Mexico halts visa-free travel for Peru: expect more Peruvians in the Darién Gap. Panama seeks to defend its management of Darién migration. Fentanyl seizures are down 27 percent from 2023.

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Developments

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department announced that as of April 20, the Mexican government will begin requiring visas of citizens of Peru arriving in the country, by air or otherwise.

Mexico has taken this step before to stop the flow of South American migrants flying to the country and traveling to the U.S. border to turn themselves in to U.S. authorities. It changed visa procedures for Ecuadorian citizens in August 2021; Venezuelan citizens in January 2022; and Brazilian citizens in August 2022.

Each time, the Mexican visa restriction caused a short-term drop in that nationality’s migration to the United States. In the case of Ecuador and Venezuela migration recovered to previous levels, however, as sharply increased numbers of those countries’ citizens opted to take the dangerous route through the Darién Gap straddling Colombia and Panama. We can expect to see an increase in the number of Peruvian citizens migrating through the Darién Gap.

The restriction on visas for Peru is unusual because Peru, like Colombia, is part of a four-country arrangement (the “Pacific Alliance” uniting Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) that allowed visa-free travel.

Mexico’s decision may owe to a U.S. suggestion, but also to souring relations between Mexico and Peru. Relations between Mexico and Colombia remain cordial, and Colombian citizens may still fly to Mexico visa-free (though they must demonstrate that they have activities planned during their stay in Mexico).

  • Visas (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexico), Friday, April 5, 2024).

Panamanian security and migration authorities held a press conference yesterday to dispute the findings of an April 3 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that found the Colombian and Panamanian governments failing to protect the hundreds of thousands of migrants passing through the Darién Gap.

  • According to a release, National Migration Service director Samira Gozaine “assured that this report does not reflect reality and has a hidden purpose that only they know.”
  • The director of Panama’s border police (SENAFRONT) said that since 2021, his forces have dismantled 170 jungle encampments and arrested 321 people for crimes against migrants.
  • Public Security Minister Juan Manuel Pino said that Panama’s government has chartered five flights next week to deport people whom biometric exams revealed to have criminal records.
  • The officials said that over 114,000 migrants have passed through the Darién Gap since January 1, up from 109,069 as of March 31 (it is not clear what the cutoff date is for the 114,000 figure).

Thanks in large part to the establishment of U.S.-backed “Safe Mobility Offices” in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has already—six months into fiscal 2024—broken its full-year record for the number of refugees admitted from Latin America and the Caribbean.

California’s attorney general visited the San Diego border to discuss fentanyl smuggling. CBP’s San Diego Field Office was the number-one location for fentanyl seizures until mid-2022, when the agency’s Tucson, Arizona field office began to exceed San Diego most months.

During the first five months of fiscal 2024, fentanyl seizures at the border are 27 percent behind where they were during the first five months of fiscal 2023. Nationwide, including ports, airports, and the Canada border, fentanyl seizures are down 24 percent. This is the first notable decline in fentanyl seizures since the drug first appeared.

At the U.S.-Mexico border so far in 2024, as usual, about 86 percent of fentanyl seizures have occurred at ports of entry. Border Patrol seized an additional 6 percent at interior vehicle checkpoints.

The Heritage Foundation, a longtime conservative think-tank now closely associated with former president Donald Trump, has notified Republican senators that it will keep score of any votes against holding an impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Analyses and Feature Stories

A story at Border Report expanded on the finding of a report about migrant deaths in El Paso, published last month by No More Deaths: that CBP routinely undercounts the actual number of migrants who die on U.S. soil.

A Sacramento Bee analysis noted that many Latino immigrants in the United States, some of whom have lived for years undocumented, voice “frustration” with asylum seekers being released at the border and given a temporary documented status by “an immigration system pitting immigrant Latinos against each other.” A January 2024 UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found 63 percent of Latino respondents in California considered undocumented immigrants to be a major or minor “burden.”

The Miami Herald reported on the Tren de Aragua, an organized crime group that emerged in recent years from Venezuela’s prisons. A Venezuelan opposition-aligned intelligence analyst told the Herald that members of the group “have been quietly entering different areas of the U.S., including Florida, Chicago and New York.”

Voice of America profiled Chinese asylum seekers who, after taking long and expensive journeys to the United States via the U.S.-Mexico border, are opting to return to China, either after failing credible fear interviews while in custody, or due to “loneliness, deceit [including labor exploitation], or family pressure.”

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