in Puerto Caicedo, Putumayo.

FARC Senator Victoria Sandino responded to Montes’s killing by calling on the government “to stop simulating the peace accord’s implementation and to implement it comprehensively.” In an article published on November 16, InsightCrime described a very precarious security situation in eight of the twenty-four former ETCRs.

At the end of October, over 200 former FARC combatants carried out a “Pilgrimage for Life and Peace” march to Bogotá to call for better protections. Twelve of the march’s leaders met on November 6 with President Iván Duque at the presidential palace.

Security Forces kill top “paramilitary” and capture a FARC dissident; a second dissident is killed in Venezuela

A November 16 army-police operation killed Emiliano Alcides Osorio Macea, alias “Caín” or “Pilatos,” the head of the “Caparros” neo-paramilitary group. “Caín” reportedly died in combat as forces raided a ranch in Tarazá, in northeastern Antioquia’s violent Bajo Cauca region.

Osorio, a longtime paramilitary who demobilized from the AUC’s Antioquia-based Mineros Bloc in 2006, was what the authorities consider a “high value target.” With over 400 estimated members, the Caparros, also known as the Caparrapos or the Virgilio Peralta Arena Bloc, is one of the larger single-region armed groups active in Colombia. It split off in early 2017 from the Gulf Clan neo-paramilitary organization and, possibly in tandem with the ELN and FARC dissidents, has been violently disputing control of the Bajo Cauca region and neighboring southern Córdoba. It is believed responsible for several killings of local social leaders. It is doubtful that the death of Caín will reduce violence in this territory, which sees much coca cultivation and cocaine transshipment.

Another mid-level commander, in this case of the dissident group headed by former chief FARC negotiator Iván Márquez, was killed in Venezuela this week. Venezuelan forces killed Olivio Iván Merchán, alias “Loco Iván,” under unclear circumstances in Venezuela’s Bolívar state. Merchán was a FARC member for more than 30 years, part of the military command (estado mayor) of the powerful Eastern Bloc. He demobilized in 2017. He joined Iván Márquez’s “Nuevo Marquetalia” dissident group when it formed in 2019.

Researcher Miguel Ángel Morffe told El Espectador that Venezuelan forces either killed “Loco Iván” by mistake, or that they did it at the bidding of his fellow dissidents who wanted him dead for some reason. Morffe saw little possibility that Venezuelan forces did so out of a desire to keep order.

Meanwhile in rural La Macarena, Meta, an Army-Fiscalía team wounded and captured Rolan Arnulfo Torres Huertas, alias Álvaro Boyaco, whom the government identified as the “finance chief” for Gentil Duarte, who heads what is probably the largest national FARC dissident group.

Military questioned for misogynistic chants

Adriana Villegas, a columnist for the La Patria newspaper in Manizales, Caldas, lives across the street from the base of the Colombian Army’s Ayacucho Battalion. Soldiers on training drills routinely run past her house, chanting cadence rhymes.

On October 18, Villegas wrote a column about the content of some of those rhymes, which alarmed her and her daughter. We won’t reproduce them here; they included some vivid imagery about committing violence against girlfriends, mothers, mothers-in-law, and women related to their enemies.

Villegas’s cause got taken up by a local feminist group and the president of the Caldas legislature, who called on the Army to apologize. It did not: it issued a statement maintaining that the misogynistic cadences were not part of training or doctrine. The Battalion’s commander called Villegas for more information, a conversation during which, she noted, he kept calling her “doctorcita” and insisted that the misogynistic rhymes were “an isolated case.”

Colombia’s Free Press Federation (FLIP) got involved after Villegas received citations from the Battalion calling on her to their base to give a statement. While this may be part of the Battalion’s internal investigation, Villegas said she found the formal requests intimidating.

“I regret that the Army is wasting this opportunity to recognize a problem and, instead, is assuming an attitude of denial,” Villegas wrote in her November 15 column.

Other links

  • Hurricane Iota passed over the Colombian Caribbean archipelago of San Andrés y Providencia as a Category 5 storm. On Providencia, El Tiempo reports, “There is no house that hasn’t suffered damage. And the majority are destroyed.”
  • A Guardian longread by Mariana Palau, about the “False Positives” scandal and former Army chief Gen. Mario Montoya, is a nuanced portrait of 21st century Colombia.
  • In an El Espectador blog post, an unnamed scholar who spent months accompanying military personnel at Colombia’s Superior War College is struck by officers’ frustration with forced coca eradication, which “turns the campesinos into enemies.”
  • Colombia’s Senate passed a bill extending for another 10 years the “sunset date” for Colombia’s 2011 Victims’ Law, which was to expire in 2021. It goes to President Duque’s desk for signature.
  • Ariel Ávila of the Fundación Paz y Reconciliación visited an encampment of FARC dissidents in Cauca, and published an overview in El Espectador of these violent groups, dividing them into three coalitions or categories.
November 20, 2020 — 0

Weekly Border Update: November 20, 2020

There’s so much happening at the U.S.-Mexico border—much of it outrageous, some of it heroic—that it’s hard to keep track. With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments in 900 words or less. We welcome your feedback.

October sees another big jump in undocumented migration

CBP reported on November 19 that, during October, Border Patrol apprehended 66,337 undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. (CBP encountered another 2,900 migrants at border ports of entry.) That was the most apprehensions since July 2019. It was the heaviest October since 2005. It was the 7th largest monthly total during the Trump administration’s 46 months.

57,206 of those apprehended, 86%, were single adults: by far the largest monthly single-adult total for the months we have data (since October 2011).

We say “apprehensions,” not “people,” as there may be some double-counting of migrants who were caught more than once. CBP reported a 37% “recidivism rate”—the portion of people caught more than once—between April and September 2020, up from 7 percent in FY 2019.

A key reason for high recidivism is the Trump administration’s pandemic policy, laid out in a March 2020 CDC order, of rapidly expelling nearly all undocumented migrants, with minimal processing. CBP is expelling Mexican and Central Americans back into Mexico, usually in less than 90 minutes, regardless of the migrants’ protection needs. US authorities expelled undocumented migrants 266,367 times between March and October. (See a May 2020 joint statement condemning the expulsion policy.)

As they involve minimal time in detention, and reduce the effort needed to cross again, the rapid expulsions facilitate repeat attempts. Migrant smugglers praised the pandemic policy in interviews with Reuters. They “often attempt to get migrants back across the border the very same day they are deported.” Their fees, “which can be $7,000, or double that,” for Central Americans, usually involve a “package” of two or three attempted border crossings. The border expulsions save smugglers money, as they don’t have to transit their clients all the way across Mexico again. One said the cost of that trip is “at least $800 per migrant paying off drug cartels for the right to transit through their turf,” plus funds for food, shelter, transportation, and bribes to Mexican authorities.

WOLA and others have been warning about a coming wave of migration from Central America and Mexico, due to persistently severe violence, climate-related crop failures, the COVID-19 economic depression, and now two strong hurricanes hitting Central America during the first half of November. That wave now appears to be underway.

A few other notes from the latest CBP data:

  • Apprehensions of children and families rose to their highest level since the pre-pandemic month of December 2019.
  • Mexico’s share of the apprehended population was 63%, up from a low of 13% in May 2019 but down from a high of 81% in May and June 2020.
  • Something is up with drug seizures. CBP seized 101% more heroin, 58% more fentanyl, 57% more cocaine, and 33% more methamphetamine in October than in September. 89% of fentanyl, and more than 90% of the other drugs, were seized at ports of entry.

Download WOLA’s package of border graphics illustrating this data, as a 4.5MB .pdf file, at bit.ly/wola_border.

Court says unaccompanied children can’t be expelled

Under the March 2020 CDC order, U.S. border authorities have expelled nearly all migrants who would otherwise be petitioning for asylum or other protection in the United States. Those expelled include at least 13,000 children from non-contiguous countries who arrived at the border unaccompanied. Before the pandemic measures, these children would have been automatically placed in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and entered into asylum proceedings, as mandated by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). Most troublingly, the New York Times reported in October that CBP had expelled some non-Mexican children, unaccompanied, back into Mexico.

On November 18 DC District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, ordered a stop to the expulsions of unaccompanied children, agreeing with ACLU-represented plaintiffs that the COVID-19 border measures cannot supersede the TVPRA. All other undocumented migrants at the border, however, remain subject to immediate expulsion.

In another victory for migrant children’s rights, Mexico published in its official register a legal change prohibiting its longstanding practice of holding children in its migrant detention centers. Mexico will instead transfer undocumented migrant children to its federal family welfare agency.

Speculation about what Biden might do with the border wall

During the 2020 campaign, President-Elect Joe Biden pledged to stop the Trump administration’s border wall construction. In August, he told reporters, “there will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.”

How Biden might do that, and how far he might go, was the topic of analyses published last week by The Arizona Republic, NPR, The Daily Beast, and Arizona NPR’s Fronteras Desk.

Some of the issues these analyses identified:

  • Ending the February 2019 “national emergency” declaration and other measures that Donald Trump has used to transfer approximately $10 billion from the Defense Department’s budget into wall-building. Biden can do this easily by withdrawing Trump’s declaration.
  • Canceling or modifying 27 existing contracts, with 11 different contractors, for border wall construction. While these contracts include clauses allowing a halt to work, which are standard in government procurement procedure, they may involve termination fees, and contractors could bring disputes to the federal government’s Court of Federal Claims.
  • Desisting from eminent-domain lawsuits to seize private property owners’ land for new wall, mainly in Texas: “End. Stop. Done. Over. Not going to do it. Withdraw the lawsuits. We’re out. We’re not going to confiscate the land,” Biden said in August. He can do this easily by pulling the suits.
  • Biden has not specified whether he would dismantle any wall. Advocates are urging the incoming administration to take it down in remote areas where it threatens fragile ecosystems, like Arizona’s Quitobaquito Springs and San Pedro River, along important wildlife migration routes, and at sites sacred to indigenous communities.
November 20, 2020 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from Animal Político (Mexico).

(Even more here)

November 20, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

Se mantiene la criminalización de las personas usuarias permitiendo que éstas sean perseguidas penal y administrativamente, y enfrenten castigos con cárcel y multas de hasta diez mil pesos

The DHS Reform Act of 2020, will improve DHS operations and address the Trump Administration’s mismanagement, waste, and abuse of the Department by requiring a range of reforms

Brazil

A Black man died after being beaten by supermarket security guards in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre on the eve of Friday’s Black Consciousness Day observations, sparking outrage

The political situation in Brazil remains quite reactionary, even after Jair Bolsonaro’s party lost ground in Sunday’s election. But the far-right president’s violent agenda took a hit — and that’s worth celebrating

Colombia

Aparece en las piezas gráficas de una campaña que denunciaba estos hechos, violencia física y simbólica contra la mujer al interior de esta institución castrense

Desde los días del plebiscito el enfoque de género enfrenta la resistencia de grupos conservadores que hacen parte de la actual coalición de gobierno, y ahora se ve amenazado por el recrudecimiento de la guerra y la pandemia

Con el homicidio de Bryan Steven Montes, conocido como ‘Jairo López’, la cifra de firmantes del Acuerdo de paz asesinados llega a 242 en todo el país

Mexico

El subsecretario de Derechos Humanos, Población y Migración de la Secretaría de Gobernación, Alejandro Encinas, dijo que la acusación contra el Capitán Crespo “es por presuntos vínculos con la organización Guerreros Unidos”

Señaló que si bien las medidas para proteger la salud durante una pandemia son necesarias, existen “grandes riesgos de que sean excesivas y discriminatorias o abuso en la implementación de ellas”

En 2018, la Policía Federal simuló contrataciones y compras para justificar el uso de más de mil 500 mdp cuyo destino real se desconoce

El de Cienfuegos Zepeda no es el único caso donde la justicia norteamericana ha quedado en evidencia por prestarse a una negociación de carácter político de esta magnitud

Drug policy reform involves a gradual shift in rhetoric, laws and practices. It doesn’t necessarily mean legalizing all drugs, but focusing on harm reduction and treatment

Peru

Though the 76-year-old Sagasti only entered congressional politics in 2016, his professional background is that of a man who has thought long and hard about how to approach complex political problems

U.S.-Mexico Border

Aides say congressional leaders and the heads of the Senate and House Appropriations committees will soon negotiate a compromise between the $2 billion request and counteroffer of zero dollars once both chambers settle on the allocation amounts

Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of CBP, once more used his monthly enforcement briefing to depict border crossers as selfish and unconcerned for the welfare of U.S. agents and the American public

Uruguay

“Hasta no hace mucho tiempo en Uruguay habían planteos de eliminar las Fuerzas Armadas e incluso hubo calificaciones sobre el soldado en la campaña electoral pasada muy agraviantes”, señaló

Venezuela

Una teniente Hidalgo fue detenida luego de manifestar su descontento por la falta de comida, agua, transporte y otros servicios que afectan a los uniformados. Otros miembros de la Fuerza Armada la apoyaron

Some of them could even still be on active duty, as the pronouncements of their retirements have not been published

November 20, 2020 — 0

The day ahead: November 20, 2020

I’m around most of the day. (How to contact me)

Posting this a little late because I just finished drafting a weekly border update, on which I got a late start because CBP dropped its October migration numbers at the end of the day yesterday. More on that later.

Today I’ve got a coalition meeting mid-afternoon, but am otherwise at my desk making the cursor go from left to right as fast as possible.

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