Adam Isacson

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

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“I’m not trying to hit cleanup. I’m bringing orange slices.”

I enjoyed and recommend this conversation with legal expert Elie Mystal of The Nation, with Anand Giridharadas at The Ink.

But as a Gen X-er, I especially liked this part, about generational change in today’s urgently needed political activism:

One of the things that I have said in those rooms to generally older geriatric people is to get the hell out of the way of the young folks. Like, there is a sense amongst older people, I have found, that they don’t want to be a part of it if they’re not out front of it, if they’re not the leader of the whatever thing. And that they have earned that right by their age and experience.

And some of it comes from a good place. Like, they have something to give and something to teach and been there, done that. And I respect all of that.

But by the same token, your time’s up. You had your chance.

I’m Gen X. We had our shot. We blew it. Sorry.

But it’s time for the next guys to step up.

And as a Gen Xer—and don’t even get me started on boomers—as a Gen Xer, my job is to help.

Like, I’m a dad. I bring orange slices to the game. I’m not trying to get out there and go—I’m not trying to hit cleanup. I’m bringing orange slices. I’m taking the kids out for pizza afterwards.

Because I now, I have a mortgage now. I live in a house. I’ve got things. I can take people out for pizza.

But I need the person who doesn’t have a house, who doesn’t have a mortgage, who’s out there on the streets. That’s the person that’s going to be the leader, that’s going to be out there with the time and effort and whatever to do it.

Day 17 for the 238 Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador

His head shaved, unable to contact anyone, with no end date to his captivity, Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela whose tattoos commemorate his town’s Epiphany festival, is starting his 17th day deep inside El Salvador’s “Confinement of Terrorism” prison.

And the Trump administration put him there.

Jonathan Blitzer, at the New Yorker, just published a 5,000-word overview of what we know so far.

As part of the White House’s effort to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, ICE officers received a document called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” which provided a point system based on different categories of incriminating behavior or associations. If an immigrant in custody scored six points or higher, according to the rubric, he “may be validated” as a gang member. Tattoos, which fall under the “Symbolism” category, constitute four points; social-media posts “displaying” gang symbols are two points. Using “open source material,” agents at the investigative arm of ICE compiled photos of tattoos considered suspicious: crowns, stars, the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo.

It is shaping up to be an “Abu Ghraib” or “family separation” level of stain on the United States, and there’s no resolution yet. On Thursday afternoon, the judge overseeing litigation about this use of the “Alien Enemies Act” will hold a hearing requiring the Trump administration “to show cause why they did not violate the Court’s Temporary Restraining Orders.”

Links to Litigation I’m Watching

There’s a lot of border, migration, and other Latin America human rights-related litigation going on in U.S. federal courts. I’m keeping a running list of links to the Courtlistener pages hosting court documents from those cases.

Here’s what’s on that page right now, but I’ll keep updating it. Add links in the comments if I’m missing any big ones.

On Monday: National Immigrant Solidarity Rally and Screening

Join me virtually this coming Monday evening for the National Immigrant Solidarity Rally and screening of the excellent documentary Borderland: the Line Within, which is viewable online today and through the weekend.

RSVP here.

Testifying Thursday

While it’s not quite the title I’d have chosen, I’m looking forward to testifying in Congress again at 11:00 Eastern on Thursday, this time in a hearing of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere about the State Department’s counter-drug and law enforcement programs.

This is not a very polarizing issue—neither side has found a silver bullet solution to drug trafficking and organized crime in the region—so I’m hoping for some constructive exchanges with members from both parties.

My written testimony is here, on the hearing repository page. I finished it at 2:00 this morning—there’s never a lot of advance prep time to write these—but hopefully it doesn’t read like that.

The hearing will be on Youtube here.

Colombia’s Peace Process: Some Links from the Past Month

Here are links to 12 stories from the past month about Colombia’s uneven efforts to achieve and consolidate peace. They’re presented according to three focus areas: the effects of the Trump administration’s policies, the politics of the “total peace” effort, and the implementation of the 2016 accord.

The effects of the Trump administration’s policies

In recent years, Colombia received as much as $440 million annually in USAID assistance for more than 80 programs

The fragile peace process in Colombia is facing one of its biggest challenges since it was signed in 2016. The freezing of USAID (essential US funding), ordered by Trump and Musk, could paralyse justice as well as peace

Los pedidos de extradición de delegados de los grupos armados y las listas de organizaciones terroristas siembran de incertidumbre las mesas de negociación

The politics of the “total peace” effort

En el marco de la mesa de diálogo entre el Gobierno y las disidencia Estado Mayor de Bloques y Frente se han adelantado acciones en materia de titulación de tierras, creación de Zonas de Reserva Campesina, planes de educación y desarrollo sostenible. Este domingo las comunidades pidieron ampliar el cese al fuego bilateral con ese grupo

En San Vicente del Caguán se llevó a cabo un diálogo social para identificar necesidades y propuestas de paz de los habitantantes

La gestión del comisionado de Paz generó dudas en el gobierno Petro. El funcionario defendió sus resultados. ¿Por qué?

Es urgente un profundo revolcón en el diseño y en la conducción de la política de paz o, de lo contrario, lo más probable es que el balance del gobierno Petro en este terreno termine siendo muy negativo

La captura de ‘Araña’ y las críticas de sus ministras son muestra de que el presidente está cada vez más lejos de esta bandera

La Paz Total del gobierno de Gustavo Petro aún no se refleja en el país y mucho menos en el Bajo Cauca. Mientras tanto, el Clan del Golfo se reestructura bajo el nombre de Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia, buscando reconocimiento político

The implementation of the 2016 accord

Afirma la magistrada de la JEP, de la Sala de Reconocimiento, que esta semana recomendó amnistiar algunos casos de secuestros de las Farc

75 personas que abandonaron la NAR Simón Trinidad piden al Gobierno garantías para su reubicación

Juan Carlos Monge, representante de la ONU Derechos Humanos, habló con Colombia+20 sobre reclutamiento, confinamiento y paz total.

Panel Tomorrow: U.S. Immigration Shifts and Their Impact on Latin America

This is one of those panels where everyone else is smarter than me, and I should just go sit down in the audience and listen.

Tomorrow at 4:00 pm eastern, at Georgetown’s campus a few blocks from the Senate—and on Zoom.

RSVP, or get the Zoom address, here.

US IMMIGRATION SHIFTS & ITS IMPACT
ON LATIN AMERICA
Adam Isaacson
Director for Defense Oversight at WOLA
Michelle Brane
Former DHS Immigration Detention
Ombudsman & Executive Director of the Family Reunification Task Force
Kristie de Peña
Senior Vice President for
Policy at the Niskanen Center
Katharine Donato
Moderator
Donald G. Herzberg Professor at Georgetown
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 4:00 P.M.
MCCOURT SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY - MCC 290
125 E STREET NW
THIS EVENT WILL BE OFFERED HYBRID

Plainclothes Border Patrol… in Southeast Washington

This video obtained by the Washington Post shows a Border Patrol agent arresting a Venezuelan father whose only crime was improperly crossing the border in October 2022 when he, his wife, and kids turned themselves in to ask for asylum.

You can’t tell the arresting officer is a Border Patrol agent because he’s wearing a sweatshirt featuring a gothic font popular with Salvadoran gangs. You’ll also be surprised that he’s a Border Patrol agent because the arrest happened in southeast Washington DC, far from an international border. (Because Washington is within 100 miles of a U.S. coastline, it is still an area where Border Patrol is allowed to operate.)

It’s also nearly unprecedented to see a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holder arrested for “improper entry” more than two years ago. We’re in a new and scary era.

The arrested father and mother are currently free, thanks to the quick and aggressive action of attorneys and mutual aid networks.

Arrested at Home in Dallas on Thursday. In a Salvadoran Gulag by Saturday.

Four men from Maracaibo, Venezuela “were eking out a new life in Dallas, where they worked long hours and shared a townhouse. Then, on Thursday, armed officers showed up at their home, arrested them and took them to a Texas detention center,” reads a startling report from Silvia Foster-Frau in today’s Washington Post.

Mervin’s younger brother, Jonferson Yamarte, had arrived in Texas. He witnessed the arrests but was not detained and described them to The Post.

He said armed immigration officers were in his living room when he woke up. They asked him to sit down, requested his name and then inquired whether he had tattoos. Scholars and journalists who have studied Tren de Aragua say tattoos are not a reliable indicator of membership in the gang. Relatives of several Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration described as Tren de Aragua members sent to Guantánamo in February also said immigration agents had focused on tattoos. Their relatives denied that their loved ones had ties to the gang.

For four Venezuelan friends, Alien Enemies Act cuts short an American dream

Forced Disappearances in New Mexico

From an ACLU of New Mexico complaint, covered in Source NM:

ICE has not identified any of the 48 individuals apprehended in the “enhanced enforcement operation” centered on Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Roswell. ICE has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them. These individuals have been effectively forcibly disappeared from our communities.

Organized Crime-Tied Corruption in the Americas: Links from the Past Month

“For drug-related crime, state capture is an essential element of doing business. It guarantees that all stages of the logistics chain run with limited risk of seizure or arrest.” Meanwhile, “Mexico is now Latin America’s emblematic case of corruption and co-option by organised crime.”

The winner of a special gubernatorial election in Colombia’s southern department of Putumayo, a major coca-producing zone, faces “allegations of alleged support for his campaign from questionable politicians and of alleged support from the Comandos de la Frontera, a FARC dissident group that controls a large part of Putumayo.”

Argues that Latin America’s criminal organizations now seek relationships at the local level—states/provinces or municipalities/counties—rather than seek to corrupt the topmost levels of government.

Laura Sanchez Ley, Agente Fronterizo de Eu Hacia Tours para ‘Coyotes’ (Milenio (Mexico), Tuesday, February 18, 2025).

Héctor Hernández, a Border Patrol agent in San Diego, allegedly gave Tijuana migrant smugglers “tours” of the border showing them the best sites for crossing migrants, charging them “$5,000 per tour and entry.” That ended in 2023 when Hernández gave a “tour” to an undercover Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent.

Arms Transfers and Arms Trafficking in the Americas: Some Links from the Past Month

Western Hemisphere Regional

The Trump administration has undone a weak Biden-era restriction on arms sales to countries that might use U.S.-provided weapons in violation of international humanitarian law.

Trump revokes Biden-era policy, prompted by Israel’s Gaza war, restricting US arms sales over human rights concerns

Argentina

The Milei government is taking delivery on an order of F-16 aircraft begun during the Biden administration, and refurbishing U.S.-provided P-3 aircraft.

El ministro de Defensa, Luis Petri, encabezó un acto junto a la aeronave Nº 25, la cual servirá para adiestramiento y no tiene capacidad de vuelo. Cómo son los misiles que llegarán de los Estados Unidos

Se encuentra a la espera de su turno para ser enviado a las instalaciones del aeropuerto de Keystone Heights, ubicado en la localidad de Florida, base aérea donde se realizarán tareas de puesta en servicio de la aeronave militar.

Central America Regional, Dominican Republic

Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the Dominican Republic adopted an OAS “Roadmap to Prevent Trafficking in and the Illicit Proliferation of Arms, Ammunition and Explosives.”

Colombia, Peru

Colombia was to buy Swedish-made Gripen fighter planes, but the U.S. government is vetoing the sale of its U.S.-made engines. Colombia may consider Chinese alternatives.

According to SA Defense the US will block the sale of the GE F414-GE-39E engine, a key component of Sweden’s Saab Gripen E fighter jet, to Colombia’s Air Force

Mexico

Several stories about arms trafficking across the U.S. border, the subject of arguments in Mexico’s lawsuit against U.S. weapons companies, which went before the Supreme Court on March 4.

Guns allegedly linked to Dallas native used in assassination attempt of Mexico City police chief, murder of immigration agent, 2 others

The case concerns a lawsuit the Mexican government filed against gun companies seeking accountability for the gun violence epidemic

The country claims Smith & Wesson and other gunmakers are turning a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of high-powered weapons made in the U.S that are illegally trafficked into in the hands of Mexican cartels

Under pressure from Trump, the Sheinbaum administration is demanding that the United States combat the firepower of the cartels. Using judicial documents and official reports, EL PAÍS reconstructs the long chain of arms trafficking, which begins in the weapons industry and ends in the streets of Mexico

Nicaragua

Russia delivered helicopters, planes, and anti-aircraft artillery to Nicaragua.

Helicópteros Mi-17, aviones AN-26 y artillería antiaérea modernizada Zushka se han entregado a la Fuerza Aérea del Ejército de Nicaragua

Venezuela

“Venezuela is a shell of a state, held up by illicit narcotic and oil money as well as Chinese, Russian, and Iranian support and posing no realistic threat to the United States. No amount of advanced Russian warplanes will change that.”

Venezuela’s economic conditions have repeatedly undercut the ability of its military to maintain the planes in its fleet

WOLA Podcast: Tariffs Won’t Stop Fentanyl: Upending U.S.-Mexico relations for a failed drug-war model

By imposing tariffs on Mexico, “Trump seems not to want even a transactional relationship, but rather to blow up the relationship.” One of the conclusions of a conversation I recorded today with Stephanie and John from WOLA, in the wake of Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Mexico.

Here’s the text of the landing page on WOLA’s website:

In an expected but still stunning escalation, the Trump administration has imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, citing cross-border flows of fentanyl as justification. The move has sent shockwaves through U.S.-Mexico and North American relations, rattling markets and generating a general outcry.

In this episode, Stephanie Brewer, WOLA’s director for Mexico, and John Walsh, WOLA’s director for drug policy, unpack the political, economic, and security implications of the tariff imposition and an apparent return to failed attempts to stop drug abuse and drug trafficking through brute force.

Brewer breaks down how the tariffs and other new hardline policies, like terrorist designations for Mexican criminal groups and fast-tracked extraditions, are reshaping and severely straining the bilateral relationship.

Walsh explains why Trump’s focus on supply-side crackdowns is doomed to fail, drawing on decades of evidence from past U.S. drug wars. He lays out a harm reduction strategy that would save far more lives.

The conversation concludes with an open question: is Donald Trump really interested in a negotiation with Mexico? Or is the goal a permanent state of coercion, which would explain the lack of stated benchmarks for lifting the tariffs?

Links:

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

At WOLA: Soldiers Aren’t Border Police: the Perils of Using Troops Against Migrants

Here’s a new analysis at WOLA’s website about one of the many ways in which the Trump administration is playing with fire: sending combat-trained soldiers to act as glorified migration agents, potentially confronting civilians while carrying out a politicized mission. We see it happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the U.S. interior and even Guantánamo as so-called “mass deportation” ramps up, and also in Mexico and Guatemala in response to U.S. pressure.

The U.S. military—which prides itself on being apolitical—is being forced to lend itself to the current administration’s domestic political priorities. This threatens a historic break with more than a century of restraint in the United States’ democratic civil-military relations.

Read the whole thing here.

Five Latin America Security Longreads from the Past Month

Fletcher Reveley, Grave Mistakes: The History and Future of Chile’s ‘Disappeared’ (Undark, Wednesday, February 19, 2025).

~10,300 words: In Chile, the Pinochet dictatorship hid the remains of hundreds of its victims. “Can new forensic science help find them—and regain public trust?”

Steven Dudley, How Organized Crime Set the Agenda for Ecuador’s Presidential Elections (InsightCrime, Wednesday, February 5, 2025).

~3,100 words: Both candidates in Ecuador’s April 13 presidential elections seem determined to satisfy the public’s lust for a “mano dura” approach to crime—whether it will work or not.

La Situacion Actual de Orden Publico en Colombia: Radiografia de un Pais en Guerra (El Espectador (Colombia), Friday, February 21, 2025).

~3,800 words: Violence between armed and criminal groups is worsening in many parts of Colombia right now. This overview documents what is happening in several regions of the country.

Elliott Woods, A Deadly Passage (Texas Monthly, Monday, March 3, 2025).

~8,200 words: Travels to the forgotten parts of Mexico and Guatemala to speak to the relatives of migrants who perished on June 27, 2022, when 53 people from Mexico and Central America died of heat inside the container of a tractor-trailer near San Antonio, Texas.

Christopher Newton, Juliana Manjarres, Marina Cavalari, Insight Crime’s 2024 Homicide Round-Up (InsightCrime, Wednesday, February 26, 2025).

~5,600 words: A country-by-country survey of trends for the most closely documented form of violent crime in the part of the world that accounts for a third of the world’s homicides.

WOLA Podcast: “They Didn’t Take Our Strength”: The Border Under Trump, Viewed from Nogales

I appreciated this opportunity to spend an hour with three colleagues at the border, with the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, five weeks into the Trump administration. Karen, Bernie, and Diana provide a moving account of what they’re seeing, and what migrants are facing, at this very difficult moment. Here’s the language of the podcast episode landing page at WOLA’s website.

KBI’s facility in Nogales, Sonora.

In the five weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the landscape for migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted dramatically. The new administration is pursuing an aggressive crackdown on asylum seekers, closing legal pathways and ramping up deportations. Migrants who had secured appointments through the CBP One app under the Biden administration found those suddenly canceled. Many are now stranded in Mexico, left in legal limbo and vulnerable to exploitation and danger. The administration is meanwhile increasing its deportations into Mexico of thousands of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere.

This episode takes a deep dive into the current situation in Nogales, Sonora, where asylum seekers and deported individuals are facing increasing hardship and uncertainty. We speak with three frontline experts from the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), an organization providing humanitarian aid, advocacy, and psychosocial support to migrants in crisis.

Our guests—Karen Hernández, KBI’s advocacy coordinator; Bernie Eguia, coordinator of psychosocial support; and Diana Fajardo, a psychologist working with recently deported individuals—share firsthand accounts of the humanitarian crisis. They describe:

  • The immediate impact of Trump’s policies, including the January 20 mass cancellation of CBP One asylum appointments and a coming surge in deportations.
  • How migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, and elsewhere are left with dwindling options inside Mexico, facing threats from organized crime, unsafe conditions, and legal roadblocks to seeking refuge.
  • The role of the Mexican government, which is now receiving deportees under an opaque and militarized process, keeping humanitarian groups at arm’s length.
  • The psychological toll of displacement, uncertainty, and family separation—and how organizations like KBI are working to provide support amid shrinking resources.

Despite the bleak reality, our guests emphasize the resilience of the people they serve. Even in desperate moments, migrants are holding onto hope and searching for ways to protect themselves and their families. But without systemic change, there is only so much that can be done to relieve suffering.

While recalling the urgent need for humane policies that prioritize protection over deterrence, this conversation underscores the crucial role of organizations like KBI in providing aid and advocating for migrants’ rights.

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

An Index to This Year’s Border Updates

Like me, you’re probably having a hard time keeping up with all of the (usually abusive) border and immigration policies that the Trump administration has been throwing at us. As they “flood the zone,” it’s like we need a big bulletin board to pin up every alarming development, so that we can at least keep it on our radar and not let it go forgotten.

Here’s my bulletin board. I’ve just indexed every topic mentioned in 2025’s weekly WOLA Border Updates. There are 70 so far.

Each topic has links to the exact sections of the Border Updates where I covered it.

I’ll keep this up to date all year. I hope you find it as useful as I have so far. (Even though I wrote this stuff, I don’t always remember where it is.)

Index on this site / Identical index at WOLA’s site

“BUSTED”

They can barely contain their glee about carrying out this administration’s illegal suspension of the right to seek asylum.

Imagine voicing delight about dumping a family of Cuban asylum seekers into Mexico. “Regretful but firm” would be decent. Delight is not decent.

Chief Patrol Agent - Tucson Sector @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter:

BUSTED. Casa Grande agents arrested a Cuban family of four who illegally crossed the border near Papago, AZ. Apparently, they did not receive the memo, but anyone illegally crossing the border faces detention or removal.

(photo of Border Patrol vehicle)

48 Percent

Take a moment today and sit with the fact that 48 percent of our fellow Americans favor taking any category of people and “establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held.”

 CBS News Poll – February 5-7, 2025
Adults in the U.S.
31. Creating Large Detention Centers
Would you avor or oppose the U.S. government establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held, while the government determinedwhether or not they should be deported?
Gender Age Ideology
Total Male Female Under 30 30-44 45-64 65+ Liberal Moderate ConservativeFavor
 48% 53% 43% 50% 43% 49% 49% 18% 48% 73%
Oppose
 52% 47% 57% 50% 57% 51% 51% 82% 52% 27%
Totals
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Weighted N (2,159) (1,053) (1,106) (449) (547) (703) (460) (559) (747) (658)
Party ID Race White by Education
Total Dem Ind Rep White Black Hispanic No Degree 4yr Degree+Favor
 48% 24% 43% 74% 50% 42% 47% 55% 41%
Oppose
 52% 76% 57% 26% 50% 58% 53% 45% 59%
Totals
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Weighted N (2,159) (665) (671) (719) (1,361) (269) (344) (845) (516)

Source is a CBS News poll.

At Venezuela’s Efecto Cocuyo: ¿Cómo mejorar el sistema de migración de EE. UU.?

Thank you to Luz Mely Reyes of the independent Venezuelan media outlet Efecto Cocuyo for hosting and sharing this conversation about the Trump administration’s ongoing anti-immigration offensive and the outlines of what a better policy would look like.

It is in Spanish, as is the site’s writeup of the interview. Here’s a quick English translation of that page:

The United States’ immigration policies, now based on a promise from a president who pledged to carry out the largest deportation in history, has generated a devastating impact on the community of migrants living in the United States, whose stay in that country is threatened by a system that makes it difficult for them to apply for asylum and regularize their immigration status through policies that have become obsolete.

To analyze the role of asylum, the causes of migration, the impact of U.S. policies, and recommendations for a more effective and humane management of the migratory phenomenon, Luz Mely Reyes, director of Efecto Cocuyo, spoke with Adam Isacson, director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

From the “stick and the carrot to just the stick”.

According to Isacson, the Biden administration adopted a mixed strategy, combining incentives (the “carrot”) such as humanitarian parole and the use of CBP One to schedule appointments at the border, with restrictive measures (the “stick”) such as the continuation of Title 42 to remove migrants and rules limiting access to asylum for those without prior appointments. “So, Biden chose something of a carrot and stick arrangement for the many migrants who were arriving.”

The Wola executive describes Trump’s policy as exclusively punitive (“stick only”), with the elimination of humanitarian parole, making access to asylum more difficult, and increasing deportations. He highlights the use of deportation flights, including with military aircraft. “In its two weeks, it has chosen only the stick and ended the carrots. CBP One no longer exists,” he explained.

A “broken and rickety immigration system”

Isacson emphasizes that the U.S. immigration system is “broken” and has a “rickety” capacity to receive, process and evaluate asylum claims. This is despite the fact that the majority of migrants are asylum seekers.

The executive explains that, currently, most migrants’ cases are handled by about 700 immigration judges who must hear more than 3 million cases that take years to resolve.

Isacson explains that although many migrants are fleeing insecurity and violence, for the most part their applications do not meet the strict requirements for asylum in the United States. “One cannot flee, no one cannot get asylum statuses in the U.S. just for being a victim of widespread violence or just for not being able to feed their children because of the situation of bad governance.”

WOLA’s recommendations for more effective immigration management

  • Implement a reform of the 1990 immigration laws to reflect today’s reality, more residency quotas and facilitating application for residency from countries of origin.
  • Strengthen the refugee program to provide a safe alternative to the dangerous journey to the US.
  • Streamline asylum processes to be faster (less than a year), fair and efficient, with more judges and avoiding detention of asylum seekers.
  • Enforce existing laws that grant the right to asylum and protect vulnerable populations.

Isacson also advocates for fair, faster, more efficient, more just decisions with better processing. “There are so many things we have to do right now just to get to common sense and basic legality, that talk of reform is an issue for the future at this point.”

On Greg Sargent’s “Daily Blast” Podcast

I had a great conversation with Greg Sargent at the New Republic for his popular “Daily Blast” podcast, which he released on February 6. The audio is here and a transcript is here. We talked about migration through Mexico and the futility of blowing up a multifaceted bilateral relationship by threatening tariffs over it.

The introductory text for the podcast reads:

Stephen Miller privately worried about imposing overly aggressive tariffs on Mexico because it could imperil Mexico’s effort to apprehend migrants traveling north to our southern border, reports The Wall Street Journal. That revelation is striking. Understood correctly, it’s an acknowledgment that Mexico had already been cracking down on migration, due to an arrangement secured by President Biden. That badly undermines Trump’s scam that his threat of tariffs forced Mexico to do his bidding on the border. We talked to Adam Isacson, an expert on Latin America, who explains what Mexico has actually been doing on immigration, and why it undercuts Trump’s biggest claims about immigration, tariffs, Mexico, and more. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

From WOLA: Trump’s Pause of U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America: An “America Last” Policy

Here is a piece that WOLA published last Friday (January 31) in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on most foreign aid. It’s even more urgent now: since we published it, the President and Elon Musk (which is which isn’t always clear) have been on a full-bore offensive to abolish USAID.

Here’s the intro, but you can read the whole thing at WOLA’s site.

The unprecedented pause and potential elimination of many U.S. foreign assistance programs, announced in President Trump’s executive order “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” has caused shock waves worldwide. The State Department has since backtracked and taken the welcome move to exclude “life-saving humanitarian assistance” from this freeze. Still, most programs remain on long-term hold even though they support priorities that the Trump administration claims to uphold, like curbing mass migration, reducing illicit drug supplies, and fostering economic prosperity.

State Department and USAID-managed foreign assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean totaled a little over $2 billion in FY 2023, the most recent year for which an actual amount is available. While this is a fraction of the $45 billion in base U.S. foreign assistance obligated for State and USAID programs that year, it is enough to guarantee that great harm will result from the 90-day pause in use of funds and the possibility that agreed-upon programs might be modified or discontinued. That is causing great uncertainty and alarm among “implementing partners”—civil society organizations, international organizations, and contractors region-wide- : they are being forced to cancel events, lay off staff, and determine how or if they will be able to honor commitments. 

The freeze applies beyond development and human rights efforts to encompass programs that groups like WOLA have often critiqued. Much U.S. military and police aid, including training programs and counter-drug eradication and interdiction funded through the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Bureau, is now on hold. 

Far from making the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous, the pause in funding and uncertainty about future funds undermine fundamental U.S. interests to an extent that is difficult to comprehend. It is actively weakening efforts to address the reasons millions are fleeing Latin America and the Caribbean, like armed conflicts, violent organized crime, rampant corruption, democratic backsliding, closing civic space, weak justice systems and rule of law, inadequate policing and public security, gender-based violence, exclusion from formal markets, and vulnerability to climate change. The aid freeze is an exquisitely wrapped gift to the United States’ regional adversaries, from dictators to drug lords to human smugglers to great-power rivals like China. 

Read the whole thing here.

Trump’s Executive Orders and Latin America: Key Things to Know

Here’s an explainer WOLA posted on Friday, sounding alarms about the likely impact of these changes from the second Trump administration’s first few days. This is all before the feud with Colombia and the effort to halt a huge amount of federal spending.

It covers the following changes that will, if implemented, gravely harm Latin America:

  • Ending asylum and other legal pathways
  • The “invasion” justification and dangerous domestic use of the U.S. military
  • Mass deportation
  • Placing criminal groups on the “terrorist list”
  • Ending all federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and mandating the recognition of only two sexes
  • Pausing U.S. Foreign Assistance
  • Exiting the Paris Climate Change Agreement

Read the whole thing here.

Today’s testimony

It was fun—at times—to engage with senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this morning on Republican-led proposals to revive the “Remain in Mexico” policy. There’s a lot to say about it and I’ll post more later. For now:

WOLA’s landing page is here. Here’s the text of my opening statement:

Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today.

I did a lot of fieldwork and data work along the U.S.-Mexico border when Remain in Mexico—MPP—was first implemented. The evidence I saw is clear: Remain in Mexico enriched cartels. It failed to meaningfully deter migration. And it soured relations with a key ally. Pursuing it again would harm U.S. interests.

Instead, I urge this Committee to focus on fixing our asylum system. That system saves tens of thousands of lives each year, but we need it to be both fair and efficient. No one supports the idea of five-year waits for asylum decisions: the backlogs create a pull factor of their own. But this is an administrative challenge, and the U.S. government is good at handling administrative challenges. It’s just a question of processing, case management, and adjudication.

People truly did suffer while remaining in Mexico. I personally heard harrowing accounts of torture and abuse. Nearly all of that abuse was the work of organized crime groups, or cartels.

The cartels’ cruelty and sadism wasn’t just a human rights issue, though. These criminals aren’t barbaric just for its own sake. This is their economic model, and that makes it a national security issue.

Organized crime is trying to extract as much money out of migrants and their loved ones as it can while those migrants are present on the “turf” that they control. Cartels fight each other for this business.

“Remain in Mexico” kept migrants on cartels’ turf for very long periods of time: months or even years in Mexican border cities waiting for their hearings. MPP created a new market opportunity for cartels.

That’s a big difference from CBP One. The app also requires months-long waits to come to a U.S. port of entry, but it makes it easier to wait elsewhere, in parts of Mexico that are safer than its northern border zone, where states are under State Department travel warnings because of cartel crime and kidnapping.

When outsiders are waiting for months in Mexico’s border zone, they are sitting ducks for the cartels:

  • First, there was extortion: foreigners had to pay just to exist for that long in cartel-controlled neighborhoods. If you don’t pay, it’s not safe to go outside your shelter.
  • Second, if people wanted to give up on the long wait for MPP, cartels offered “coyote” services: the chance to cross the border and try to evade Border Patrol. They charge several thousand dollars for that.
  • Third was kidnapping for ransom: cartels held people in horrific conditions, raping and torturing them, as their relatives—frequently in the United States—had to wire thousands of dollars to free them.

The financial scale of this exploitation is staggering. Let’s consider it. Take a conservative estimate of $1,000 per migrant in extortions, ransoms, or coyote fees—I ran that figure by some border-area experts and they laughed at how low that estimated amount is. Multiply that by 71,000 people in MPP, and you get $71 million in cartel profits, an amount equal to the annual base salaries of 1,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents.

For all that, Remain in Mexico didn’t really do that much to reduce or control migration.

For more than 10 years now, there’s been a series of crackdowns on asylum seekers. My testimony maps them out in a graphic. These crackdowns follow the same pattern: you get an initial drop in migration numbers, it lasts a few months, and then there’s a rebound.

Title 42 and its expansions? A classic example. So was “Remain in Mexico.”

After it expanded in June 2019, Border Patrol’s apprehensions did fall for four months. Then the migration numbers plateaued—at the same level they were in mid-2018. In fact, at the same level as the Obama administration’s eight-year monthly average. And that’s where the numbers stayed.

And then in the first months of 2020, Border Patrol apprehensions started rising. They were on pace to grow by a double-digit percentage from February to March. But then COVID came, and all but ended March 10 days early.

Title 42 ended up eclipsing Remain in Mexico: no more hearing dates; asylum seekers got expelled. Remain in Mexico became irrelevant and the Trump administration rarely used it again.

MPP also strained relations with Mexico. The Mexican government at first resisted the program, agreeing to it only after very heavy diplomatic pressure. This complicated cooperation on other shared priorities.

There are a lot of those priorities, from trade to fentanyl. Mexico is one of the ten largest countries in the world, with the 14th-largest economy. The border is just one reason why the United States needs good relations with Mexico.

Compelling Mexico to agree to a new Remain in Mexico takes bandwidth away from those priorities. Why do all that for a policy that actually enriches drug cartels? Why do all that for a policy that doesn’t even have a clear and lasting effect on migration?

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Testifying in the Senate Thursday morning

Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs

Full Committee Hearing
Remain in Mexico
Date: January 16, 2025
Time: 9:00am
Location: Senate Dirksen Building, SD-342
THE HONORABLE KENNETH CUCCINELLI
Former Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Secretary (2019-2021)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
ANDREW R. ARTHUR
Resident Fellow in Law and Policy
Center for Immigration Studies
ADAM ISACSON
Director for Defense Oversight
The Washington Office on Latin America

Tune in at 9:00 Eastern on Thursday when I testify in the Senate Homeland Security Committee in opposition to proposals to restart the “Remain in Mexico” program.

Remain in Mexico was a human rights travesty. It enriched Mexican organized crime. It complicated U.S.-Mexico relations. And in the end, it didn’t do much to deter migrants.

I look forward to making all of those points in a few days. Wish me luck—and I apologize if not much gets posted here over the next few days while I prepare testimony.

WOLA Q&A: Trump’s Threats of Tariffs as a Response to Migration and the Fentanyl Overdose Crisis

Here’s a brief piece that WOLA published yesterday about the aftermath of Donald Trump’s use of tariff threats to bully Mexico on migration and fentanyl. It’s co-authored with my WOLA colleagues Stephanie Brewer (Mexico) and John Walsh (Drug Policy). We also recorded a podcast together.

I wrote the part about migration. An excerpt is below, but I recommend reading the whole thing here.

Mexico’s 2024 crackdown has been its most intense ever. Since January, Mexico has averaged 115,636 blocked or encountered migrants per month—11 times the monthly average during Trump’s first administration. For the first time ever, Mexico’s number has equaled or even exceeded Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) and Border Patrol’s count of migrants encountered at the border. Mexico cracked down so swiftly that Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions plummeted 50 percent in a single month, from December 2023 to January 2024: the sharpest month-to-month drop of the 21st century so far. This happened without a mention of tariffs or other punishments.

CNN Español: “Estados Unidos prohíbe la entrada del General retirado colombiano Mario Montoya”

Here’s a CNN Español segment I recorded at the studio (which is one neighborhood away from home) on Monday evening. It’s about State Department sanctioning, for serious human rights allegations, a general who was a key U.S. “partner” at the outset of Plan Colombia in the early 2000s. Also, the Colombian government’s request to pardon a FARC leader currently in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado after being extradited in 2005.

My Kid, in Korea

My daughter Margaret has been spending this first semester of her junior year studying at Yonsei University in South Korea, a country that she’s followed closely since discovering K-Pop in junior high. Between that and a summer program, she’ll have spent five of the last six months of 2024 on the other side of the planet. Not bad for a 20-year-old.

She’s been posting regular updates about her travels to her blog, with dozens of photos. The latest post is about recent jaunts outside of Seoul, visiting cities in the country’s interior.

I post this as a proud parent—and as someone who can use his own site to post some links and prod search engine crawlers in her direction.

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