11:00-12:00 at the Heritage Foundation and online: Catch, Release, and Then What? (RSVP required).
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
12:30-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Argentina Elige: A Conversation with Luciano Laspina, Argentine Congressman and Senior Economic Adviser to Presidential Candidate Patricia Bullrich (RSVP required).
6:00-7:00 at thedialogue.org: Elections Series – The Role of the Judiciary in Electoral Contexts: A View from Latin America (RSVP required).
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
12:00-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Presentación del reporte del “Foro nacional sobre feminicidio: Visiones y soluciones” y del reporte sobre “Los avances legislativos y propuestas que se encuentran pendientes de aprobar en materia de feminicidio en México” (RSVP required).
2:00-3:00 at wola.org: Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights (RSVP required).
Friday, August 4, 2023
10:00-10:45 at csis.org: Looking South: A Conversation with GEN Laura Richardson on Security Challenges in Latin America (RSVP required).
1:15-2:30 at the Inter-American Dialogue and online: A Conversation on Central America (RSVP required).
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Kino Border Initiative (KBI) cordially invite you to the following webinar:
Abuses at the U.S.- Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights
A U.S.-Mexico border that is well governed can go hand in hand with a border where migrants and asylum seekers receive humane treatment. For this to happen, U.S. government personnel who abuse human rights or violate professional standards must be held to account and victims must receive justice.
Right now, at the U.S.-Mexico border, this rarely happens. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal government’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, has a persistent problem of human rights abuse without accountability.
Many, if not most, CBP officers, and agents in CBP’s Border Patrol agency, are professionals who seek to follow best practices. However, the frequency and severity of abuse allegations suggests that agents who do, have little reason to be concerned about consequences from an accountability system that yields few results.
Join us to discuss the launch of our new report, Abuses at the U.S.-Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights. While documenting the problem at the border and showing “failure points” to accountability, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) offer more than 40 recommendations for more effective complaints, investigations, discipline, oversight, and cultural change.
The report is a product of years of work documenting human rights violations committed by U.S. federal law enforcement forces at the U.S.-Mexico border. WOLA, based in Washington D.C, maintains a database of over 400 cases—many of them severe—compiled since 2020. KBI has documented thousands of cases of abuse narrated by migrants who have sheltered at its facilities in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. KBI has generated hundreds of formal complaints since 2015 in an effort to improve accountability.
Of complaints since 2020, 95 percent resulted in no accountability outcome at all. Changing an abusive culture, and increasing the probability of accountability, can take many years and will face political headwinds. But as the many, often shocking, abuses documented by both organizations make strikingly clear, there is no other choice: this is a matter of democratic rule of law, both at the border and beyond it. The United States must bring its border law enforcement agencies’ day-to-day behavior back into alignment with its professed values, especially at a time of historic migration.
With:
Adam Isacson
Director for Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA
11:00-11:30 at the Atlantic Council and online: Guatemala’s choice: A conversation with presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo (RSVP required).
12:30-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Argentina Elige: A Conversation with Diana Mondino, Senior Economic Adviser to Presidential Candidate Javier Milei (RSVP required).
2:00 at 310 Cannon House Office Building and online: Hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittees on Border Security and Enforcement and Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence on The Real Cost of an Open Border: How Americans are Paying the Price.
Thursday, July 27
10:00 at 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building and online: Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues on Haiti: Next Steps on the International Response.
10:00 at 2237 Rayburn House Office Building and online: Hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance on Oversight of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
3:30-4:30 at the Heritage Foundation and online: Securing the Border and the Homeland: A Conversation with Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (RSVP required).
11:00-12:30 at the Wilson Center: Voices Behind the News: Promoting Freedom of Expression & Strengthening Independent Media in Central America (RSVP required).
12:30-2:00 at OSF and online: Peru: Democratic Crisis, Human Rights and Impunity (RSVP required).
Wednesday, June 21
9:00-2:30 at the Wilson Center: Building a Competitive US-Mexico Border Conference (RSVP required).
12:00-12:30 at the Atlantic Council and online: A conversation with Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, director of the Pan American Health Org (RSVP required).
12:00-1:30 at IPS and online: Cuba Listed As A State Sponsor of Terrorism: Reasons & Repercussion (RSVP required).
12:30-2:00 at OSF and online: Inter-American Principles on Non-Profit Organizations: Regional Response to a Closing Civic Space (RSVP required).
3:00-4:00 at CSIS and online: The Future of U.S. Counter-Narcotics Strategy: A Conversation with Dr. Rahul Gupta (RSVP required).
Thursday, June 22
3:00-4:30 at CSIS and online: Building the North American Semiconductor Corridor (RSVP required).
5:30-6:30 in Washington and online: Democratic Decline and Authoritarian Drift in Guatemala: Presentation and Comments on the Inclusion of Guatemala in Chapter 4.B of the IACHR Annual Report 2022 (RSVP required).
5:30-7:00 at 1301 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 600 and online: The Current Situation in Colombia: A Conversation with Marco Romero (RSVP required).
Friday, June 23
9:30-11:00 at 1301 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 600 and online: ‘Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading’: Cristosal Reports on One Year Under El Salvador’s State of Exception (RSVP required).
12:00-2:00 at thedialogue.org: Migrant and Refugee Children in the Americas (RSVP required).
1:30-3:30 at USIP: Commemorating Jimmy Carter’s Legacy in the Americas (RSVP required).
12:00-1:00 at Center for American Progress YouTube: Guns Without Borders: Addressing the flow of U.S. firearms to Mexico and Central America (RSVP required).
4:00-8:00 at Race and Equality Facebook Live: Nicaragua: 5 años de crímenes de lesa humanidad (RSVP required).
10:00-11:30 at Georgetown University Zoom: “Alone and Exploited”? The Impacts of U.S. Immigration Enforcement on Child Migration and Labor (RSVP required).
10:30-12:00 at thedialogue.org: Information About Child Migration (RSVP required).
11:00-12:00 at wilsoncenter.org: Electoral Reform in Mexico: A Threat to Democracy (RSVP required).
2:30-4:00 at the Wilson Center and wilsoncenter.org: Nicaragua’s Political Crisis and Its Impact on the United States (RSVP required).
5:00-7:00 at IPS Zoom: Free the Water Defenders (RSVP required).
1:00-2:00 at the Wilson Center: Corruption, Accountability and Democracy in Brazil: Challenges and Solutions (RSVP required).
Thursday, April 6, 2023
11:00-12:30 at George Washington University: Resurgence Of Militarism: Views From The Global South And Implications For The United States (RSVP required).
1:30-5:00 at Race and Equality Zoom: Mecanismo sobre Raza en el Sistema Universal de Derechos Humanos: Estrategias y Próximos Pasos en Brasil (RSVP required).
2:00 at 2359 Rayburn House Office Building and online: Hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on Fiscal Year 2024 Request for the Department of State.
10:00 at Global Americans Zoom: Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean – Unpacking Emerging Trends and the 2022 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index (RSVP required).
10:00-11:00 at the Atlantic Council and atlanticcouncil.org: Open for business? Investing in northern Central America (RSVP required).
Thursday, May 9, 2023
8:30-5:00 at Johns Hopkins SAIS and online: 5th Annual Forum on Security Challenges in Latin America (RSVP required).
9:30-11:00 at stimson.org: The Biden Administration’s New US Conventional Arms Transfer Policy (RSVP required).
11:00 at migrationpolicy.org: Migration in the Caribbean: Challenges and Opportunities for a Changing Region (RSVP required).
Friday, March 10, 2023
2:00-3:30 at American University: Book Talk: The Foreign Policy of The Latin American States – Approaches, Methodologies and Cases (RSVP required).
12:00-1:20 at drclas.harvard.edu: Intentional Polarization: Why do populist presidents in Latin America often turn to extremist public policies? (RSVP required).
2:00-3:30 at thedialogue.org: Social Protection And Disability (RSVP required).
10:00-11:00 at the Wilson Center and wilsoncenter.org: Putting Peru Back Together (RSVP required).
2:00-4:10 at stimson.org: Forum on the Arms Trade Annual Conference (RSVP required).
3:00-4:30 at INCAE Zoom: Experiencias exitosas en gobierno digital y auditoría social (RSVP required).
6:00-7:30 at csis.org: Turning up the Heat on Geothermal Energy in Latin America (RSVP required).
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
9:00-10:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Greening BRI Governance in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Beyond (RSVP required).
9:30-11:30 at csis.org: Promise and Peril: Migration Management Technologies in West Africa and Central America (RSVP required).
11:00-12:30 at FIU Washington DC and Zoom: A Look Inside Venezuela with Julio Borges and Paola de Alemán (RSVP required).
12:30-2:00 at wola.org: Reckoning with Indigenous and Afro Descendant Truth: the Ethnic Chapter of Colombia’s Truth Commission Report Webinar (RSVP required).
6:00-7:30 at George Washington University: Assessing the U.S. – Mexico Security Cooperation (RSVP required).
Thursday, February 23, 2023
12:00 at globalinitiative.net: Gobernanza punitiva y derechos humanos en Centroamérica (RSVP required).
4:00-5:00 at Georgetown University: Peaceful Borders and Illicit Transnational Flows: The Case of the Americas (RSVP required).
5:00-7:00 at George Washington University: A Conversation with Ambassador Juan Jose Gomez Camacho (RSVP required).
Saturday, February 25, 2023
5:00-7:00 at Busboys and Poets 14th Street: Indigenous Cinematic Resistance in the Amazon (RSVP required).
10:00-11:00 at Georgetown University Zoom: A Conversation with Robert W. Thomas, Chargé d’Affaires of the United States Embassy in Santo Domingo (RSVP required).
3:00-4:00 at the Wilson Center: Reflections on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Visit to Washington (RSVP required).
11:00-12:30 at George Washington University Zoom: Multidimensional Quality of Employment in Latin America (RSVP required).
12:30-6:00 at George Washington University: Peru in Flames: Discussing Ways Forward with Former President of Peru Francisco Sagasti (RSVP required).
3:00-5:00 at American University: A Conversation with the Author of Unintended Consequences of Peace: Peaceful Borders and Illicit Transnational Flows** (RSVP required).