Key Democratic lawmakers and congressional staff have been in “constant communication” with Biden’s transition team and policy writers about the immigration plan
Aliado fiel de Donald Trump, Bolsonaro afirmou, após a invasão do Capitólio, que, se não tivermos voto imprenso em 2022, “nós vamos ter problemas piores do que os Estados Unidos”
Las historias que hemos leído en #ProhibidoOlvidarSV dan cuenta de un país en el que conviven aún el dolor de aquellos años y la determinación por sostener aquellos acuerdos como un logro mayúsculo
Guatemalan migration officials estimated on Sunday that about 6,000 migrants were corralled between Chiquimula and the border with Honduras, most of them Honduran
The roadblock was strategically placed at a chokepoint on the two-lane highway to Chiquimula in an area known as Vado Hondo. It’s flanked by a tall mountainside and a wall leaving the migrants with few options
Hundreds of migrants managed to push through military and police lines on Saturday, but when others unsuccessfully attempted to do so on Sunday morning, soldiers responded with batons and tear gas
La persecución e intento por frenar la primera caravana de migrantes del 2021, ha provocado que miles de uniformados de México, Guatemala, El Salvador y Honduras hayan tenido que movilizarse en los pasos fronterizos
People in the caravan “will not find when they get to the U.S. border that from Tuesday to Wednesday, things have changed overnight and ports are all open and they can come into the United States”
La presencia de elementos de seguridad mexicanos en la frontera sur disminuyó este domingo, luego de que la caravana de migrantes proveniente de Honduras fuera detenida y obligada a retroceder por la fuerza policiaca y militares de Guatemala
El nivel de confianza en las fuerzas armadas de nuestro país en general, y en particular del Ejercito, tiene altos niveles de confianza (alrededor del 70%)
The vigilantes bitterly deny allegations they’re part of a criminal gang, though they clearly see the Jalisco cartel as their foe. They say they would be more than happy for police and soldiers to come in and do their jobs
The United States can take only one message from all of this: the López Obrador administration at its highest levels is not a trustworthy U.S. security partner
Contractors have been working day and sometimes night, effectively racing against the clock to build the border wall in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s term
A week after inauguration day, a coalition of groups across the borderlands will begin a monitoring project in order to assess the damage, and to see what needs to be done. Some hope certain sections can be removed
The 14 -mile span from the rail road bridge north to El Pico Water Plant is 90% complete in its design phase. Surveys are still ongoing, along with engineering, environmental and flood plain studies
Organizaciones nacionales e internacionales defensoras de los derechos humanos exigen la liberación de los detenidos, así como un pronunciamiento por parte del coordinador Residente del Sistema de las Naciones Unidas
Rodriguez, extending an olive branch to the incoming U.S. president, said the ruling socialist party is eager for a new start after four years of endless attacks by the Trump administration
Cross-posted from WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site. During at least the first half of 2021, we’re producing weekly sub-1,000-word updates in English about peace accord implementation and related topics.
Trump administration, citing the ELN talks’ outcome, puts Cuba on the U.S. terrorist sponsors list
On January 11, with nine days left to the Trump presidency, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. government was once again designating Cuba a “state sponsor of terrorism,” alongside North Korea, Syria, and Iran. President Barack Obama’s administration had removed Cuba from this “terrorist list” in 2015.
The measure carries penalties, like bans on assistance and arms sales, that already apply to Cuba through other laws. The Biden administration can remove Cuba, American University’s William LeoGrande explains, by submitting “a presidential report and certification to Congress, which then has 45 days to reject the certification before it goes into effect.”
The main pretext cited for re-listing Cuba involves Colombia. In May 2018 Colombia’s government, the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group, and the government of Norway asked Cuba to host ELN-government peace talks. At the talks’ April 2016 outset, all involved—including Colombian government representatives—signed a set of protocols. These made clear that, should the ELN talks break down, the ELN’s negotiators would not be arrested—they would have 15 days to leave Cuba and receive safe passage back to Colombia. However, President Iván Duque’s administration, which took office in August 2018, was skeptical about peace talks.
In January 2019, the ELN set off a truck bomb on the premises of Colombia’s National Police Cadets’ School, killing 22 people and forcing an end to the negotiations. After that, the Colombian government rejected the protocols: it demanded that Cuba turn over the ELN’s negotiators for arrest, later formally requesting their extradition. Cuba would not do that, and the guerrilla negotiators remain stranded in Cuban territory. The ELN leaders themselves demand to leave Cuba as detailed in the protocols.
Critics of the State Department decision pointed out that Havana is being punished for assisting a peace process and obeying its rules. “They felt they were doing what they were asked to do, then being accused of being terrorists themselves,” said a source whom The Washington Post described as “a former senior U.S. official familiar with Latin American policy.”
“Efforts to politicize important decisions concerning our national security are unacceptable,” read a letter from nine Democratic senators, led by incoming Appropriations Committee Chairperson Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont.)
“I am outraged,” said the new House Foreign Affairs Committee chairperson, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York).
“If a country risks being placed on a terrorism list as a result of facilitating peace efforts, it could set a negative precedent for international peace efforts,” read a statement from the government of Norway.
The Colombian government’s two lead negotiators during the FARC peace process warned “that ideology and partisan interests are being privileged over common sense and international commitments.”
On the other side, legislators from Colombia’s ruling rightist Centro Democrático party signed a letter calling on President Duque to consider breaking off diplomatic relations with Cuba. And Colombia’s national security advisor, Rafael Guarín, tweeted that “The Government of Colombia will be forceful against diplomats who attempt to act and interfere within the country.”
Presidency peace and stabilization official reports results, responds to critics
The Colombian Presidency official who oversees most peace accord implementation, Emilio Archila, told El Espectador that he doesn’t know why critics accuse his government of focusing too exclusively on certain aspects of the accord, like the Territorially Focused Development Plans (PDETs). “A very small part of it,” he surmised, “is that it is in the political opposition’s interest that we arrive at [the election year of] 2022 with the idea that not enough is being done, and perhaps the opposition has done better than me.”
Archila had choice words for Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco, who upon the release of HRW’s annual worldwide report said that “in Colombia you turn over a stone and a sicario comes out,” while accusing the government of “a fundamentally military response” to human rights problems. “This is an insulting statement regarding Colombia,” the presidency official replied.
In interviews and in the release of monthly results reports, Archila pointed to a Defense Ministry “intelligence bubble” to follow up on risks and threats against ex-combatants “which has saved the lives of several.” Presidency documents cite 1,134 mostly small development projects delivered in the PDETs’ 170 municipalities (counties). Archila rejected criticism that delivery of these projects has not been as consultative as the accords envisioned. To criticisms that the projects have been too small to bring fundamental change in rural Colombia, he responded that larger projects, like tertiary roads, are coming but take longer.
FARC party spokesman Pastor Alape Lascarro toldEl Espectador that the PDETs “are not responding to the expectations of the communities, carrying out works that are not within the framework established in the Peace Agreement.” He questioned the long-term sustainability of economic projects offered to ex-combatants, while recalling that 253 of 13,185 demobilized FARC members have been killed since the accords’ signature.
Environmental defender Gonzalo Cardona is assassinated
On January 11 the Fundación ProAves, which seeks to protect birds and other wildlife in Colombia, announced the murder of Gonzalo Cardona Molina, coordinator of a ProAves preserve in Tolima department that provides refuge for the endangered yellow-eared parrot. ProAves had reported Cardona missing on January 8, and confirmed a few days later that he had been killed.
Cardona was a founding member of the environmental group , working in Roncesvalles municipality in west-central Tolima since 1998 to save a bird species whose population in Colombia’s central cordillera, by then, had fallen to 81. His work there during some of the conflict’s most intense years placed him in periodic danger, as rural Tolima was a key battleground between the FARC and government forces. But it made a difference: a late 2020 census counted 2,895 yellow-eared parrots in the preserve.
Cardona’s likely killers are not known. “It is outrageous that the second most biodiverse country on the planet continues to lose its great defenders to violence,” read a statement from Colombia’s Alexander von Humboldt Institute.
In more dismaying news, Francisco Javier Vera, an 11-year-old environmental activist in Cundinamarca, received a grisly threat of death and torture this week in a comment posted to his Twitter account.
Links
Sign up for Con Líderes Hay Paz, WOLA’s new digital advocacy campaign in support of Colombia’s threatened Afro-descendant and indigenous social leaders and human rights defenders.
Iván Márquez, the FARC leader who headed the guerrillas’ negotiating team in Havana then rearmed in 2019, released a video endorsing the idea of a recall vote to remove President Duque. At the request of Colombia’s National Police, Twitter shut down Márquez’s account, and that of his longtime dissident collaborator Jesús Santrich. YouTube followed suit. National Security Advisor Rafael Guarín tweeted that Márquez will be “taken down” like Pablo Escobar.
The Duque government is inexplicably removing the Interior Ministry security detail for Iván Velásquez, the former auxiliary magistrate who suffered extensive illegal surveillance while investigating the “para-politics” scandal, then went on to head Guatemala’s CICIG anti-corruption body.
The restart of aerial herbicide fumigation in coca-growing regions, which was likely to begin in the first months of 2021, may be delayed for weeks or months further. A judge in Nariño accepted an injunction (tutela) filed by Afro-descendant and indigenous communities, alleging that required prior consultations have been insufficient.
Sixteen women were killed in Colombia during the first thirteen days of 2021, a sharp rise in the rate of femicides.
President Duque reiterated his government’s refusal to offer COVID-19 vaccines to undocumented Venezuelans in Colombia, saying it would cause “a stampede.”
At War on the Rocks, Andrew Ivey explores “integral action” as a direction for the Colombian military’s post-conflict role. While we don’t share his conclusion that the military should play eminently civilian roles like carrying out development projects, Ivey presents detailed information about the evolution of the armed forces’ thinking.
We live close to downtown Washington, the weather was cool but sunny, and my family and I finally had a few hours off. We took a walk to see what our city looks like, 10 days after the riot at the Capitol and 4 days before the presidential inauguration.
Stars and Stripes reporter Bob Reid put it well on Twitter. The city’s center doesn’t quite look like a war zone. Instead, “it looks more like a Cold War frontier zone in the ‘70s. Empty streets, barriers, bored armed troops.”
About half a mile from Pennsylvania Avenue, you walk past the first security perimeter, where National Guard Humvees or dump trucks are parked, along with arrays of jersey barriers, to block vehicles. A block or so before Pennsylvania Avenue, you hit the next ring of security, where pedestrians like us wait in line to be searched, then let in. From there, you can go all the way up to the metal fencing that blocks access to the National Mall and everything about 1,000 yards from the Capitol.
National Guard at the outer perimeter, 4th and H Streets and Massachusetts Avenue.The outer perimeter at 7th and I Streets NW.7th and I Streets, Mount Vernon Square.Boarding up the Walgreen’s at 7th and H Streets NW.The National Archives are inside the second security perimeter. Only people who’ve been searched can get there.Pennsylvania Avenue is almost totally empty.Even the glass I.M. Pei pyramids outside the National Gallery of Art are boarded up. This measure was not taken at any previous inauguration, nor during the Women’s Marches, the Black Lives Matter marches, the March for Our Lives, the March for Science, or any other recent peaceful demonstration. I hate this so much.This is usually the inaugural parade route. No bleachers on the sidewalks this year.A remnant of January 6th.This is as close as you can get to the Capitol today.Humvee at the inner perimeter.National Guardsmen.Guardsmen are carrying M4 rifles with the magazines stowed in pouches on their vests.Rifles and a pizza box on Constitution Avenue at 3rd Street.These wanted notices, with faces captured from videos of the Capitol riot, are on most bus shelters.
Delmer Martinez photo at Associated Press. Caption: “A police officer stands by as travelers fill the back of a truck after revising their documents and allowing them to continue their journey toward the Guatemalan border, on the highway leading to Santa Barbara, after they left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, before dawn Friday, Jan. 15, 2021. The migrants left with little certainty about how far they will make it as regional governments appeared more united than ever in stopping their progress.”
When Mr Trump took office in 2017, Latin American governments suffered a “fear of coming to his attention”, says a former adviser to his administration. But many grew to like him, largely because he left them alone
The Brazilian and Argentine armies carried out Operation Arandu at Barão de São Borja Training Camp, in Rosário do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, November 14-20, 2020
Las dos niñas argentinas que fueron presentadas como “abatidas en combate” por el ejército paraguayo en septiembre pasado, habrían sido detenidas con vida y ejecutadas por los militares de ese país
hasta ahora lo que se ha visto de los PDET son pequeñas obras de infraestructura, como arreglos en vías terciarias, en centros educativos, en polideportivos, en casetas comunales, etc., que no necesariamente están generando desarrollo
Una tutela de los pueblos étnicos del Pacífico Nariñense logró que el Tribunal Superior de Pasto suspendiera una resolución del Ministerio del Interior según la cual no era necesario hacer consulta previa
Como parte del control que ejercía en el territorio, violó a cientos de mujeres, lo que llevó a que tuviera unos 21 hijos, según cuentas extraoficiales
Sergio Guzman, “Damage Control” (Colombia Risk Analysis, Global Americans, January 15, 2021).
The Colombian government’s not-so-subtle endorsement of Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election was a failed risky gambit. After the failed coup attempt on the United States Capitol, however, it turned out to be a huge error of judgment
De acuerdo con los parlamentarios, mantener relaciones diplomáticas con Cuba significa un “obstáculo real para poder alcanzar esa paz con justicia que anhelamos todos los colombianos”
Taking a country off the list requires a presidential report and certification to Congress, which then has 45 days to reject the certification before it goes into effect
“La guerra fue una farsa. Mataron más de 75.000 personas entre los dos bandos –incluyendo los mil de El Mozote- y fue una farsa como los Acuerdos de Paz”, sentenció el presidente
An indictment was unsealed in Central Islip, New York charging 14 of the world’s highest-ranking MS-13 leaders who are known today as the Ranfla Nacional, which operated as the Organization’s Board of Directors
Video shared by the Guatemala Immigration Institute showed cheering people streaming in while border agents looked on and tried to keep them from blocking traffic
Haiti braced for a fresh round of widespread protests starting Friday, with opposition leaders demanding that President Jovenel Moïse step down next month, worried he is amassing too much power as he enters his second year of rule by decree
Conforman esta fuerza de tarea Agentes Federales de Migracio?n, personal de la Secretari?a de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena), Guardia Nacional (GN), Agencia Mexicana de Cooperacio?n Internacional para el Desarrollo (Amexcid) de la Secretari?a de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE); y del Sistema Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF), y las secretari?as de Salud y Proteccio?n Civil del estado
El embajador Christopher Landau afirmó que EU ofreció a México la extradición de sospechosos de tráfico de armas, sin que el país hubiera solicitado alguna, y tampoco aceptó un donativo de aparatos de detección
His complete exoneration in Mexico came as a shocking about-face after the authorities had promised to bring the full weight of the Mexican justice system to bear
“Estados Unidos se reserva el derecho de reanudar el enjuiciamiento de Cienfuegos si el Gobierno de México falla”, reveló Nicole Navas Oxman, titular de la vocería del Departamento de Estado, al periodista estadounidense Keegan Hamilton, de Vice News
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement of regret Thursday while former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and current DOJ official Gene Hamilton blamed the president for the policy
Multiple Department of Justice leaders told us that Sessions understood at the time the zero tolerance policy was issued that its strict implementation would result in the Department of Homeland Security’s referral for criminal prosecution of adults entering the country illegally with children
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency responsible for housing unaccompanied children, has housed 701 minors whose parents were in Mexico under the MPP program. Most — 643 of them — have been released to family members
The logistical report from the resettlement agency HIAS is the latest in a growing push from immigration and human rights advocates to try to hold him to his promise
Los integrantes de la organización no gubernamental fueron encarcelados el pasado 12 de enero y este jueves fueron presentados ante los tribunales ordinarios
Oficiales iraníes están formando a militares en Venezuela “para controlar a la sociedad venezolana”, denunció el jueves la directora ejecutiva de la ONG Instituto Casla ante autoridades de la Organización de los Estados Americanos
There’s certainly a feeling in Venezuela that a new cycle is about to begin as Joe Biden takes over as President of the United States, offering a potential reset in relations. And it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there might not be room for Guaidó in that cycle
The media outlet Efecto Cocuyo, community radio channel Fe y Alegría, as well as the National Press Workers Union, VPI TV, and news journal Panorama, among other media outlets, have become the target of stigmatization campaigns and legal scrutiny
The Rio Grande Valley border town of Alamo, Texas, whose municipal officials received no official notice from the White House, hosted an abruptly planned January 12 visit from Donald Trump. It was the outgoing president’s first public appearance since the January 6 riot in the Capitol building. There, before an audience made up mainly of Border Patrol agents and DHS officials, Trump commemorated the construction of 450 miles of border wall during his administration.
“450 miles. Nobody realizes how big this is.… We gave you 100% of what you wanted so now you have no excuses,” he told the laughing crowd of assembled agents. Trump autographed a plaque affixed to the wall, then returned to Washington where, that same evening, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment to remove him. The next day, the House impeached him for a second time.
The previous week, Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan had told reporters that wall-building contractors were completing between 1.5 and 2 miles of new barrier each day, on pace to complete 475 miles by Trump’s likely final day in office, January 20. A CBP/Army Corps of Engineers update reported that 453 miles had been completed as of January 8. From this and past updates we can conclude that, of those 453:
47 miles were built where no fencing existed before;
55 miles are new or replacement secondary fencing.
In all, then, the Trump administration built 240 miles of fencing in places where it had previously been possible to walk across the border. Of the 453 miles, roughly 5% are in Texas, the state that makes up about 64% of the border. The topography of the Rio Grande and the predominance of private landholdings along the border complicate express wall-building in Texas, though the Trump administration has begun dozens of eminent-domain processes to seize border-zone land from Texas property owners.
To date, the administration has directed about $16.3 billion for wall construction; the Washington Post reported in December that at least $3.3 billion will be unused as of January 20. Despite Trump’s repeated pledges, Mexico has not paid for any construction.
CBP’s Morgan said that the administration plans to contract out another 300 miles “probably by January 17, 18, 19.” Those hasty arrangements will almost certainly be canceled once Joe Biden takes office; the President-Elect has said “there will not be another foot” of wall built during his administration. It remains to be seen whether Biden will act immediately to exercise “convenience clauses” to cancel existing contracts with private builders, which would involve paying termination fees-and, if so, whether his administration would go still further, downgrading or disassembling segments of Trump’s wall in environmentally sensitive areas and Native American sacred sites.
Security forces mobilize against possible “caravan” in Central America
Since December, social media messages in Central America, especially Honduras, have been calling for a new “caravan” of migrants. Many indicate an intention to depart from the bus station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city, on January 15.
In recent years, migrants have attempted “caravans”-hundreds or even thousands traveling en masse-as a way to migrate without paying thousands of dollars to a smuggler, while using safety in numbers to avoid the extreme dangers of the migrant trail through Mexico.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, security forces in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras dispersed attempted caravans, long before they came anywhere near the United States, in April and October 2019, and in January, October, and December 2020. It has been more than two years since a significant number of migrants traveling by “caravan” has reached the U.S. border. Migrants who pay steep fees to smugglers-whose business depends on official corruption along the migrant trail-continue to reach the U.S. border.
Whether in caravans or not, officials, advocates, and experts expect a steady increase in migration from Central America this year. COVID-19 and two November hurricanes have left millions in desperate conditions. In Honduras alone (population 9.7 million), 600,000 people have lost their employment since the pandemic began. This is on top of the large number of migrants who, as in past years, have fled Central America due to threats against their lives from criminal organizations and a lack of government protection.
About 250 migrants departed the San Pedro Sula bus station ahead of the scheduled date, on January 13. According to press reports, as of January 14 they were stranded on the city’s outskirts as police in riot gear assembled on the highway. An officer told AP “the intention was to stop the migrants from violating a pandemic-related curfew, check their documents and make sure they weren’t traveling with children that were not their own.”
Caravan participants will face similar blockages further along the route. On January 11 officials from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico met in the Honduran border city of Corinto, near San Pedro Sula and the Caribbean, to discuss migration coordination. While they stated that “migration is a right,” the government representatives said that all travelers will require passports, proof of parentage for any children, and proof of recent negative COVID-19 tests. On January 13 an 11-nation body, the Regional Conference on Migration, issued an “extraordinary declaration” pledging to increase cooperation amid “concern about irregular flows of migrants.”
Authorities in Honduras and Guatemala say they are deploying thousands of military personnel to interdict caravan participants. Guatemala, which even plans to use its Air Force, has declared a 15-day “state of prevention” in seven of its twenty-two departments (provinces) east of the central highlands. There, police and troops may restrict freedom of assembly and limit the population’s movements.
Links
Katie Tobin, an official at UNHCR’s Washington office with long experience on asylum, will begin work next week as senior director for transborder security on Joe Biden’s National Security Council.
Winding down the “Remain in Mexico” program and treating asylum seekers more humanely “requires the active partnership of the Mexican government,” Leon Krauze points out in the Washington Post. Meanwhile Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s choice for National Security Advisor, spoke on January 6 with Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard about “a ‘new approach’ to migration issues that ‘offers alternatives to undertaking the dangerous journey to the United States,'” Reuters reported.
Border Patrol agents in Texas’s Del Rio Sector recovered the body of a pregnant 33-year-old Haitian woman from the Rio Grande on January 8. They later determined that Mexican authorities had recovered the body of her husband from the river a few days earlier.
The Trump administration has rushed through a host of 11th-hour regulations and immigration court decisions further limiting the right to seek asylum in the United States, which may take the Biden administration months to undo if it so chooses.
In response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by El Paso reporter Robert Moore, who was seeking information about a CBP crowd control exercise and metering of asylum seekers at ports of entry, the agency told a judge that “[t]he earliest it could start producing the requested records was June 30, 2021, and it would take up to six years to complete.”
Other than a possible window late morning, I’ll be hard to reach today. (How to contact me)
My calendar tells me I’ve got an interview this morning and a four-hour-plus block of consecutive meetings this afternoon with coalition partners, WOLA colleagues, and diplomats. In between, I’m wrapping up a weekly border update and dashing off suggested questions for all of next week’s confirmation hearings for Biden cabinet nominees.
If you try to contact me, I might not be able to get back until at least the end of the workday. (I might not be able to go the bathroom until the end of the workday.)
World Report 2021, Human Rights Watch’s 31st annual review of human rights practices and trends around the globe, reviews developments in more than 100 countries
The statement by the 11-member Regional Conference on Migration suggests that Mexico and Central America could continue to turn back migrants on the basis of the perceived risks of the pandemic
UNIFIL-MTF, the only U.N. naval peacekeeping mission, is also the first mission led by a nation that is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, since 2011
If a country risks being placed on a terrorism list as a result of facilitating peace efforts, it could set a negative precedent for international peace efforts
“We have noticed that when community leaders are threatened they go silent, as well as their organizations, and that interrupts the creation of new groups”
El 21 de noviembre de 2020 la Unidad Nacional de Protección expidió una resolución en la que elimina el esquema de seguridad asignado al exmagistrado auxiliar de la Corte Suprema de Justicia e investigador de la llamada parapolítica Iván Velásquez Gómez
Precisamente unas 250 personas salieron esta noche desde Honduras en caravana hacia el punto aduanero de Corinto, fronterizo con Guatemala, con la idea de llegar a Estados Unidos
The group set out on Wednesday but paused at night before reaching some 75 police officers, dressed in riot gear, who waited along the highway on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula
“The acquisition and cross-servicing agreement is fundamentally about logistics. Basic things like parts, things you might need to fix your equipment, or food or fuel and our ability to trade goods and services while exercising or operating together”
En los primeros 13 días de 2021, una docena de personas fueron ejecutadas y abandonadas en parajes solitarios con un modelo criminal denominado empaquetados
Solo ocho expedientes por tortura contra militares fueron judicializados en la última década. En ellos, únicamente cinco militares recibieron alguna condena
“Vemos nosotros que la parte, digamos, floja de las investigaciones, es la parte que tiene que ver con el Ejército mexicano, es creo donde está el talón de Aquiles de todo el conjunto de la investigación”
AZUL POSITIVO is a non-profit organization with 16 years of experience that carries out important actions of preventive health in relation to HIV, gender violence and humanitarian assistance for students, young people, LGBTI communities, excluded and poor people
Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special representative for Venezuelan affairs, held at least one meeting in December with a group of Biden transition team officials
I may be around in the late afternoon, but it’s a full day. (How to contact me)
I’ve got an interview and a long internal planning meeting this morning, a coalition meeting and a meeting with a border colleague this afternoon, and want to finish a weekly border update and a quick essay for a partner organization before I get out of this chair. I’m getting a late start because I was tired from some late-night writing earlier in the week. That’s all to say, I’ll be hard to reach today.
Social media influencers with large followings such as Cuban American YouTube celebrity Alexander Otaola argued there is a tendency among far-left liberals to “criminalize” Trumpism and warned “the opposition” that Democrats now have “absolute power”
He and his most loyal followers really do see themselves as visionary soldiers in a global battle against socialism and other ills, and if Brasília is to become the hemisphere’s sole remaining outpost, so much the better
Military commanders advocating for integral action have clashed with civilian policymakers, who tended to favor combat solutions to the nation’s insecurity, even as the number of combatants has declined
El grupo armado de “Gentil Duarte” cobra más fuerza en el sur del país, mientras que el de “Iván Márquez” intenta ganarle terreno en zonas controladas por el primero
Cubans are ready to move on, a sentiment underlined by their president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who tweeted on Tuesday that the American decision had been made in “the death throes of a failed and corrupt administration”
El inusual traslado ocurrió justo un mes después de que este medio revelara las negociaciones entre el Gobierno y líderes de la MS-13 encarcelados en los penales de máxima seguridad
If the new president’s goal is to alleviate the pain of thousands of immigrants, he should aim to reset the relationship with Mexico, a country Trump extorted
In South Texas, Trump autographed a plaque on the barrier and told a small audience of uniformed Border Patrol agents and others that “we inherited a broken, dysfunctional and open border”
In a call with reporters last week, Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said federal contractors are averaging between 1.5 and two miles of new barriers per day
Though the federal government has the power to terminate these contracts, the government will likely still have to pay a termination fee, which Bolter says is likely still cheaper than continuing
CBP said rapid construction is important to border security, but it also means builders are going in virtually blind, without any environmental impact studies
During his remarks, Trump made several misleading or false statements about his border and immigration policies. Here are five things he said that merit a closer examination
It’s the third federal court ruling in a month that found agencies of the Department of Homeland Security to be in violation of the Freedom of Information Act
Its policies punish people seeking protection, separate children from their parents, and turn the system created by Congress to protect refugees from persecution into one that delivers them back to danger
Según el presidente venezolano, los intentos por retirarlo del poder y las sanciones financieras estadounidenses fueron fundamentales para el colapso de la economía nacional, la cual se prevé pase seis años de recesión
Serious efforts should be made to explore exactly what Maduro is willing to concede, and which elements of U.S. pressure can be leveraged to get him to the negotiating table
I’m in morning planning meetings and have a mid-day interview. I hope to spend the afternoon adding a bunch of information to my database for future projects and publications, and planning a new resource about the border.
Mauricio Alvarado photo at El Espectador (Colombia). Caption: “Según la Mesa Nacional de Víctimas, la Resolución 1049 de 2019, asociada a la Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas, omite los derechos y necesidades del núcleo familiar como sujeto colectivo de reparación.”
Desde o início, a trajetória política de Jair Bolsonaro foi marcada pela proximidade com policiais e militares de baixa patente. Isso, no entanto, não lhe dá o direito de usar o cargo de presidente da República para fazer agremiação política com soldados e policiais.
Rather than inviting Bolsonaro to a Twitter slugfest like Macron did in 2019 – a sphere where Brazil’s president feels at ease – the U.S. government will be far more effective if it resorts to traditional off-line diplomacy
“Mediante esta modificación al Decreto 265 las FF.AA. prestarán apoyo logístico, tecnológico y de transporte a nuestras fuerzas de orden y seguridad en el control de nuestras fronteras”, concluyó Piñera
El consejero para la Estabilización entrega un balance y responde por las críticas sobre lo alcanzado hasta ahora en temas clave del Acuerdo de Paz: los PDET, la reforma rural integral, la sustitución de cultivos y la reincorporación
El líder ambiental, que durante 23 años se dedicó a evitar que esta ave endémica de Colombia se extinguiera, fue visto por última vez en la vereda La Unión, en el departamento del Valle del Cauca
La Fiscalía General de la Nación investiga, de manera diferenciada, los casos de “homicidios múltiples” ocurridos según la cantidad de víctimas: hasta tres y mínimo cuatro, los cuales corresponden a 107 y a 40
De acuerdo con sus registros, durante este tiempo, la institución es responsable por 289 homicidios, de los cuales solo el 0,69% ha terminado en condena
In particular, he mentioned Cuba’s refusal to extradite to Colombia members of the National Liberation Army guerrilla group following a terrorist attack in Bogotá and a breakdown in peace talks
The primary basis laid out by the administration for the re-designation is Cuba’s refusal to extradite to Colombia a group of 10 guerrilla leaders of Colombia’s National Liberation Army
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez told a news conference that the manoeuvres were an attempt by the outgoing Trump administration to “create provocations, threats.”
La comisionada de policía en condición de retiro, María Luisa Borjas, sostiene que la única manera de rescatar a la institución policial es sacar a la narcodictadura
Hernández has long been portrayed by US officials as a key ally. As vice president, Biden even met with Hernández in 2015 to review joint efforts to “tackle corruption and target transnational criminal networks”
La lógica de esta expansión no responde ya primordialmente a la decisión de combatir el crimen o garantizar la seguridad, sino al deseo de suplir funciones del gobierno mismo, en cierto sentido, a suplir al gobierno civil, cada día más un gobierno civil/militar
El Ejército firmó convenios directamente con las víctimas y pagó millonarias sumas a cambio de confidencialidad. Ha pagado incluso a afectados por la Guardia Nacional
In a call with reporters last week, Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said federal contractors are averaging between 1.5 and two miles of new barriers per day, with the scheduled completion of about 475 miles by the time President-elect Joe Biden takes office
The president-elect and his aides have cautioned that the policy reversals will take time amid the pandemic. He has also yet to say whether he will rescind the asylum limits unveiled towards the end of Mr. Trump’s tenure
I have a meeting this morning with a foreign diplomat this morning, and in the afternoon with congressional staff and a reporter, plus I’d like to sit in on the Forum on the Arms Trade’s annual conference. In the middle of the day I’ll be doing some writing about Colombia, and I should finish digging through all of the legislation that passed at the end of the year.
(I’ll deal with Donald Trump’s visit to the border if we have to—we’ve re-shared an analysis from late October that says everything we wanted to, and I’d rather not give that evil man the attention he craves.)
The figures represent a significant increase when compared with the reported USD3.2 billion of exports in 2018
Colombia
Yohir Akerman, “De Armas Tomar” (El Espectador (Colombia), January 11, 2021).
El 27 de noviembre de 2017 la Fiscalía 106 especializada contra Violaciones a los Derechos Humanos imputó a David Bastidas por su presunto rol en 32 homicidios, 14 desapariciones forzadas y 10 casos de tortura
La propuesta de un agente israelí que condujo al exterminio de miles de militantes de izquierda y la aprobación que impartió el presidente Virgilio Barco al criminal proyecto
Al parecer miembros del Clan del Golfo entraron en una vivienda del sector La Cuarenta, en Betania (Antioquia), donde acabaron con la vida de tres personas
“Esto no es un conflicto nuevo. Buenaventura vive unos episodios de violencia de manera cíclica, producto de las reconfiguraciones del conflicto armado”
Así lo señalaron tras un encuentro en la zona fronteriza ecuatoriana de Mataje, desarrollado menos de dos meses después de la realización del IX Gabinete Binacional
Más de un centenar de académicos han suscrito una carta para reprochar la ligereza con la que el presidente Nayib Bukele calificó como “una farsa” los Acuerdos de Paz firmados el 16 de enero de 1992
In addition to the debilitation of the investigative capacity of the Public Prosecution Service, Congress nominated new prosecutor generals that represented the interests of congressmen instead of those of the judicial system
In the most explosive allegation in the filing, it said the president, 52 years old, boasted to Mr. Fuentes Ramirez that “he wanted to shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos”
President Trump has heaped praise on Hernández, who has visited the Oval Office multiple times, perhaps because he has been a willing partner in controversial Trump administration immigration measures
“Cuando se le pregunta a la gente sobre la confianza en las instituciones, están casi parejas en aceptación con más de 80 por ciento de aprobación la Secretaría de Defensa y la Secretaría de Marina, pero ya le sigue la Guardia Nacional”
The Supreme Court’s lack of independence is just one scandal added to a long list of instances of nepotism, bribery, extortions, and even drug trafficking tied to the judiciary branch in this country
Cinco condenados por el ‘andahuaylazo’ salieron de prisión esta semana, y todos con objetivos distintos. Antauro Humala mira la campaña solo y en silencio
The visit will likely be the president’s first public appearance since he addressed supporters on Wednesday riling up a crowd that later staged a violent siege of the U.S. Capitol
The bloodshed began on Friday afternoon with an operation by two police units – the Special Action Forces, known as FAES, and the Special Tactical Operations Units, known as UOTE – in the gang-ridden neighborhood of La Vega
Algunas manifestaciones particulares, como el homicidio y cierto tipo de lesiones, tuvieron mermas momentáneas. Mientras tanto, otras actividades ilegales han ido en pleno crecimiento
I’m probably reachable, but in writing mode, during the afternoon. (How to contact me)
It’s annual strategic planning time at WOLA. We’ve got all-hands staff meetings today, Wednesday, and Thursday. And this afternoon, when not in this morning’s meeting, I need to finish the second of two planning documents.
It’s not that bad—you have to have a plan on paper for the next 12 months, and some of that was hard to do until we knew who would be in the White House and running the Senate. The way things are going, I need to be forced to carve out time to think deliberately about strategy. But of course, as with everything, I’m running late on this, so I may be hard to reach even when not in meetings today.
Here’s a 600-word introduction I wrote to open my most recent e-mail newsletter. That edition also includes a collection of things I posted here over the past week—Colombia and Border updates, selected links—plus a collection of tweets that made me laugh.
The last thing you want to read is another take on the horror that took place 1.5 miles from my house last Wednesday. I’ll make mine quick, and it may surprise you. I’m feeling optimistic.
All around the world, illiberal elected leaders—”authoritarian populists”—are dismantling democratic institutions and persuading millions to live in their alternate truth-free realities. Look around, and it’s hard to find an example of one of these leaders being defeated at the ballot box before he could consolidate his dominion over institutions. (Ecuador? The Gambia? Sort of.) As checks and balances crumble and lies proliferate, nobody seems to know what to do. Neither street protests nor recall votes nor comprehensive fact-checking dislodge or even affect the popularity of the world’s Orbans, Dutertes, Modis, Maduros, Putins, Erdogans, Bolsonaros.
In the United States, though, we’re doing it. It’s working. Our authoritarian populist is out in nine days, maybe less. Congress reconvened amid smashed glass and after 3:00AM, despite Republican dead-enders’ cynical efforts, it confirmed the truth that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won.
Getting rid of an authoritarian populist is really freaking hard. Here in America, we’re not doing it at all gracefully. It’s so ugly. Wednesday was as ugly as we’ve seen in our national politics in generations. But we’re doing it. It’s working.
Right now, the U.S. brand as “example of democracy for the world” is garbage. But if we can come back from this—if our battered institutions can peacefully break the authoritarians’ back and re-cage our historic demon, racism—then the United States will be an even stronger example than before. It will hold up a light for countries unable to break the spell of 21st century post-truth authoritarian populism.
We’re not out of the woods. The 2022 miderms and the 2024 presidential elections could go badly. There’s just a narrow window open for the majority of Americans who at least somewhat value truth and reason. By forcing everyone to stare consequences in the face, last Wednesday opened that window further. The outcome in Georgia on Tuesday—more reason for optimism!—opens it still further. But there’s a lot of work ahead in the next two to four years.
And as Wednesday made plain, a lot of that work involves our security forces.
Our legislative branch doesn’t have its own army. It just has the unexpectedly weak Capitol Police. It must depend on the executive branch for protection. We never realized before that this dependency was dangerous. Wednesday’s insurrection shows how important that norm is. There must be accountability for violating it.
The non-response to the mob attack on the Capitol shows the danger of politicized security forces. Some Capitol Police were amazingly brave, and at least one paid the ultimate price. But others appeared to be sympathetic with the rioters. Their small numbers and lack of backup sent a strong message too. The force’s management—and especially the Trump appointees at DHS and DOD who were in charge of anticipating this situation, preparing, and calling for National Guard backup—either felt affinity with the rioters’ cause or are stunningly incompetent. This is utterly inviable. It must never happen again.
Nearly everywhere in the world, security forces tend to be made up of conservative men with strong social biases. How to keep them from being instrumentalized by an authoritarian leader is a common challenge. If the United States is going to be a “democratic example” again, we need to show we’re up to that challenge. That means de-politicizing our law enforcement agencies right away, starting with the highest levels of their chain of command.
9:00-2:30 at ips-dc.org: Setting a Progressive Foreign Policy Agenda: Restoring the United States’ Standing During the Biden Administration (RSVP required).
At Nexos, scholar Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo offers a devastating assessment of civil-military relations in Mexico, as the López Obrador government further increases the armed forces’ role in Mexicans’ daily lives. “We had a parenthesis of civilian rule that lasted about 50 or 60 years. That parenthesis has closed.”
At Mexico’s SinEmbargo, veteran crime journalist Ricardo Ravelo offers a sweeping who’s-who of the country’s current constellation of cartels and regional organized crime structures. Pair this with Ravelo’s January 1 look at the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which may be eclipsing Sinaloa as Mexico’s largest and deadliest.
The UN Verification Mission in Colombia released its latest report on the peace process. With a lot of new statistics, it puts front-and-center concerns about rampant killings of social leaders and ex-combatants.
OpenDemocracyprovides a grim point-by-point evaluation of Colombia’s compliance—or lack thereof—with each chapter of the 2016 peace accord.
DHS’s Office of Immigration Statistics is an island of seriousness at the troubled agency. Its latest Enforcement Lifecycle Report has a wealth of information, including detailed appendix tables, illustrating what happens to undocumented migrants after DHS apprehends them, including those who make claims of fear.
Cross-posted from WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site. During at least the first half of 2021, we’re producing weekly sub-1,000-word updates in English about peace accord implementation and related topics.
This edition is a “double issue,” longer than usual. Following a holiday break, it covers events of the past three weeks.
U.S. Congress passes 2021 foreign aid bill
On December 27 Donald Trump signed into law the U.S. government’s budget for 2021, including the foreign aid appropriation (see “Division K” here). As in nearly all of the past 30 years, that bill makes Colombia by far the number-one recipient of U.S. assistance in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The law appropriates $461,375,000 in State Department and USAID-managed aid for Colombia this year, about $30-40 million more than the past few years’ laws and about $50 million more than the Trump White House had requested in February.
The proportions between programs and priorities are similar to prior years. Our best estimate (derived here) is that 47% of the $461 million will go to economic and civilian institution-building aid programs; 18% will go to strictly military and police aid programs; and 34% will go to programs, mainly counter-drug programs, that can pay for either type of aid but for which we don’t have a breakdown.
In addition to the $461 million in the foreign aid bill, a significant but unknown amount of military and police aid will come from the Defense Department’s $700 billion-plus budget. In 2019, according to the Congressional Research Service, Defense accounts contributed another $55.39 million or more to benefit Colombia’s security forces.
As in previous years, the law includes human rights conditions holding up about $7.7 million in military aid until the State Department can certify to Congress that Colombia is holding gross human rights violators accountable, preventing attacks on human rights defenders and other civil society leaders, protecting Afro-descendant and indigenous communities, and holding accountable senior military officers responsible for “false positive” killings.
After some very concerning military intelligence scandals in 2020, the law includes a new condition on the $7.7 million: the State Department must also certify that Colombia is holding accountable those responsible for “illegal surveillance of political opponents, government officials, journalists, and human rights defenders, including through the use of assets provided by the United States.”
Killings of former FARC combatants accelerate
The UN Verification Mission’s latest quarterly report, dated December 29, voices strong concerns about “248 killings of former combatants (six women), including 21 during the reporting period (two women, three of indigenous origin and two Afro-Colombians) and a total of 73 during 2020.”
The problem is worsening. Five demobilized FARC combatants were murdered over a 12-day post-Christmas period.
Rosa Amalia Mendoza Trujillo and her infant daughter were among several victims of a December 27 massacre in Montecristo, Bolívar.
Manuel Alonso, killed on December 27 on the road between Florida, Valle del Cauca, and Miranda, Cauca.
Yolanda Zabala Mazo, killed on January 1, together with her sister, on January 1 in Briceño, Antioquia.
Duván Armed Galíndez, shot on January 2 in Cartagena del Chairá, Caquetá.
Diego Yule Rivera, who had been displaced from Caloto, Cauca after receiving threats, was shot in Cali on January 7.
This, according to the FARC political party, brings the number of assassinated ex-combatants to 252 since the peace accord went into effect.
The chief prosecutor’s office’s (Fiscalía’s) Special Investigative Unit has managed 289 cases of killings and other attacks on ex-combatants, the UN report informs. Of these, the Unit has achieved convictions of responsible parties in 34 cases, while 20 cases are on trial, 38 are under investigation, and an additional 49 have arrest warrants issued.
The report notes that conditions are most perilous for ex-combatants in the zone surrounding the triple border between Meta, Caquetá, and Guaviare departments in south-central Colombia. This area, once the rearguard of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc, is now under the strong influence of the largest FARC dissident organization, the 1st and 7th Front structure under alias “Gentil Duarte.”
Coca eradication hits record level as a restart of fumigation nears
In an end-of-year security declaration, President Duque announced that Colombia, with U.S. backing, had met its 2020 goal of eradicating 130,000 hectares of coca. This is a manual eradication record, the first time Colombia has exceeded 100,000 hectares and an area “roughly the same size as the city of Los Angeles” according to AFP. The 130,000-hectare goal will remain in place, Duque added, for 2021.
(Any discussion of eradication statistics must mention mid-2020 allegations from former officials and contractors, who contend that eradication teams may have inflated their results by as much as 30 percent.)
Duque added that Colombian forces had seized 498 tons of cocaine in 2020, which would shatter the 2017 record of 434.7 tons.
We probably won’t find out how much coca was planted in Colombia in 2020 until the U.S. government and UN Office on Drugs and Crime release their estimates in mid-2021. In the meantime, the Colombian government continues to move closer to relaunching a program, suspended in 2015 for health concerns, that would eradicate coca by spraying the herbicide glyphosate from aircraft.
On December 19 and 20 Colombia’s environmental authority (ANLA) held a virtual public hearing on one of the main requirements that must be fulfilled to relaunch fumigation: the National Police’s application to modify its environmental management plan to allow aerial glyphosate spraying. This hearing was delayed for months, as communities in remote areas with poor internet service objected to holding a “virtual” consultation due to pandemic restrictions.
At the hearing, National Police Gen. Julio Cesar González presented a summary of the force’s proposed modifications to the environmental management plan (available here as a large trove of Google documents). “We’re going to go to areas that are already deteriorated, so we don’t expect to affect them further. This is based on technology, and aerial spraying will focus on large plots.” The General insisted that the spray program’s technology has advanced over what it was before, allowing greater accuracy over the area to be sprayed and the amount of herbicide to be applied. More than 60% of the spray mixture will be conditioned water, glyphosate will be 33% (less than some commercially available mixtures), and the rest will be a mineral coadjuvant.
Diego Trujillo, the delegate for agricultural and environmental issues at Colombia’s inspector-general’s office (Procuraduría), voiced concerns about the proposed renewal of spraying. He argued that it runs counter to the peace accord’s commitments, and relies on purchases of Chinese-produced glyphosate that, according to El Espectador’ssummary, “led in 2015 to an investigation into corruption in the this herbicide’s acquisition, which was was not recommended by health and environmental authorities.”
Mauricio Albarracín of the legal NGO DeJusticia objected to the process, citing a lack of prior and informed participation of possibly affected communities who were being asked to consider an environmental management plan “that consists of more than 3,000 pages, contains language that is not accessible to the possibly affected population, and suffers a lack of transparency in information.” Albarracín added that information about harms and risks is “insufficient, poorly structured and biased,” and that the spraying plan fails to meet the obligation to implement the 2016 peace accord in good faith. (The accord sets aside aerial spraying as a last resort, when coca growers who have been offered help with alternatives persist in growing the crop, and when conditions on the ground are too dangerous for manual eradication.)
María Alejandra Vélez, director of the University of the Andes’ CESED (Center for Studies on Security and Drugs), argued that fumigation is not cost-effective and could carry unacceptable health and environmental risks. Vélez, an economist, found fault with the police proposal’s methods and quality of information.
Following the hearing, the daily El Espectador published a tough editorial titled “insisting on the useless.”
Presidency officials are investing their time complying with the requirements imposed by the Constitutional Court to resume an ineffective and insufficient activity that destroys ties with communities in the most affected areas. One would think that after decades of failure, the political consensus in Colombia would show signs of reflective capacity. But this is not the case. The useless is presented as the magical solution.
Links
Colombia’s Defense Ministry announced that the country’s homicide rate fell 4.6% in 2020 to a rate of 23.79 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest level since 1974. However, the country suffered a jump in massacres—killings of three or more people at a time—with 89, claiming 345 victims.
President Iván Duque said that his government has no intention of providing COVID-19 vaccines to undocumented Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. “Of course they won’t get it,” he toldBlu Radio. “Imagine what we would live through. We would have calls to stampede the border as everyone crosses asking for a vaccine.”
La Silla Vacíawades through the Fiscalía’s record on bringing social leaders’ killers to justice, and finds 30 percent of cases have reached the indictment stage but only 7 percent have concluded with a conviction. Meanwhile, WOLA published a second alert, just before Christmas, about threats to social leaders, a week after warning of a large number of urgent situations. And on January 1 Gerardo León, a community leader in Puerto Gaitán, Meta, became the first murdered Colombian social leader of 2021.
Colombia expelled two Russian diplomats, accusing them of espionage. The Putin government followed suit, expelling two diplomats from Colombia’s Moscow embassy.
As of December 22, Joe Biden still hadn’t given a call to Iván Duque to acknowledge his post-election congratulations. If a call has taken place since, the Colombian government hasn’t announced it. Governing-party officials’ meddling in the U.S. campaign is the most likely explanation for the presidential ghosting.
Colombia has a new National Police chief. Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, an officer with an intelligence background and the son-in-law of 1990s chief Gen. Rosso José Serrano, replaces Gen. Óscar Atehortúa, whose tenure was marked by protests against brutality and allegations of corruption. An El Espectadoreditorial urges the new chief to carry out badly needed reforms to the force.
Hernán Giraldo, a former top paramilitary leader from northern Colombia whose name is synonymous with systematic rape of young girls, is being extradited back to Colombia nearly 13 years after being sent to the United States to serve a sentence for another crime, drug trafficking.
Retired military officers are becoming more politically active. La Silla Vacíareports on a late October meeting at which former soldiers and police agreed to form a political party to run candidates in 2022 national elections, in order to counter what they see as “a radical left.” Meanwhile retired Gen. Jaime Ruiz, president of Colombia’s hardline association of former officers (ACORE), shared with El Nuevo Siglo his view that, largely because of the FARC peace accord, “2020 was not a good year for the security forces.”
December 31 was the deadline the government set for the FARC to hand over all illegally obtained assets, as mandated by the peace accord. The ex-guerrillas appear to have fallen short on turning over land and property, but claim that they face security and legal obstacles to doing so. El Espectadorexplains the “ABC” of the controversy.
As more military forces, more weapons, and more ammunition arrived, more money was destined for the construction of bases and war bunkers in the midst of our houses. And that was when the shootings started to return
En este artículo tratamos de explicarle en qué va realmente la entrega de los bienes, por qué se ha entregado tan poco hasta el momento y qué dificultades atraviesa el proceso
Se trata de Diego Maria Yule Rivera, quien dejó sus armas en el espacio de reincorporación de Monterredondo, en Miranda (Cauca). Es el asesinato 252 que registra el Partido Farc
En una entrevista con la cadena de noticias CNN, Michelle A. Mannat, estratega lo confirmó: “Habrá investigación en Cámara y Senado contra quienes intervinieron. Sin duda es un tema que va a tener un énfasis en los primeros días de gobierno de Biden”
Transnational mining corporations, most of them Canadian, their personnel, and state security forces have been accused by human rights groups of a litany of abuses in Central America
El INM, que apenas el pasado 4 de enero reanudo el servicio, se encuentra rebasado en su capacidad, lo que sumado a la suspensión temporal que hubo provocada por la pandemia, ha hecho que la población migrante deba esperar más de seis meses
El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador sugirió eliminar el principal órgano de transparencia del país, que es autónomo, y que se hagan cargo de esa tarea del INAI incluso funcionarios de la Función Pública
The bloodshed in Guanajuato is largely the result of a territorial dispute between the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel and the larger and more powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel
De acuerdo con informes de la DEA y de la Fiscalía General de la República (FGR), más de la mitad del territorio nacional está controlado por 14 cárteles, en su mayoría violentos, que están relacionados con altos mandos de las policías estatales y municipales
“How can you censor someone: ‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S. Mexico border. This edition is a “double issue,” longer than usual. Following a holiday break, it covers events of the past three weeks.
On December 27 President Trump signed into law an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the federal budget in 2021. It includes the Homeland Security Department’s appropriation, which was one of the most contentious areas of difference between the Democratic-majority House and the Republican-majority Senate.
The Senate had included $2 billion for further construction of Donald Trump’s border wall. The House’s version of the bill not only offered zero dollars for the wall, it sought to rescind wall-construction money from past bills. When leaders of both houses met to reconcile differences, the Senate got more of what it wanted so that President Trump might sign the bill: $1.375 billion for “the construction of barrier system along the southwest border.”
“We pushed back hard against this funding, and it was one of the last things resolved in our bill,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-California), the chair of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, toldBorder Report. “The White House made clear to leadership, however, that if the omnibus did not include this funding level and reference the ‘construction of border barrier system’ purpose from the FY20 bill, there would be no omnibus. That could have led to a government shutdown right before Christmas and could also have put in jeopardy the coronavirus pandemic funding.”
The question now is whether President-Elect Joe Biden is bound to spend the money on border wall construction, against his stated will. House Democrats say “no”: that the bill language provides wiggle room. “There is no definition of ‘barrier systems’ and, therefore, the Biden administration can use that for so many options,” another top House Democratic appropriator, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Texas, told Border Report. “It could be used for technology, for roads, for lighting along the border, it can replace older existing fencing so therefore we don’t have to go with the new fence. It gives the administration a lot of leeway.” It’s not fully clear, but it may even be possible that “barrier systems” might include downgrading of wall designs in environmentally sensitive areas or Native American sacred sites.
This may all be moot, anyway, now that the Democrats are to assume Senate majority control following Tuesday’s election in Georgia. The new Congress is likely to approve any request from President Biden to rescind the border wall money.
Other border-relevant elements of the 2021 bill include:
A 1.4% increase in CBP’s operations budget (to $12,908,923,000, from $12,735,399,000 in 2020);
A 2% decrease in ICE’s budget (to $7,875,730,000, from $8,032,801,000 in 2020—the House bill had sought, but did not obtain, a sharp reduction in ICE’s detention capacity);
A 7% decrease in the budget of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division ($4,118,902,000, from $4,429,033,000 in 2020);
“No funding for new Border Patrol Agents or personnel hired above the baseline funded in fiscal year 2020;”
A $110 million, or one-third, increase in the budget for alternatives to detention programs; and
CBP and ICE reporting requirements to Congress, and in some cases to the public, about border security metrics, its border wall-building expenditure plan, family separation events, numbers of asylum seekers, migrant deaths, alternatives to detention, inspections and due process in detention facilities, unusually long stays in holding facilities, infrastructure needs at ports of entry, assistance provided to other law-enforcement agencies, and a “risk-based” border security improvement plan.
Biden administration won’t dismantle Trump policies on day one
Past updates have laid out some of the hardline Trump administration border and migration restrictions that the Biden administration has indicated it will undo. Transition officials, however, are trying to set expectations. Voicing concerns about a rush to the border and a lack of processing infrastructure, the President-Elect and top advisors warned in pre-Christmas press interactions that the phase-out may be more gradual than migrants rights’ advocates would prefer.
“It will get done and it will get done quickly but it’s not going to be able to be done on Day 1,” Biden said, adding that his administration would need “probably the next six months” to get processing and adjudication infrastructure in place to receive significant numbers of asylum seekers once again. Undoing Trump’s policies without that capacity in place, Biden added, would be “the last thing we need” because the result could be “two million people on our border.”
“Processing power at the border is not like a light that can be turned on and off,” Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s national security advisor, told Spain’s EFE news service in an interview given jointly with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s choice to fill her old position. “Migrants and asylum seekers should not at all believe the people in the region who are selling the idea that the border will suddenly be wide open to process everyone on the first day. It will not be so.”
As as result, the pandemic restrictions currently expelling people with fear of return will persist during the Biden administration’s early weeks. So will Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which has forced about 70,000 non-Mexican asylum seekers to await their immigration hearings in Mexico. Sullivan said, though, that Biden “will work to promptly undo” the “safe third country” agreements signed with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which would permit the United States to send other countries’ asylum seekers to apply for protection in those countries.
Policymakers are concerned about a “rush” of migrants to the border amid easing COVID travel restrictions and perceptions that a less hardline president is assuming power. Media in Central America are reporting about plans afoot in Honduras to organize a new migrant caravan, to depart on January 15.
CBP releases December border numbers
So far, U.S. government data are showing growing migration at the border, but not a surge. CBP’s numbers for December, released on January 7, showed a 3 percent increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants from November to December.
The overall number—70,630 people apprehended—was very high by the standards of recent years. Of those, however, 60,010 were quickly expelled under pandemic border restrictions. And there was much double-counting, as the rapid expulsions have brought a sharp increase in repeat attempts to migrate.
Monthly migrant apprehensions have been roughly at the same level—the mid-to-high 60,000s—since September. The apprehended population, however, has become slightly less Mexican and more Central American. Apprehensions of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras increased 24 percent from November to December, while apprehensions of Mexican migrants—still the majority—fell by 6 percent. This was the second straight monthly decline in apprehensions of Mexicans, while apprehensions of Central Americans have been increasing steadily since June.
Only 13 percent of apprehended migrants were children or parents with children. That is a sharp reversal from 2019, when children and families were two-thirds of the apprehended population. The main reason is the current impossibility of pursuing asylum at the border, compounded by the controversial “Title 42” pandemic policy of expelling most migrants as quickly as possible, regardless of their fear of return. Border Patrol and CBP expelled migrants 393,807 times between March—when pandemic border measures went into place—and December.
The data points to increases in border-zone seizures of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, starting a few months after the imposition of pandemic border restrictions. Though cartels have nimbly adjusted to the new measures, as Steve Fisher and Kirk Semple reported in a late December New York Times analysis, U.S. border authorities are intercepting a modestly larger share of their product. (No similar trend is evident for marijuana; smuggling from Mexico has plummeted in recent years as many U.S. states have legalized and regulated cannabis.)
The Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act is now law
On January 1 President Trump signed into law the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act of 2019 (S. 2174), a bill that helps border jurisdictions deal with the tragedy of hundreds of migrants who die of dehydration and exposure in borderland deserts and wilderness areas each year.
S. 2174 originated in the Senate, co-sponsored by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Kamala Harris (D-California, the Vice President-Elect). It was not a controversial piece of legislation: it passed the Senate under unanimous consent in mid-Novembe, and an identical House version (H.R. 8772), co-sponsored by Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Will Hurd (R-Texas), passed quickly in mid-December under suspension of the rules.
The new law authorizes funding for proper care and identification of remains, which will assist their return to citizens of other countries who have often gone years without knowing what happened to their loved ones who migrated. It authorizes funding for 170 solar-powered rescue beacons in the desert so that migrants in distress can call for help.
The bill also includes detailed reporting requirements, since data about the migrant deaths problem have been very spotty. For instance, while Border Patrol listed only 43 migrant remains found in Arizona between January and September 2020, a joint project of the Pima County (Tucson) Medical Examiner’s Office and the NGO Humane Borders reported finding 181 during that period.
In fact, the Pima-Humane Borders effort recorded its highest-ever total of migrant remains in 2020: 227 deaths after the hottest summer in Arizona’s history. This was way up from 144 in 2019 and 128 in 2018. While the heat is a big reason for the increase, so is the pandemic border closure and “expulsions” policy, which eliminated incentives for people who might otherwise seek asylum to turn themselves in to border agents. “They can’t apply for asylum, so their options are considerably cut down and they’re forced into more and more dangerous situations,” Montana Thames, of the Arizona humanitarian group No More Deaths, toldMother Jones. Thames added that “wall construction is happening closer to Nogales and Sasabe, where there are more resources—so because of the wall constitution, they have to go to more dangerous and more remote parts of the desert.”
In most recent years, Arizona’s migrant deaths total had been second to south Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. There, in Brooks County about 80 miles north of the border, migrants trying to walk around a Border Patrol highway checkpoint have died in large numbers. In 2020, though, according to the Brooks County sheriff’s office, migrant deaths fell to 34 in 2020, down from 45 in 2019. The problem is worst right now in Arizona as tougher border measures push migrants to some of the most remote deserts.
Links
CBP released a “Strategy 2021-2026” document that, at 1,250 words over 32 photo-heavy pages, is more of a brochure than a strategy discussion. It does reveal, though, that the agency has increased Border Patrol agent hiring by 10 percent and CBP officer hiring by 22%, reversing years of decline caused by difficulties in recruitment and bringing the agencies closer to their authorized staffing levels. Notably, except for one photo caption, the document does not discuss the border wall.
The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics released its 2020 “Enforcement Lifecycle Report,” which provides data about what happened to migrants after they were apprehended or presented at ports of entry.
President Trump pardoned two CBP officers who were convicted in 2006 of beating an apprehended migrant with a shotgun, shooting him, and then attempting to cover up the crime.
A joint investigation by Human Rights Watch, Stanford University’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program, and Willamette University’s Child and Family Advocacy Clinic documents trauma that children and families suffered as a direct result of the Remain in Mexico program.
At the Washington Post, Hannah Dreier tells the outrageous and sad story of Kevin Euceda, a Honduran asylum seeker who spent three years in ICE detention, asked to be deported as COVID swept through his detention center, and died—or was killed—shortly after his return.
The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kate Morrissey provides a helpful primer on the U.S. asylum system, its origins, and possible reforms like reducing the court backlog, providing legal aid, sharply reducing detention, and working with other countries.
The number of National Guard and other U.S. military personnel deployed to the border has fallen to 3,600—from well over 5,000 in 2018—reportsMilitary Times.
The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux examines the Border Patrol’s hardline, politically active union, which attached itself very closely to Donald Trump and his unsuccessful reelection campaign, and the larger issue of a politicized border security apparatus that is likely to clash with the Biden administration.
We salute the memory of two respected Mexican migrant shelter operators who died of COVID-19-related complications since mid-December. Juan Francisco Louriero of the San Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales and Father Pedro Pantoja of the Casa del Migrante de Saltillo were both 76 years old.
I’ve got a near-solid block of coalition meetings and one-on-one interviews between 10:30 and 4:00, and need to finish writing a border update before that starts, so I’ll be slow to return calls and messages today.
I’ve worked on defense and security in Latin America for a long time, which colored my view of what happened in the Capitol yesterday.
As soon as we all saw rioters start calmly parading through the Capitol, I was immediately struck by our security forces’ slow and tolerant response. Starting with some of the Capitol Police (though others performed bravely), and continuing with the incredible lack of backup they received.
20 years after 9/11, of course the Capitol Police and other authorities have the resources, and off-the-shelf plans, for dealing with a situation just like this in a professional, efficient, rights-respecting way. I’m sure they’ve had drills and exercises. Why were those plans plainly ignored? Why did it all fall apart for a group of only a couple thousand people maximum?
Anybody who has paid attention to Latin America knows what a dangerous politicization of security forces looks like. We also saw it—in the other direction—with federal law enforcement in Portland and at Washington’s BLM protests.
Some cops at the Capitol yesterday seem to have felt some kinship with the pro-Trump mob, and treated them way differently than they do peaceful Trump critics and people of color. And their management was plainly politicized in its failure to prepare for a contingency we all saw coming, and its subsequent failure to rush help to the scene.
You don’t get to ransack the Capitol for hours, then calmly walk away, unless law enforcement and its command share your views. What we saw yesterday was tacit approval of the rioters. Full stop.
Let’s stare that directly in the face, then do our best after January 20 to get it investigated, punished, and reformed so it never happens again. Let’s find out if that’s even possible to do in America in 2021.
This non-response looked familiar to anyone who has studied Latin America’s militaries and police during times of transition to and from democracy. To me, it was the big story of yesterday, and it’s terrifying.
AP/Matt York photo at Yahoo! Caption: “In this Aug. 22, 2019, file photo, U.S. Customs and Patrol agents sit along a section of the international border wall that runs through Organ Pipe National Monument in Lukeville, Ariz. A public-private project that maps the bodies of border crossers recovered from Arizona’s inhospitable deserts, valleys and mountains said this week of Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 that it documented 227 such deaths in 2020, the highest in a decade following the hottest, driest summer in state history.”
Habrá algunos cambios en las reglas y es aquí donde se perfila la puesta en escena de una segunda estrategia que llevaría adelante el gobierno demócrata
If Americans were shocked by what they saw, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, who have been accustomed to U.S. interference in their elections and domestic politics, were aghast
El Secretario General recomienda como primera prioridad para el 2021 asegurar la protección y seguridad de excombatientes, comunidades afectadas por el conflicto y líderes sociales y los defensores(as) de los derechos humanos
None of these has yet been achieved, and the political will required today to advance on these key issues for the stability and future of the country is nowhere in sight
Enforcement efforts in California and Texas over the years have pushed migrants into dangerous terrain in Arizona without easy access to food and water
Desde ese día permanece en los sótanos del organismo junto a otros cuatro militares que están bajo sospecha de estar relacionados con un presunto plan que supuestamente iba a ejecutar un camarero del Palacio de Miraflores
I’m available until late afternoon, but trying to finish some writing. (How to contact me)
If you’re like me, you probably lost some prime work hours yesterday watching the Capitol get vandalized in real time. Work-wise, I’m about where I was yesterday. Today, I also want to push out a weekly border update, which will need to include a summary of what was in the 2021 appropriation. I’ll be here all day doing that, with only an interview on my calendar at the end of the day.
The hemisphere’s three greatest vulnerabilities to the malign influence of Russian and Chinese’s soft power are related to failed economic development policies of the past, incomplete decentralization of government power, and anti-democratic regimes’ reliance on foreign actors to control their populations
A new report by advocates focused on the Otero facility argues that this is an example of “performative compliance,” a process in which ostensible oversight bodies undermine their own stated purpose
With state subsidies to fight poverty now ended, Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday said his country is “broke” and he is unable to do anything about it, attributing the crisis to “the press-fueled” coronavirus
El documento señala, por ejemplo, que, en cualquier caso, primará el diálogo y la mediación en la protesta, incluso “cuando los medios pacíficos de intervención se consideren agotados y se proceda al uso de la fuerza”
El periodista y escritor Carlos Manuel Álvarez narra los interrogatorios a los que fue sometido por las autoridades cubanas durante su detención tras las protestas en el barrio de San Isidro de La Habana
The 103-page report, “‘Like I’m Drowning’: Children and Families Sent to Harm by the US ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program,” is a joint investigation by Human Rights Watch, Stanford University’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program, and Willamette University’s Child and Family Advocacy Clinic
We recognize the existence of the Delegate Commission headed by its legitimate Board of Directors, established by the National Assembly, led by Juan Guaidó
Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who had been Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s deal maker, can be extradited to the U.S., where he was indicted on charges of laundering money for the authoritarian regime
I’m mostly around today, with a couple of scattered commitments. (How to contact me)
How about those Georgia Senate results? The horizons of what’s possible for human rights advocacy on Capitol Hill just broadened substantially, especially with Sen. Leahy now in charge of Appropriations.
The stakes were high, and I didn’t go to bed until about 2:00am last night, as I was watching the count come in. I’m getting a bit of a late start today, but except for a meeting mid-day and another in the late afternoon, I should be reachable as I work on our annual planning documents and do a variety of updates to my news, reports, and contacts databases.
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images photo at The Intercept. Caption: “Members of the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante painted a graph, showing statistics of migrants who died on their journey to the United States, on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana on Nov. 2, 2019.”
Many of the themes that have come to characterize Brazil’s militarized effort to end the escalating environmental destruction of the Amazon forest: disorganization, inexperience and allegations of political bias
El 28 de agosto pasado, dos efectivos de la Dine fueron detectados por Carabineros en la ventana del despacho de la jueza. Solo pudieron controlar a uno, pues el otro salió corriendo
Migrants traveling through the Uraba region are mostly trying to make it to the United States. Many come from Cuba and Haiti. But it is also common to see migrants from Africa and Asia
Él, como otros tres militares en retiro con los que hablamos y que asistieron a Dosquebradas, dijeron que en la reserva hay una sensación de que Colombia está dando un peligroso giro hacia la izquierda
Al finalizar el 2020, la cifra de homicidios de excombatientes en el país fue una tragedia: 249 vidas silenciadas. Manuel Alonso, quien se dedicó al estampado artesanal y la carpintería en su proceso de reincorporación, fue la penúltima
Siete miembros de las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado, cuatro integrantes de la PMOP y tres de la Dipol fueron arrestados el mismo día por el rapto de una persona y por querer meter droga a un penal
Mexico
Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo, “No Es el Pueblo” (Nexos (Mexico), January 5, 2021).
El momento civilista ya pasó. No está claro qué características vaya a tener el nuevo militarismo, son muy distintos los modelos de Egipto, Chile y Pakistán, y no es posible saber cuál vaya a ser el mexicano
Dozens of migrant refuges in Mexico have closed their doors or scaled back operations in recent weeks to curb the ravages of coronavirus, exposing people to greater peril
Durante meses, quizás años, hombres y mujeres fueron torturados, asesinados y enterrados en una pequeña vivienda abandonada y semiderruida, situada en las faldas del parque nacional del Cerro del Toro
The media, civil society organizations and anti-corruption activists must have humility and integrity to reckon with the ominous damage they have caused with their uncritical endorsement of an opportunistic charlatan
The FY 2020 report describes the final or most current outcomes, as of March 31, 2020, associated with the 3.5 million Southwest Border encounters occurring between 2014 and 2019
The Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act was a rare piece of bipartisan legislation that acknowledged the extraordinary loss of life in the borderlands while seeking to bring closure to families
Three asylum-seeking mothers who crossed the border while pregnant described giving birth in U.S. hospitals, only to be swiftly sent back under false pretenses and without an evaluation of their particular humanitarian circumstances or claims of danger
El dirigente opositor, reconocido por más de 50 países como presidente interino de Venezuela, compartió en su cuenta de Twitter fotos de los uniformados
With many in the opposition leadership now outside Venezuela, Mr. Guaidó is increasingly isolated, living in a small apartment in Caracas with his wife and small daughter and wondering whether the secret police will arrest him
El Tribunal de Apelación caboverdiano de Barlavento decidió este lunes dar luz verde a la extradición a EE.UU. del empresario colombiano Alex Saab, presunto testaferro del presidente venezolano, Nicolás Maduro
No meetings on the calendar today, though I do have a mid-day errand to run. I’m going through the thousands of pages of legislation that passed after Christmas (2021 budget and defense authorization) looking for things to be aware of. Also, I’m working on my 2021 program planning documents for WOLA. As I write those, I’ve got an eye on the outcome of today’s Senate runoff in Georgia, which will affect what goals we can consider “achievable” this year because majority control of the Senate is at stake.
Cuatro años después del Acuerdo de Paz se han registrado al menos 47 agresiones a líderes y lideresas sociales de ocho municipios en el departamento de Sucre
El 65 % ocurrió en seis departamentos y en el 89 % de los municipios donde sucedieron las matanzas, la Defensoría había notificado al Gobierno sobre el escalamiento de la violencia y riesgo
En el Gobierno de la Cuarta Transformación –apenas en dos años –el grupo criminal que dirige Oseguera Cervantes ya se posicionó en todo el territorio nacional, por encima del cártel de Sinaloa
“The identity of [informants] had to be closely guarded by U.S. agents working in Mexico. They couldn’t share that information with Mexican officials because the confidential source could wind up dead”
Según la fiscalía, se han identificado a bandas de tráfico ilegal de personas que se han aprovechado de la necesidad y vulnerabilidad de los venezolanos para cobrarles cupos y hacerlos ingresar irregularmente
A Post investigation, including more than 20 interviews and a review of documents including prospective contracts, uncovered multiple proposed deals involving Troconis that would have required what some opposition members have characterized as large and unusual payments
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