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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October 1, 2024 — 0

A Day Without a Deadline

After a particularly busy period, a reflection about this website, and the direction of my work in general.

There are moments each year when all my intentions to maintain an up-to-date, compelling, thoughtful personal website just fall apart, sunk by an armada of 70-hour weeks.

I’m emerging (I hope) from one of those moments. In the last seven days, I’ve:

  • Taught a class at the Foreign Service Institute
  • Recorded a quick WOLA video ahead of Kamala Harris’s September 27 visit to the U.S.-Mexico border
  • Prepared testimony and testified in a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing
  • Driven from Washington to eastern Long Island (6 1/2 hours) and spent time with my father-in-law
  • Presented on a virtual panel hosted by the Latin American Studies Association
  • Given a virtual presentation to a group of experts in Colombia
  • Driven to Brooklyn (2 1/2 hours), while covering the Harris border visit, for a weekend of family festivities around my sister’s wedding, which was terrific (especially my speech, lol)
  • Driven back to Washington (4 1/2 hours), while covering the Biden administration’s tightening of asylum access regulations (see today’s “Border Links”)

Today, other than an interview this morning, I’ve got a clear calendar, finally. I’m washing clothes, taking a breath, answering messages (sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you, not that you’re likely to be reading this), planing out the next few weeks, and maybe getting rid of the stubborn cough I’ve had for two weeks (it’s not COVID).

One thing I miss during these “high season” moments is having the chance to share more here. This site is a good space for me to get my thoughts together, sharing information and insights that are deeper than a tweet, but not requiring full editorial review or an institutional voice.

I’d like to share more of that, and to have more time to do the reading on which a lot of it is based. But most of my recent posts to this site have been brief, sporadic links, graphics, or border updates, which are not quite the same. It’s not my goal to run a news-brief service.

I may remain in this rut, though, at least through the U.S. elections: such are the demands of “rapid response,” and I’ll also be spending part of next week at a conference in Guatemala, so there will be a bit of travel.

However, I expect some gradual but steady evolution in the coming weeks as I return to this space and use it more to develop ideas and future work.

That future work will be more on the “security and U.S. policy” side of my advocacy and research, where I’ve allowed a lot of weeds to grow during the past few years as my “borders and migration” focus intensified.

This year, though, WOLA has seen a decline in funding for borders-and-migration work. By no means will I abandon that work, which is very important to me even as it’s hard to promise short-term positive change. Still, as the election-period “rapid response” phase draws to a close, I do expect to turn the dial back toward the “defense oversight” work denoted by my job title.

That means more attention to security policy (what’s up with the “Bukele model?”), U.S. assistance (what’s Southcom up to?), state presence and governance (what’s happening with the Colombian peace accord’s “rural reform” promises? or in the Darién Gap?), organized crime and corruption (Ecuador’s crisis, drug policy challenges), and, yes, borders and migration (all of the above topics as they relate to migrants, plus accountability for abuse and corruption).

I look forward to this site reflecting that shift. It will be happening just as we get a new administration and Congress here in Washington. The election’s two possible outcomes point to two starkly different futures.

Neither promises a golden age for a rights-based U.S. policy toward Latin America. But one outcome promises gradual progress, while the other calls for defending what and whom we can, whenever we can, through a long, dark night.

It’s going to be endlessly interesting, and I’ll aim to document as much of it as I can here, even as these “busy seasons” come and go.

August 20, 2024 — 0

Daily Border Links: August 20, 2024

Democratic Convention language hails asylum ban's initial reduction of migration. Panama starts US-backed deportation flights from the Darién Gap. Migration is falling faster in Arizona than Texas.

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Developments

As the Democratic Party’s convention launched in Chicago, its platform, published Monday, includes language calling for changes in the law curtailing asylum access at the border during busy times, as is currently happening under the Biden administration’s June 4 asylum rule. Under a section entitled “Temporary Emergency Authority to Shut Down the Border,” the platform—a non-binding document—suggests:

When the system is overwhelmed, the President should have emergency authority to expel migrants who are crossing unlawfully and stop processing asylum claims except for those using a safe and orderly process at Ports of Entry. The authority should be accompanied by humanitarian exceptions for vulnerable populations including unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.

In remarks to the Convention on Monday evening, President Biden hailed the drop in migration that took place in the first weeks after the asylum-restriction rule went into effect:

Then I had to take executive action. The result of the executive action I took: border encounters have dropped over 50%. In fact, there are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office. And unlike Trump, we will not demonize immigrants, saying they’re the poison of the blood of America, poison the blood of our country.

A look at the Border Patrol sectors that report weekly data points to this initial drop in migration leveling off by mid-July; Border Patrol apprehensions have been largely flat since then.

Panama today will begin deporting some migrants aboard U.S.-funded deportation flights after they exit the treacherous Darién Gap jungle route from Colombia.

The U.S. government has reportedly allocated $6 million to support those flights. Assuming $500 per deportee, that would be enough to remove 12,000 people, equivalent to 6 percent of the migrant population in the Darién region during the first half of 2024.

At least the initial flights will go from Panama to Colombia, the country from which migrants entered. As Colombians are only about 6 percent of migrants passing through the Darién, most of those aboard the planes will probably be citizens of other countries, mainly Venezuela (65 percent of Darién migrants).

Analyzing Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) recently released data about Border Patrol apprehensions reveals that despite heavy investment in its “Operation Lone Star” crackdown, Texas has not experienced steeper migration declines than Arizona, where the Democratic governor has not pursued similar hard-line measures.

  • Between the record-setting month of December 2023 and July, Border Patrol apprehensions in Texas fell 86 percent. However, they fell 84 percent in Arizona and 77 percent border-wide.
  • Between January and July, Arizona’s Border Patrol apprehensions fell 74 percent, more than Texas’ 53 percent or the border-wide decline of 55 percent.
  • Between May and July, Arizona also leads with a 64 percent drop in Border Patrol apprehensions, well ahead of Texas’s 50 percent drop and a border-wide drop of 52 percent.
  • For the second time in the 2024 calendar year, Texas in July led all states in Border Patrol apprehensions.

These data are derived from CBP’s reporting of “U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations Encounters by State,” subtracting Laredo and El Paso Field Office port-of-entry encounters from Texas, Tucson Field Office port-of-entry encounters from Arizona, and San Diego Field Office port-of-entry encounters from California. (A small number of New Mexico port of entry encounters gets subtracted from Texas, as they fall under the El Paso Field Office; this makes Texas’s decline look slightly steeper than it is.)

A boy from southern Mexico seeking to migrate to the United States was killed, and eight people from Ecuador, Africa, and Mexico were wounded, when assailants opened fire on the vehicle in which they were traveling in Mexico’s border state of Sonora, across from Arizona. The attack may have been related to violent competition between migrant smugglers.

Analyses and Feature Stories

Migrant rights activist Abraham Monarez told Ciudad Juárez’s Norte that the number of migrants in the Mexican border city has plummeted because of the Mexican government’s operations to remove migrants to the southern part of the country, and because people find they can seek CBP One appointments from elsewhere in Mexico. Many who come to Juárez are staying in hotels instead of shelters, Monarez said. “Now, when they get their appointment at CBP, that’s when they move” north from places further south, like Mexico City.

“As Colombians try to settle down in Denver, they often feel overlooked” amid a larger number of asylum seekers from Venezuela who have received more attention from service providers, the Denver Post reported.

On the Right

May 29, 2024 — 0

Read This Site on the Fediverse

Just because it seemed like an interesting thing to do, I’ve linked this site to ActivityPub. Which means you can catch every post by following it from Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma, or any other Fediverse application.

The address is @adamisacson@adamisacson.com.

(And as the graphic indicates, each post has its own unique shortlink using the domain “admis.me.” I figured out how to do that myself. Fancy.)

May 21, 2024 — 0

Sabbatical, Day 2

It was a busy day, not much different from a work day—but I laid some groundwork for my two-month sabbatical, two days in.

I can’t really say that I’m in “sabbatical mode” yet, but I’m laying the groundwork, I suppose?

I’d stayed up a bit too late last night learning how to use Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot for my upcoming coding projects, and then I couldn’t stop myself from writing a data-heavy post about border trends. Knowing that I didn’t have to report to work the next day let me follow the topic wherever it took me, and by the time I looked up from my screen, it was 12:30 AM.

Though I was up later than on a regular work day, this morning otherwise looked like…a regular work day. I wanted to go through my news feeds and create a daily border links post because it’s impossible to look away from Senate Democrats’ deeply regrettable decision to move forward with asylum-restrictions legislation this week.

I also guest-taught a class of U.S. diplomats via Zoom. It was my second time trying out a 45-minute presentation about Latin America’s security challenges. The narrative flows across these topics:

  • The region’s chronic violence
  • Deforestation as an example of how laws are not enforced against the powerful and well-connected
  • What “impunity” means, and how impunity for official corruption tied to organized crime makes organized crime far harder to confront than insurgencies
  • How state absence from vast territories makes the problem even worse
  • Why a “pax mafiosa” is not progress, even if it lowers violence levels for a while
  • The solutions to violence that human rights groups and pro-democracy reformers propose: construction of a democratic security sector
  • A problem: my community’s proposed solutions can’t make people feel safer in six months. But some politicians offer short-term fixes to security
    • The “Bukele model” and why it may not work, and especially not in countries like Ecuador
    • Negotiations with armed and criminal groups, like gang pacts or Colombia’s “total peace”
  • Amid frustrations over short and long term timeframes, leaders (and U.S. policymakers) often content themselves with repeatedly pushing security challenges down to “manageable” levels
  • Where “manageability” falls apart (returning to the beginning) is deforestation and climate harm. There is no “manageable” level of that anymore.

While I’m on this sabbatical, I hope to polish this talk some more, then post a screencast delivering the narrative as audio over my slides.

After that talk, I spoke to a journalist about border trends for half an hour. Then I took my daughter out to the suburbs and sat in a cafe while she got a haircut. While in the cafe, I put out one of my weekly (OK, not quite “weekly”) emails to my mailing list.

I paid a quick visit to the grocery store after that, and upon returning home found on the doorstep some items that I’d ordered when I was in Medellín last week. I’m on a tight budget—non-profit salary, child at a private college—but had thought it would be worthwhile to set up a basic screen shelter and some sort of outdoor furniture in our tiny urban back yard.

More than two hours of assembly later, here it is. I now have an extremely rustic “writing shed” to work in during the coming months.

Yes I know, my back yard is a weedy mess. That’s a result of work deadlines, travel, family obligations on off-days, and a series of rainy weekends. I haven’t been here much when it’s nice out. I’ll clean it up during the sabbatical.

I’m writing in it now, and it’s just barely starting to feel, maybe, like I’m on sabbatical.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be working on some of the projects I’d discussed in my “sabbatical coming” post from last week. In the afternoon, though, I’ll be going to the Nationals baseball game with my mother and her husband, who live out in the suburbs. The weather is supposed to be perfect.

See also:

May 21, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

Screenshot

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

It has highlights from last week’s trip to Medellín, some writing and data work about the border, and some thoughts on my two-month work sabbatical, which started yesterday. There are also weekly events links (16 of them) and links to some good readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

May 20, 2024 — 0

Brave New World

I keep a little webpage that generates tables of data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, using CBP’s regularly updated dataset.

For weeks, I’ve wanted to have the ability to sort the tables by clicking on their column headers. It seemed like a big job, though, especially figuring out how to keep the columns’ totals at the bottom, not included in the sort.

This evening, though, I thought to ask ChatGPT—and it gave me exactly what I wanted, with only a couple of dozen lines of code. Here’s what the tables can do now:

Animated GIF of the table being resorted, in descending and ascending order, when column headers are clicked.

The whole process took less than 20 minutes: two queries and me copy-pasting the code into the page. It works flawlessly, which is very cool, and perhaps a bit creepy.

Try it out here.

May 13, 2024 — 1

Slowing Down

Looking ahead to a two-month sabbatical. Given all the stuff I'd like to do, the title is deceptive.

That’s it until July 22. I won’t be in my office for more than two months, unless I’ve forgotten something.

I won’t be around to see the little orchid in my office bloom, as it’s about to do.

I’m off to Medellín tomorrow morning for an academic conference about migration. I return Saturday. And on Monday, my two-month sabbatical begins.

WOLA gives us a sabbatical every five years: a time to reflect and work on other projects. My last one was in the fall of 2015. Between the pandemic and my procrastination on the “sabbatical proposal,” it’s taken me eight and a half years to start a new one.

I’m lucky to have it. This is a much different period of my life than last time.

  • Last time, I’d been doing this work for 20 years and was solidly mid-career; now, I’m entering my mid-50s and thinking about what may be my final 20 (25? 30?) years of doing this work.
  • Last time, I was raising a 6th grader; now, she has just finished sophomore year of college.
  • Last time, I did not travel. This time, I’m going to be in Medellín now, Bogotá in June, and El Paso for three weeks in June and July. The first two are conferences. The border visit is just me hanging out.

My work plan for 2024 called for focusing on communications. (How could it be otherwise: I work on borders and migration during the 2024 election year. There’s a lot to communicate.) If you follow this site, you’ve seen that reflected in daily and weekly border updates, other written and quantitative work, lots of social media, and perhaps some regular-media appearances.

That work has been going well: I think it’s been the right strategic choice. But this late spring-early summer interlude is very welcome.

Lately, a typical week has included at least a dozen interviews, a few coalition meetings, a few internal meetings, and 20-25 email and text replies per day, on top of the writing and updates. Work that requires deeper thought has been falling behind.

So I’m ready to at least log out of WhatsApp and miss some of those meetings. The border updates will be infrequent, too, though I don’t plan to shut them down entirely. (I’m still reading the news.)

Now that there’s a chance, though, there’s a lot to think about.

  • Instead of “rapid response,” engaging in more “slow response”: taking the time to explain what a better security and border policy would look like. That means exploring both the “I have a magic wand” version and the “most we can do within existing law” versions. Of course, we already try to articulate that in a lot of our work at WOLA, but in my view it’s often rushed (tight word limits) or shoved into “recommendations” sections that hardly anyone reads. We’re not doing enough to paint a picture for people, whether of “selling a dream” or just “pursuing the least bad option.”
  • Preparing—both big-picture strategy and day-to-day survival tactics—for the strong possibility that Americans elect an administration that stands against most of what I care about, and that will seek to use its power against us.
  • Addressing an adverse funding environment for this work lately. I don’t cost much, but we need to keep the lights on. (This ties in with “paint a picture for people” above.)
  • Figuring out how to catch up, or abandon, parts of the work that are chronically behind.
  • Giving a hard look at the whole “border numbers and regular updates” approach that has characterized so much that I’ve posted on this site this year. It’s been regular, it opens the door to key audiences like reporters, legislative staff, and partner organizations. It’s certainly an example of “doing the work.” But is it creative? Is it helping those partners and audiences in the best way? I don’t intend to run a news aggregation service: is there a danger of falling into a rut?
  • Anticipating how this work will change because of climate change. I fear that this may be a historic summer for the planet, and it’s going to affect nearly everyone’s work. What we saw in Porto Alegre last week could just be a preview. And if I’m wrong, just wait until next summer.
  • Taking advantage of being in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez for a while without a fixed agenda. Mexico’s crackdown on migration can’t hold for too much longer, and things are already quite bad there. And the State of Texas is making the situation far worse.

In addition to all these things to think about, I’ve got projects that I’m eager to pursue, but haven’t had the time.

  • During my last sabbatical, I learned a lot of coding (PHP, MySQL, and the now-antiquated jQuery javascript framework) and built a personal research database, parts of which I still use every day. This time, I’ll be fixing some bugs and features there.
  • But I really want to build a new tool. This one will ease some of WOLA’s legislative work by keeping track of congressional offices and how we’ve worked with them. Years ago, I made a really primitive, bug-ridden version of that; I’ll be starting over from scratch and sharing it on GitHub as I go.
  • I also have a report on migration in Colombia that is nearly done: 16,000 words (which is too much), hundreds of footnotes. It needs some updating, and it will probably undergo a lot of internal edits and revisions before it goes public. It’s really good, though, and I look forward to releasing it.
  • I’m writing a chapter for a colleague’s book about drug policy. I’ve got the research in hand, so this won’t take too long.
  • I also want to get our “Border Oversight” database of CBP and Border Patrol human rights challenges back up to date.
  • I want to get my own archives and notes in order, with more of them visible to the public in a new subdomain at this site (something similar—though less ambitious—to those “digital gardens” that a few smart people have been creating). Keeping that together will ease my posting of more content at this site and elsewhere.
  • Here at this site, I hope to post more thoughts more often. My “sabbatical reflecting” will be much richer with a journal to record thoughts and observations. That would also help me to recall this period later, when I’m back in the day-to-day fray. (I didn’t do that during my last sabbatical, and my memories, sadly, are a blur.) This long-winded post is an effort to do that.

I know this is a lot. I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t do all of these things, and I certainly don’t want to finish the sabbatical more tired than I started it. But if I spend this time well, I’ll emerge able to contribute more, and more creatively, for many years.

Finally, all of this means that you should not take it personally if I don’t answer your email right away, or if I end up ghosting your WhatsApp message or missing your DM. This is why I’m in “slow response” mode, and I’ll be back soon enough.

See also:

May 9, 2024 — 0

Upcoming Sabbatical, Projects, and Travels

This site has been quiet this week. It will remain so for a bit longer, then I expect to be posting way more than usual.

In about half an hour, I’m headed downtown to WOLA’s 50th anniversary celebration and human rights award dinner. I’m looking forward to seeing dozens of people I’m very fond of, and whom I haven’t seen in a long time.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Massachusetts to pick my kid up at college (sophomore year, incredibly, is over). On the way back, I’ll be seeing an old high school friend in New Jersey, where I grew up.

Then on Tuesday, I’m off to Medellín for three days, to participate in a conference on migration at Colombia’s National University.

When I return a week from Saturday, things get interesting. I’ve got a two-month sabbatical. (WOLA encourages staff to take sabbaticals every five years; in my case, it’s been eight and a half years.)

I’ll be traveling to Bogotá for a few days in June for the LASA Congress, and to El Paso for three weeks in June and July for a “change of scene.”

Both while traveling and while at home, I want to do some deep thinking and also some work on a “coding project” that I’ll discuss here along the way. Actually, it’s two coding projects, but I’ll see how much I manage to accomplish. Like a carpenter who makes his own hammers, I’m fashioning tools that will help me do my work better when I come back.

During those two months, once I catch up on all the accumulated sleep deprivation, I expect to have a lot more unstructured time than usual. That means I’ll be harder to reach, because a sabbatical full of meetings and emails isn’t a sabbatical at all.

I’ll be posting to this site often, though. One idea I’ve had, which I’m not ready to commit to, is to post an original entry every evening, so that I can have a record of this mid-career time “out of the fray.” Those records and ruminations may be of more value to me than to readers, but I guess that’s the whole point of running a personal website.

So be warned, for a couple of months this site may depart dramatically from the “daily border links” and “infographics” groove that it has slipped into lately. I look forward to spending more time here.

April 23, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

There’s a Weekly Border Update, an analysis of why migration is unexpectedly declining at the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year, a look at the link between cocaine trafficking and violence in Ecuador, and a podcast about international drug policy. Also, links to some really good readings, and to 11 Latin America-related events that I know of in Washington or online this week.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

April 1, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

There’s a Weekly Border Update with a bit too much data, a roundup of arms transfers that took place in the Americas over the past month (way too many), links to five really good “long reads” about security in the Americas over the past month, and some notes about asylum access at the U.S.-Mexico border. Also, links to some really good readings, and to six Latin America-related events that I know of in Washington or online this week.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

March 26, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

There’s a Weekly Border Update after an eventful week; a few charts showing what appears to be an unusual spring migration slowdown at the U.S.-Mexico border (but not on the migrant route further south); some links from the past month about civil-military relations; and some other interesting odds and ends. Also, links to some really good readings, and to six Latin America-related events that I know of in Washington or online this week

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

March 23, 2024 — 0

CBP Data Through February Added to “cbpdata.adamisacson.com”

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration and drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border through February. Within minutes, I added the migration data to my online tool that helps you search it

At the end of the day Friday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data about migration and drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border through February. Within minutes, I added the migration data to my online tool that helps you search it, cbpdata.adamisacson.com. I’m glad this is so easy to do now.

Here’s what you get when you search for border authorities’ encounters with migrants during the first five months of the U.S. government’s 2024 fiscal year, listed by nationality. (This is everything: both migrants apprehended by Border Patrol between the ports of entry, and migrants—mostly “CBP One” appointments—who arrived at the ports of entry.) You can see an increase over January, but still well below late last year.

Visit the “cpbdata” tool to view migration data by country, by demographic category, by geographic area, and to see years going back to 2020. I’ll be updating our collection of infographics over the next several days.

See also:

March 12, 2024 — 0

A bit of construction

Admin message: This site may look goofy or outdated for a couple of days as I move to a new server.

This site may look goofy or outdated for a couple of days as I move to a new server. Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, I’ll keep posting daily border updates at our Border Oversight site.

March 4, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This one has a Weekly Border Update; a "Border and Migration 101" screencast; a long written piece about what will happen if the Biden administration starts blocking asylum seekers; some links from the past month about organized crime-tied corruption; links to some good readings, and to 11 Latin America-related events this week.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

There’s a Weekly Border Update; a screencast video where I give a lengthy “Border and Migration 101” presentation; a long written piece about why it will harm people—but make little overall difference at the border—if the Biden administration starts blocking asylum seekers; some links from the past month about organized crime-tied corruption; and an argument for the urgently opening up more asylum appointments at border ports of entry. Also, links to some really good readings, and to 11 Latin America-related events that I know of in Washington or online this week.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

February 25, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This one has a Weekly Border Update; a new mini-report plus a podcast about security in Ecuador; and a breakdown with links explaining the past month in Colombia's peace process. Also, links to some good readings, and to an incredible 46 Latin America-related events.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one has a Weekly Border Update; a new mini-report plus a podcast about security in Ecuador; and a breakdown with links explaining the past month in Colombia’s peace process. Also, links to some good readings, and to an incredible 46 Latin America-related events that I know of in Washington or online this week (counting Inter-American Human Rights Commission hearings). It’s going to be a busy week.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

February 19, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This one has a weekly Border Update, links to recent coverage of arms transfers in the region, new data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and an old video of a Venezuelan colleague about whom I'm extremely worried right now. Also, links to events this week and readings from last week.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one has a weekly Border Update, links to recent coverage of arms transfers in the region, new data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and an old video of a Venezuelan colleague about whom I’m extremely worried right now. Also, links to events this week and readings from last week.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

February 12, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This one has a weekly Border Update, new data from the Darién Gap, a podcast about Guatemala's tenuous but hopeful political moment, an interview about the border, and some links from the past month about civil-military relations in the Americas. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one has a weekly Border Update, new data from the Darién Gap, a podcast about Guatemala’s tenuous but hopeful political moment, an interview about the border, and some links from the past month about civil-military relations in the Americas. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

February 6, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

a weekly Border Update, two explainers about the Senate border deal (which may be dead anyway), some recommended Latin America security long-reads, two posts with charts illustrating migration trends and the futility of deterrence policies, a radio interview about Texas, and a TV interview about El Salvador. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one has a weekly Border Update, two explainers about the Senate border deal (which may be dead anyway), some recommended Latin America security long-reads, two posts with charts illustrating migration trends and the futility of deterrence policies, a radio interview about Texas, and a TV interview about El Salvador. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

January 29, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This week's edition is as jam-packed as you'd expect from someone working on border and migration policy at this moment. There's a weekly Border Update, a podcast, nine charts explaining December migration data, links about organized crime-tied corruption in the Americas, and a Spanish podcast about the U.S. elections. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This week’s edition is as jam-packed as you’d expect from someone working on border and migration policy at this moment. There’s a weekly Border Update, a podcast, nine charts explaining December migration data, links about organized crime-tied corruption in the Americas, and a Spanish podcast about the U.S. elections. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

January 22, 2024 — 0

Email Update is Out

This week's edition has a fair amount of content, including a weekly Border Update, a panel discussion, and a look at Colombia's peace process over the past month.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This week’s edition has a fair amount of content, including a weekly Border Update, a panel discussion, and a look at Colombia’s peace process over the past month. And of course, upcoming events and some recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

January 20, 2024 — 0

Long Live Blogging

On September 10, I decided to make my Twitter account "dormant," posting instead to my own site, along with other spaces. Traffic to my site has multiplied roughly eightfold in four months.

I was a heavy Twitter user, posting a few times per day, with a healthy following. But by last year, months into the Musk reign, I’d had enough. On September 10, I decided to make my Twitter account “dormant,” using it only to post links to resources published elsewhere, like on this site.

The result, measured in visits to this site, has been staggering:

From just over 1,000 visits per month to nearly 10,000, in about 4 months.

I’m regretting not having moved earlier to cut back my social media use, and intensify blogging which, though 25 years old, remains a very vital tool for communicating.

January 16, 2024 — 0

Get Daily Border Links in your Email

I've created a Google Group mailing list, so you can get our Daily Border Links updates in your inbox as soon as I publish them. Just click the link and add your e-mail address if you're interested.

I’ve established a pretty good morning workflow to produce these “daily border links” updates, a key part our 2024 rapid-response approach to migration and border security issues. So in order to make them even more accessible, I’ve created a Google Group mailing list, so you can get them in your inbox as soon as I publish them.

Just click the link and add your e-mail address if you’re interested.

January 14, 2024 — 0

Email Update Is Out

Link to the latest edition of my regular email update, which draws heavily from this site.

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one has a bit less new material since I’m just back from break. But this one has some updates from early January, links about civil-military relations in the region, and links to upcoming events.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

January 3, 2024 — 0

Offline for Seven Days

This site is going into suspended animation for about a week, as I take a break with the family from January 4 through 10. I’ll be back, and posting again, on Thursday the 11th.

This site is going into suspended animation for about a week, as I take a break with the family from January 4 through 10. I’ll be back, and posting again, on Thursday the 11th.

I don’t expect to post anything here while I’m off, unless inspiration strikes and Internet access is reliable. See you in a week.

December 23, 2023 — 0

Email Update Is Out

The last email of the year has the weekly Border Update, more new migration numbers, a panoramic WOLA podcast episode, some written congressional testimony about Colombia, and the usual links

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

I’d said in the previous email that it was the last email of the year. But it turns out that there are were few additional items to share from this past week. So this is the last email of the year. It has the weekly Border Update, more new migration numbers, a panoramic WOLA podcast episode, some written congressional testimony about Colombia, and the usual links.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

December 19, 2023 — 0

Email Update Is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This is almost certainly my last e-mail of the year, and it’s packed with links to stuff we’ve made, all of which has already been linked from this page. It’s got a great video from Colombia, this week’s Border Update, another congressional testimony, some charts, links to stuff to read, and more. There are no links to Latin America-related events, because I couldn’t find any announcements for events during the week before Christmas.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

December 11, 2023 — 0

Email Update Is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one is a bit shorter because I’ve been drafting a report on my late October-early November trip to Colombia. But there’s still the weekly border update (and a daily one), links to a few recommended articles, and links to upcoming events, among other stuff.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

December 5, 2023 — 0

E-mail Update Is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

This one is a day or so late because last week’s House hearing pushed all of my work into the future and I’m still catching up. It has a link to the Border Update, links to my hearing testimonies, some new infographics about migration and the security forces in Mexico, and links to recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

November 21, 2023 — 0

E-mail Update Is Out

Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.

I missed my usual weekend send date for this one because I was up to my eyeballs in border infographics, and I won’t send one this coming weekend because it’s the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. So this is the last e-mail until the beginning of December. It has a link to the Border Update, our memo about what’s happening in Congress, infographics about migration, and links to recommended readings.

If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.

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