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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Podcast: Cartels on the terrorist list? Military intervention in Mexico?

I just sat and recorded an episode of the solo podcast that I created when I started this website six years ago. Apparently, this is the first episode I’ve recorded since July 2017.

There’s no good reason for that: it doesn’t take very long to do. (Perhaps it should—this recording is very unpolished.) But this is a good way to get thoughts together without having to crank out something essay-length.

This episode is a response to recent calls to add Mexican organized crime groups to the U.S. terrorist list, and to start carrying out U.S. military operations against these groups on Mexican soil.

As I say in the recording, both are dumb ideas that won’t make much difference and could be counter-productive. Confronting organized crime with the tools of counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency won’t eradicate organized crime. It may ensnare a lot of American drug dealers and bankers as “material supporters of terrorism,” and it may cause criminal groups to fragment and change names. But the territories were organized crime currently operates will remain territories where organized crime still operates.

Neither proposal gets at the problem of impunity for state collusion with organized crime. Unlike “terrorist” groups or insurgencies, Latin America’s organized crime groups thrive because of their corrupt links to people inside government, and inside security forces. As long as these links persist, “get-tough” efforts like the terrorist list or military strikes will have only marginal impact.

You can download the podcast episode here. The podcast’s page is here and the whole feed is here.

Matamoros: not too dangerous to deport and expel, apparently

The city of Matamoros, where the 4 US citizens are kidnapped, is a dangerous place.

Matamoros is also the site of 184 US deportations of Mexican citizens every week.

And that doesn’t count Title 42 expulsions of Mexicans and non-Mexicans, I don’t have the exact number of expulsions to Matamoros but it’s probably at least 184 per week.

(Source for this table)

Migration data from Mexico

Here’s more than 16 years of Mexico’s monthly apprehensions of migrants.

January 2007-January 2023

	07-Jan						07-Jul						08-Jan						08-Jul						09-Jan						09-Jul						10-Jan						10-Jul						11-Jan						11-Jul						12-Jan						12-Jul						13-Jan						13-Jul						14-Jan						14-Jul						15-Jan						15-Jul						16-Jan						16-Jul						17-Jan						17-Jul						18-Jan						18-Jul						19-Jan						19-Jul						20-Jan						20-Jul						21-Jan						21-Jul						22-Jan						22-Jul						23-Jan
Apprehensions	11215	11910	12473	11796	12004	11095	10846	12520	9047	7292	6431	3826	8970	10787	9305	11031	9747	8394	7585	6705	6521	6894	5506	3278	5943	6246	6884	6742	5701	6872	5718	5789	6039	5450	4388	3261	4759	5796	7336	6695	7075	6378	6760	6755	5098	4714	5077	3659	4430	5087	6695	6471	7852	5717	5215	5299	5586	5453	5267	3511	6343	7442	9291	8732	8874	8082	6860	6496	8746	7879	6364	3397	6699	7407	8290	7951	7718	7370	7471	7443	6657	7549	7300	4443	6295	8317	10502	8621	10132	12515	11005	11618	11111	13700	13671	9662	18299	14885	16569	17085	19402	17152	17195	17088	15450	18232	14755	12029	11218	11420	14253	16700	16454	14850	13604	16502	19811	20494	17579	13331	10553	7275	5905	5243	7071	7471	7863	9171	7757	9678	9227	6632	9248	11549	11779	11486	10350	9577	8965	13560	13903	18895	12663	6637	8521	10194	13508	21197	23241	31396	19822	16066	13517	12256	9727	7305	14119	8377	8421	2628	2251	2304	4737	7445	8831	12253	9557	6337	9564	12893	18548	22968	20091	19249	25830	43031	46370	41580	29264	18291	23382	24304	30753	31206	33290	30423	33902	42719	43792	52201	49485	48982	36147

Data table is here.

Zooming in on Mexico’s apprehensions of migrants, by nationality, since January 2022:

Chart: Mexico’s Migrant Apprehensions (Since 2022)

January 2023: Ecuador 16%, Venezuela 15%, Guatemala 11.1%, Honduras 10.6%, All Others <8%
Since January 2022: Venezuela 21%, Honduras 16%, Guatemala 15%, Cuba 9.2%, Nicaragua 8.9%, All Others <7%

	22-Jan	22-Feb	22-Mar	22-Apr	22-May	22-Jun	22-Jul	22-Aug	22-Sep	22-Oct	22-Nov	22-Dec	23-Jan
Venezuela	2733	1120	1209	1960	1640	3919	6431	16885	15381	21781	12298	11721	5314
Honduras	5841	5929	6390	6457	7544	6507	7461	5741	5309	5475	5895	4379	3847
Guatemala	6304	5191	6075	6920	7222	7010	6578	4927	4932	4632	5380	4344	4017
Cuba	2214	3384	6333	6103	3191	2481	2550	2159	3244	3247	3318	3251	2815
Nicaragua	2234	1843	2701	2854	3474	1561	2182	2327	4062	5711	7329	4547	2151
Colombia	503	2986	3375	1746	3031	2840	2169	2479	2704	2179	2225	2041	912
El Salvador	1565	1721	2338	2579	3307	1990	2936	2544	2471	2144	2379	1271	1212
Ecuador	246	202	276	513	780	668	719	1185	1528	3266	4459	8314	5808
Other countries	1742	1928	2056	2074	3101	3447	2876	4472	4161	3766	6202	9114	10071

Vice: Congress Suddenly Wants to Know If US Taxpayers Were Helping El Chapo

From a very good piece at VICE by Keegan Hamilton, who closely followed the New York trial of former Mexico public security chief Genaro García Luna:

For watchdogs like Adam Isaacson [sic.], director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, it’s no surprise that the U.S. government turned a blind eye toward García Luna while he was in power.

“It seems pretty clear that the DEA and other parts of the United States government knew that Garcia Luna was not somebody that they could fully trust, and that, in fact, he may have been colluding with armed groups or with organized crime,” Isaacson told VICE News. “But they still found him useful because he was going after other organized crime groups at the same time.”

Isaacson pointed to examples beyond Mexico, such as Honduras and Brazil, where the U.S. has provided funding and training to state security forces linked to corruption and human rights abuses, and said it’s no longer shocking—it’s simply business as usual in the war on drugs.

“Their mission is not to make corruption go away,” Isaacson said. “Their mission is to break a drug organization and get as many tons of drugs seized as possible so it doesn’t make it to the United States. And if that means making common cause with bad guys to go after other bad guys, they’re going to do it without regard to the institutional or accountability damage that that might do in the countries that they’re working.”

Sunday morning in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

Army personnel are police in everything but name in today’s Mexico. Policing is just not a mission that they’re properly trained to carry out. An episode on Sunday morning (February 26), in the organized crime-dominated border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, seems especially serious.

From the Mexican online media outlet Elefante Blanco:

According to the Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee, in the early morning hours of Sunday, February 26, a military convoy shot at a white Chevrolet pickup truck on Huasteca Street between Jiménez and Méndez.

The people inside the vehicle tried to protect themselves, but only one survived. Upon hearing the gunshots, the neighbors went out between 4:30 and 5:00 AM to see the scene as the sun came up. At 10 AM, the Sedena [Defense Department, or Army] intervened at the scene of the killing, moving the truck.

…What really inflamed the residents was when the soldiers attempted to tow the white Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, at that point the main evidence in the case, to take it away.

There the confrontation escalated. Residents blocked the way by standing in front of the tow truck, threw stones, and released the truck. One soldier fell and was beaten by several civilians, another was run over by a military vehicle.

Dozens of residents and reporters recorded what was happening on Huasteca Street. The soldiers took cover in the chaos and snatched cell phones, which provoked the population even more. The president of the Committee, Raymundo Ramos, was pushed, his cell phone fell and a pickup truck rammed him.

Seizing, and apparently smashing, a witness’s mobile phone. Credit: Luis Valtierra

Asylum requests in Mexico through January

Mexico’s refugee agency (COMAR) received nearly 13,000 requests for asylum in January, a pace that, if sustained for the entire year, would bring a record 154,000 asylum applications in Mexico’s system in 2023.

The number-one nationality of asylum applicants in January was Haiti, the nation that was also number one in 2021. Honduras was COMAR’s number-one asylum-seeking nationality in 2022 and prior years.

Here’s the table with this chart’s underlying data. Note that Afghanistan, for the first time, made the “top ten” in January with 430 asylum requests. Afghanistan was the number-nine nationality of migrants passing through Panama’s Darién Gap region in January (291 migrants reported by Panamanian authorities).

Asylum requests are increasing again in Mexico’s system

13,217 migrants applied for asylum in Mexico’s system in November 2022, the most in a month since November 2021, according to the Mexican government’s Refugee Aid Commission (COMAR). November’s asylum requests increased 15 percent over October, and 47 percent over September.

From October to November, COMAR received the largest increase in applications from citizens of Venezuela—27 percent—though the number of Venezuelan applicants was in second place behind that of citizens of Honduras. Venezuela’s applications almost certainly increased because, after the U.S. and Mexican governments began applying Title 42 and expelling Venezuelans into Mexico on October 12, Venezuelan citizens could no longer seek protection in the United States.

All nationalities measured increases in asylum applications from October to November:

  • Venezuela: +27%
  • Haiti: +17%
  • Dominican Republic: +14%
  • Colombia: +12%
  • Honduras: +12%
  • El Salvador: +12%
  • Others: +12%
  • Brazil: +12%
  • Guatemala: +12%
  • Cuba: +11%
  • Nicaragua: +5%

Despite what you hear from some U.S. politicians and media outlets, the Americas’ ongoing migration event is not just a US-Mexico border phenomenon. People are fleeing everywhere. Colombia and others are assimilating millions of Venezuelans. Costa Rica is doing the same with Nicaraguans. And here’s Mexico.

Mexico’s use of the military for migration missions

In the past month or two, Mexico again increased the number of soldiers, marines, and national guardsmen assigned to border and migration duties. The most recent count, as of November 21, was 31,777 individual military personnel.

The numbers come from “security reports” periodically presented at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s morning press conferences, and uploaded to the Mexican Presidency’s website:

Coca in Mexico

During the López Obrador government (since December 2018), Mexican forces have eradicated 33.6 hectares of coca, according to the country’s presidency.

(Colombia, the most energetic eradicator, reported destroying 103,000 hectares in 2021 and nearly 60,000 in 2022 through October.)

Mexico, in October, set a new record for most migrants apprehended in a month

The Mexican Interior Department just updated its migration statistics for October 2022. It took them longer than usual, and the reason could be that October 2022 shattered Mexico’s record for migrants apprehended in a month.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) took 52,262 people into custody over those 31 days. INM’s average since 2013 is 14,895 migrant apprehensions per month.

42 percent of migrants apprehended in Mexico last month were citizens of Venezuela. Of 2022’s top eight countries, plus “all others,” the rates of increase from January to October were:

  • Ecuador 1478%
  • Venezuela 808%
  • Colombia 335%
  • Nicaragua 156%
  • Other countries 119%
  • Cuba 47%
  • El Salvador 37%
  • Honduras -6%
  • Guatemala -26%

Migration in Mexico appears to be record-breaking

The Mexican government’s record for most migrants apprehended in a month, set in September 2021, is 46,370. That’s 1,546 migrants per day.

According to a November 21 release from Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), Mexican authorities apprehended 16,096 migrants between November 17 and 20. That’s 4,024 migrants per day, from 46 countries.

Mexico hasn’t reported October 2022 migration data yet, but in September, the INM apprehended 41,915 migrants: 1,397 per day.


Mexico’s migrant apprehensions through September.

As nearly all of this migration is U.S.-bound, it’s reasonable to expect a further increase in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border for the month of November.

Mexico’s suspicious aircraft detections point to Venezuela

This is from the Mexican Presidency’s latest security report (October 20, page 61). It looks like Zulia, Venezuela has been the main jumping-off point for aircraft suspected of smuggling drugs toward Mexico.

Venezuela meanwhile claims to have destroyed 37 suspect aircraft so far this year:

Busy month for Mexico’s asylum system

Of 2022’s first 10 months, October was second only to March in the number of migrants who applied for asylum in Mexico. The Mexican government’s Refugee Aid Commission (COMAR) received 11,391 requests for protection during October.

The most came from Honduras, Mexico’s number-one asylum-seeking country of citizenship so far in 2022 (3,077 in October), followed by Haiti (third overall in 2022, 1,865 asylum seekers in October), Cuba (second in 2022, 1,674 in October), and Venezuela (fourth in 2022, 1,549 in October). The largest percentage increases in asylum seekers’ countries of citizenship from September to October were those from Venezuela (18%), Guatemala (16.3%), Haiti (16.0%), and Colombia (15%).

It is perhaps unsurprising that Venezuela saw the largest monthly percentage growth in asylum seekers. U.S. border authorities expelled about 6,000 Venezuelan migrants back into Mexico, without affording them a chance to ask for U.S. asylum, under the Title 42 expansion arrangement that the U.S. and Mexico announced on October 12. That means an increased population of Venezuelan citizens stranded in Mexico, and thus more asylum applicants.

COMAR reports approving 93 percent of Venezuelan citizens’ asylum applications this year. That exceeds the approval rate of all other reported nationalities, including Honduras (90%), El Salvador (89%), Cuba (50%), and Haiti (20%).

Graphics on organized crime in Mexico

El Heraldo de Chihuahua published this map of organized crime dominance and territorial conflict along the U.S.-Mexico border in the state of Chihuahua, which extends from New Mexico to Texas’s Big Bend National Park. It names five criminal groups affiliated with two larger “cartels” (Sinaloa and the regional/local Juárez Cartel). The article’s text mentions seven local criminal groups. It does not mention the large and growing Jalisco Cartel.

Tijuana’s Revista Zeta, which has a long record of courageous reporting on organized crime in Mexico, published this table of “Cartels Recognized by the Attorney-General’s Office (FGR),” attempting to show which local criminal groups (“criminal cells”) are affiliated with which larger national cartels. Like the El Heraldo map, this table shows the Sinaloa (Pacífico) and Juárez (Carrillo Fuentes) cartels active in Chihuahua, naming four local criminal groups.

The table shows the remarkable fragmentation of criminal groups that has resulted from years of “mano dura” and “high-value targeting” strategies, which have weakened or divided cartel leaderships but done little to prevent vast territories from being fertile ground for organized crime.

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