Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

August 2021

August 5, 2021 — 0

High Levels of Migration are Back. This Time, Let’s Respond Without a Crackdown

It looks like U.S. authorities encountered migrants 210,000 times in July at the U.S.-Mexico border. I think the number will increase. The pandemic is intensifying a pattern that we already saw in 2014, 2016, 2018-19: a jump in people fleeing several Latin American countries, punctuated by cruel, ineffectual crackdowns. It’s not just here: lots of countries in the region are absorbing migrants from Venezuela, Central America, Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere.

Maureen Meyer and I just published an explainer laying out why, as the Biden administration reckons with this foreseeable but large new migration event, it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need another crackdown. This is a time to show the world how high levels of migration can be managed through increased processing and increased adjudication capacity.

We should be able to consider large numbers of protection claims, promptly and efficiently, without locking people up. The process should be so bureaucratic and boring that FOX News can’t even generate much outrage about it.

Anyway, this new, long-ish report explains the trends the border is facing right now, and lays out the outlines of how to handle it without freaking out or cracking down. It’s full of helpful graphics and we wrote it in the plainest English that we could manage.

Please share it—there’s a lot of nativist, even white supremacist garbage analysis out there, and we need to drown it out with facts.

August 5, 2021 — 0

Busy day today

I’m not sure why items tend to congregate around a single day, but August 5 is one of those days for me.

  • The New York Times just published my column (second one in three months!) about Colombia’s troubling surplus of retired soldiers, who are massively entering the international market for contractors and mercenaries.
  • I’m moderating a WOLA event about forced eradication of illicit crops in Latin America, with colleagues from Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico.
  • WOLA will be publishing a big analysis / explainer piece about the situation at the border.
  • We’re recording a podcast this afternoon about Cuba, which we’ll post shortly afterward.
  • I’m on a panel this evening hosted by Colombia’s El Espectador to talk about coca cultivation and drug policy.

I look forward to posting links to all of those.

August 5, 2021 — 0

New York Times column

The Times is running an opinion column by me this morning, about Colombia’s dangerous surplus of well-trained military veterans, who are being contracted for missions in Haiti and around the world.

Colombian leaders must address the lack of opportunity that has tempted some veterans to take illegal work or leave the country to be mercenaries. Colombia needs a version of America’s G.I. Bill — the legislation that helped propel millions of World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans into the middle class — that would offer much more generous benefits than the Colombian government currently does.

The country is still cementing peace. With the 2016 accord, it seemed that Colombia could finally begin to jettison its painful international association with drug traffickers, hit men and guerrillas. It would be tragic for the country to trade that reputation for one as a land of available mercenaries.

This is my second Times column about Colombia since May, which is great because the readership is high.

August 4, 2021 — 0

ChinaCom

Whenever a senior military officer is nominated to head the U.S. Southern Command, the Senate Armed Services Committee requires that officer to answer a list of advance questions. The responses are in a public document that accompany the officer’s nomination testimony before the Committee.

In December 2015, Adm. Kurt Tidd appeared before the Committee. His responses document mentioned China three times.

Yesterday (August 3, 2021), Gen. Laura Richardson appeared before the Committee. Her responses document mentions China 33 times.

The war on leftist insurgencies gave way to the war on drugs, which gave way to the war on terror, which became a focus on transnational criminal groups. But now, “great power” or “near-peer” rivalry looks like the main mission for the U.S. defense apparatus in Latin America.

August 4, 2021 — 0

Imagine seeing the world like Colombia’s ex-president

Once again, Colombia’s populist-extremist former president Álvaro Uribe uses Twitter to reveal the dark lens through which he views the world.

Imagine feeling threatened by conflict victims’ organizations—not political parties—having 16 temporary seats in Colombia’s 107-member House of Representatives for 8 years, as the 2016 peace accord foresaw.

Imagine being unable to distinguish between victims and “Farc and allies.”

Imagine believing that you get to judge who Colombia’s “true victims” are.

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