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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Notes on our April 30 Enforced Disappearance Event

Here are notes and embedded video from our very well-attended 4/30 virtual panel, Lessons from Latin America as the United States Confronts Enforced Disappearance, hosted with the National Security Archive, with 3 longtime leaders in the fight against enforced disappearance in Latin America.

The below text is cross-posted from WOLA’s website.

Highlights and Conclusions from the April 30, 2025 WOLA–National Security Archive Webinar

This is enforced disappearance

Over the past two months, U.S. immigration and law‑enforcement agencies have been detaining migrants and asylum seekers without promptly disclosing their whereabouts, permitting contact with counsel, or even keeping them on U.S. soil where they are clearly within the reach of the rule of U.S. law. Veteran rights advocates warn that these detentions mirror a practice that Latin American societies know all too well: enforced disappearance.

That was the subject of a nearly two-hour discussion, hosted by the Washington Office on Latin America and the National Security Archive, featuring three renowned Latin American rights advocates who have devoted much of their careers fighting to end enforced disappearances and hold perpetrators accountable. The panel distilled four decades of hard‑won lessons—from Argentina’s military rule, Central America’s conflicts, and Mexico’s present‐day crisis—into guidance for a United States that has begun sliding onto the same dangerous slope.

Presentations

1. Carolina Jiménez Sandoval – President, WOLA

“Enforced disappearance is painful. It is a tragedy for families, but also for societies. And it’s not just a human rights violation… When a government takes citizens or others in their territory outside the protection of the law, this is a warning for democracy.”

In introductory remarks, Jiménez framed enforced disappearance as both a human‑rights atrocity and a democratic red flag. She invoked three mothers—Chilean, Mexican, Venezuelan—who are still looking for disappeared loved ones decades, years, or mere weeks later, to show that the pain transcends time and geography.

  • Definition matters. International law codifies disappearance as state custody, or deliberate state inaction, plus denial of the crime. There is no ambiguity.
  • Human impact is paramount. Technical debates must not obscure families’ anguish and the societal damage each disappearance inflicts.
  • U.S. exceptionalism is over. A webinar once unthinkable is now necessary because U.S. agencies are adopting tactics once associated with Latin American dictatorships.

2. Kate Doyle – Senior Analyst, National Security Archive

“We can’t help but connect what is happening in our country right now, today, to a long history in the Americas of the use by states of enforced disappearance to punish people considered dissidents.”

As moderator, Doyle noted chilling similarities between the Trump administration’s recent actions and the darker parts of Latin America’s recent history. She recalled, however, that Latin America “also has a proud and powerful tradition of fighting back” and inventing “strategies to protest the disappearances, demand information, hold hearings, fight in courts, create new laws, search for the missing, expose injustice, and tell the rest of the world what was happening.”

The three invited panelists, Doyle recalled, are emblematic of that experience. “We need to hear from them. We need to learn from their histories. We need to pull lessons from what they have to tell us about how to fight back here.”

3. Mercedes “Mimi” Doretti – Executive Director, Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF)

“When the state no longer respects the rule of law, we are all in danger. We can all be accused at any time of being a criminal, a terrorist, or any other name, since nothing needs to be verified. Back then and now, we all know that no one actually disappears. It’s just not an existential status. We are either dead or alive.”

Drawing on 40 years of exhuming clandestine graves and investigating atrocities region-wide, Doretti described how Argentina’s junta used disappearance to eliminate due process and sow terror. She traced EAAF’s birth: prosecutors needed science, families needed someone they could trust more than state institutions, and young anthropologists provided both.

  • State denial breeds confusion and a maddening sense of unreality. Early in the dictatorship, relatives were told the kidnappings they witnessed had never occurred or that the victims were somehow deserving. The goal was paralysis through lies and denials.
  • Families are partners, not witnesses. EAAF put relatives at the center of every investigation—sharing findings, co‑designing searches, putting evidence at the center and building trustful relationships.
  • An “ecosystem” approach works. Forensic experts, lawyers, journalists, archivists, and families formed “a human‑rights ecosystem” that can out‑investigate a hostile, dishonest state.

4. Juan E. Méndez – Former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture; survivor, lawyer, scholar

“Disappearances are torture as well. Because the person who is deprived of contact with a family, the person who doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him or her, the person who doesn’t know when this detention will end, the person who is in incommunicado detention, perhaps even in solitary confinement somewhere where nobody knows where they are, that person is being inflicted pain and suffering of a mental nature, even if no physical torture may be happening.”

Méndez blended personal testimony—he was disappeared for days and imprisoned for 18 months—with legal analysis. He helped win the Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras judgment, the Inter‑American Court’s landmark ruling that enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity.

  • Temporary disappearances count. Moving detainees between secret sites, denying them lawyers, or hiding them from families—even for days—meets international definitions of disappearance. In Argentina, these practices began even before the 1976 military dictatorship began, during a state of siege.
  • Four minimum state duties: Governments must register every detention immediately; forbid secret sites; notify courts about each detention; and guarantee the detained person contact with counsel and relatives.
  • Law needs mobilization. International norms matter only when civil society “makes the state pay a price” for violations. A very good legal framework like the one that exists today is not enough on its own: “We need every man and woman who cares for the fate and whereabouts of every other human being to have their voices heard, have their voices resonate.”

5. Marcela Turati – Mexican investigative journalist, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab and Periodistas de a Pie

“The people [must] understand that victims have rights… even if they were criminals, they have rights [including] not to be disappeared.”

Reporting on 127,000 disappearances in Mexico—mostly committed at a time of formal democracy, mostly by non-state actors with the government’s collusion, acquiescence, or deliberate inaction—Turati emphasized the battle for truth in real time.

  • Name the crime. The press once spoke euphemistically of people falling victim to levantones (“pick‑ups”); insisting on using the word “disappearance” forces the state to own its obligations. “You can talk about enforced disappearances when the public servants don’t prevent these disappearances, don’t investigate when the people present a denunciation… So it’s not only when the army abducts or makes detentions.”
  • From confusion to complexity. Networks of journalists, data scientists, and victim groups map patterns—routes, mass graves, bureaucratic gaps—to demystify the phenomenon and put the puzzle pieces together, especially when the state can’t be counted on to do that.
  • Tech with a human face. Turati’s team’s WhatsApp chatbot, SocorroBot, walks families through the first 24 hours after someone vanishes and connects them to local support.

Key conclusions

  1. Disappearance is a deliberate state strategy, not a bureaucratic accident. Whether permanent or “only” temporary, or whether committed by government or non-state actors, secrecy plus denial equals disappearance.
  2. Information—and its absence—is a battlefield. Dictatorships lied outright; today’s U.S. agencies exploit data opacity, shifting detainees among ICE and local jurisdictions’ detention facilities or foreign prisons. Documenting transfers, in this example, helps move from confusion to accountability. Sharing credible information means better communication and storytelling, beginning with spreading knowledge “about people’s rights as human beings.” Turati added: “Always look for the audiovisual support. I think that we have to find a way to go public, just to be massive with the public. And I can see the effects of the videos, photos, camera images, satellite images, I don’t know, trying to bring what we know the ‘influencers’ use.” This also requires clarity about who the intended audiences are.
  3. Families are catalysts. Argentine mothers in the Plaza de Mayo, Mexican search collectives with shovels and drones, Central American parents seeking to trace children who disappeared along the migration route—relatives sustain the search when institutions fail. “The most important thing in Mexico is, for me as a journalist, to stay close to the victims,” Turati said.
  4. Independent expertise matters. The Argentine forensic model showed why civil‑society science must fill gaps left by compromised state forensics. “Both Mimi and Juan have pointed to this sort of creating expertise in a field where there was none,” Doyle observed. “And that’s something that I think we need to think about here in the United States as well.”
  5. International law is usable. The United States is a party to the Convention Against Torture. While it shuns the International Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, existing instruments still prohibit the Trump administration’s practices, offering advocacy hooks. “The public understands instinctively what we mean when we say there’s no due process,” Méndez noted.

Recommendations

Drawing directly from the speakers’ proposals and proven tactics, steps like these can guide U.S. advocates, policymakers, and communities:

  • Rapid, independent documentation: We need to closely document what is happening, both through direct information gathering and building public databases.
  • Put families at the center: Relatives need immediate notification and frequent accompaniment from experts, mirroring EAAF’s family-first methodology.
  • Legal safeguards and reform: Even as a U.S. ratification of the International Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearance appears far off, it is urgent to prohibit incommunicado custody, denial of access to counsel, invocation of the Alien Enemies Act during peacetime, and failure to provide at least 30 days to bring habeas corpus challenges before being rendered to another country. Extrajudicial imprisonment, whether at home or in other nations, must never happen.
  • Civil society mobilization: U.S. civil society and philanthropy must strengthen coalitions of journalists, tech volunteers, faith groups, and academics to keep cases in the public eye, echoing the Latin American “human-rights ecosystem.” Put a strong emphasis on storytelling, using innumerable tools including podcasts, exhibitions, teach-ins, or webinars like this one, especially to spotlight disappeared migrants and citizens.
  • International pressure and solidarity: Work with international bodies like the Inter-American Commission and U.N. Working Group on Enforced Disappearance for emblematic U.S. cases. Tighten bonds with Latin American experts and search collectives for skill-sharing on investigation, trauma care, and public protest tactics.
  • Accountability pathways: Document chain-of-command responsibility within DHS and private contractors to preserve evidence for future accountability measures. Never yield on the supremacy of judicial decisions: “I would say that the most alarming aspect of the situation,” Méndez warned, “is the fact that high ranking officers, officials are hinting that they don’t need to pay attention to court orders.”

Conclusion

The event’s nearly 500 participants asked dozens of incisive questions: more than time would allow. Many of them could be the subject of future events, and our organizations plan to hold more soon.

Argentina’s dictatorship, Central America’s civil wars, or Mexico’s organized crime violence all once seemed distant tragedies to many in the United States. Yet, as the webinar’s speakers made clear, the mechanisms of disappearance are portable, and their first victims are often the marginalized—migrants, students, activists—long before the practice threatens society at large.

The good news is that Latin America also exports resilience: mothers who march, scientists who unearth truth, lawyers who codify new crimes, journalists who refuse to let the missing be forgotten. Those lessons’ arrival in the United States is timely and urgently needed. By acting now—documenting every vanished person, closing every legal loophole, and mobilizing the broadest possible coalition—we can ensure that enforced disappearance never becomes normalized on U.S. soil.

Keep an Eye on Next Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday the 29th and Wednesday the 30th are going to be two very intense days for border and migration-related human rights work here in Washington. Within those 48 hours, we expect six public events to happen:

  • Tuesday 29 at 10:00 am – The House Homeland Security Committee will meet in Room 310 of the Cannon House Office Building to mark up (consider, amend, and approve) the $90 billion-or-more DHS section of congressional Republicans’ “Reconciliation” package, a funding bill that could make Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s most fevered “mass deportation” dreams come true. Watch the Committee’s announcement for the text of their part of the bill, which must be shared 48 hours in advance (that’s Sunday).
  • Tuesday 29th at 2:00 – Parties will meet in Courtroom 8 of the Washington DC federal district courthouse (333 Constitution Ave NW) for a “hearing on the cross-motions for summary judgment” in the RAICES v. Noem litigation, which is challenging the Trump administration’s January 20 executive order shutting the border to undocumented entry, and stopping border asylum claims, by claiming that an “invasion” is underway.
  • Tuesday 29th, probably; time and place not confirmedPolitico and others are reporting that the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee will meet to mark up its part of the big “Reconciliation” funding bill, which may throw up to $150 billion at, among other priorities, “the Trump administration’s expanded military mission at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
  • Wednesday 30th at 10:00 – The Senate Finance Committee will meet in Room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to consider the nomination of Rodney Scott, a former Border Patrol chief and a hardliner who is no stranger to controversy, to be the next commissioner of the Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
  • Wednesday 30th at 2:00 – This one is virtual: WOLA and the National Security Archive, deeply concerned by what can only be described as “enforced disappearances” of migrants by the Trump administration, are hosting a discussion with some Latin American human rights defenders who are widely known for their brave opposition to enforced disappearance in the region. The event description is here and the RSVP link is here.
  • Wednesday 30th, probably; time and place not confirmedPolitico is reporting that the House Judiciary Committee will meet to mark up its part of the big “Reconciliation” funding bill, “which is set to include $110 billion in spending on immigration enforcement.”

Meanwhile, Tuesday is also the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second administration, so expect a lot of “taking stock” discussion in media and social media that cannot ignore the impact on the human rights of migrants and border communities.

288 People Rendered to El Salvador’s Mega-Prison. We Only Know 258 of Their Names.

This is enforced disappearance.

The Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had 288 Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants in its custody. A vast majority, we now know, were not accused of committing crimes, and only a handful faced allegations of committing violent crimes (see CBS News, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and Cristosal).

Then, they disappeared from ICE’s locator system and have apparently ended up in El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison. But nothing is certain because neither the U.S. nor the Salvadoran governments has confirmed their names. What we know about these individuals’ identities is entirely from leaks to secondary sources. Even their loved ones have no official information, with the partial exception of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and that is because a judge ordered it.

Disappearing from custody without any official acknowledgment of one’s identity, then being sent to a prison with no end date and no judicial process at all? That, right there, is the definition of enforced disappearance: a major, serious human rights violation that is tragically familiar in Latin America but rare—until now—in the United States.

Here is what we know about the people disappeared from the United States and apparently rendered to incommunicado prison in El Salvador:

Country Known Names Unknown Names Total
Venezuela 245 7 252
El Salvador 13 23 36
Total 258 30 288

Venezuela, 252 people. 137 rendered under the Alien Enemies Act, the rest with final removal orders:

  • 238 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. Names leaked to CBS News on March 20.
  • 7 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31.
  • 7 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 7 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody, and 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador.

El Salvador, 31 people, all with final removal orders:

  • 23 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. From much reporting, we know the identities of 3: Kilmar Abrego Garcia and credibly alleged MS-13 members César Humberto López Larios alias “Greñas” and César Eliseo Sorto Amaya. The other 20 remain unnamed.
  • 10 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31.
  • 3 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 3 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody. As 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador, that would mean that 7 of the 10 were Venezuelan, leaving 3 Salvadorans.

Improbable, but no longer impossible

Maybe President Bukele will build a new wing at his mega-prison to hold all the Trump administration critics who get sent there as “no-takebacks mistakes,” as happened with supposedly non-deportable Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Ábrego García.

From this week’s WOLA Border Update:

“Although the Alien Enemies Act does not apply to American citizens, without due process, a citizen could be mistakenly deported to El Salvador, held indefinitely, and reliant on the same administration that deported them to realize the error and decide to retrieve them,” wrote Adam Serwer at the Atlantic. Greg Sargent echoed that at the New Republic, quoting Ábrego García’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg: “if the government can remove people in ‘error’ without recourse, then that logic could ‘apply with equal force to U.S. citizens.’”

If that plays out, by late 2025, two shaven-headed U.S. citizens in El Salvador’s Center for Confinement of Terrorism prison could have a conversation like this:

“What are you in for?”

“I complained about the tariffs on social media. You?”

“Tesla protest. But ICE said I was a Venezuelan gang member.”

Imagine Needing a Judge to Tell You to Undo a Mistake Like This

Based on the record before the Court, I find that this Court retains subject matter jurisdiction. I further find that: (1) Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits because Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, specifically,&,U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A), and without any legal process; (2) his continued presence TRUOS FISalyador for obvious reasons, constitutes irreparable harm; (3) the balance of equities and the public interest weigh in favor of returning him to the United States; and (4) issuance of a preliminary injunction without further delay is necessary to restore him to the status quo and to avoid ongoing irreparable harm resulting from Abrego Garcia's unlawful removal. For the reasons stated above, the Court hereby DIRECTS Defendants to return Abrego Garcia to the United States no later than 11:59 PM on April 7th, 2025. A memorandum opinion further setting forth the basis for this ruling will be issued in due course.

From the preliminary injunction granted today by Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to bring back Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison, where the Trump administration put him on March 15.

How twisted do you have to be to need a court to tell you to do this basic thing? Ábrego García was here legally, convicted of nothing, and sent to El Salvador’s terror jail. ICE recognized the error. They should’ve asked Nayib Bukele to return him weeks ago.

WOLA Podcast: “Global Drug Policy: ‘Countries are being freed up to actually speak their minds’”

A belligerent U.S. delegation got isolated at a UN drug policy meeting in March, where there were important breakthroughs for reform. I got a great rundown from three people who were there in the latest WOLA Podcast. Here’s the text of the landing page at WOLA’s website.

For the second year in a row, what had been an uneventful, consensus-driven United Nations meeting on drug policy saw unexpected drama and signs of real change.

At the 68th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna in March 2025, governments approved the formation of an independent expert commission to recommend changes to the architecture of global drug policy, which has changed little since the early 1960s.

Colombia again played a catalytic role, as it did in 2024. But this time, the United States—under the new Trump administration—tried to block nearly everything, isolating itself diplomatically in the process.

In this episode of the WOLA Podcast, Adam Isacson speaks with three experts who were in Vienna:

  • Ann Fordham, Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), a network of 195 organizations working to reform global drug policy.
  • Isabel Pereira, Senior Coordinator for drug policy at DeJusticia, a Bogotá-based think tank and advocacy group.
  • John Walsh, WOLA’s Director for Drug Policy, who has tracked the UN’s drug control system since the 1980s.

The conversation traces the slow evolution of the UN drug control system—from decades of punitive consensus to today’s shifting coalitions, unprecedented votes, and long-overdue reviews.

Much of the episode centers on a breakthrough: a new resolution establishing an “independent external review” of the UN’s own drug control institutions. For years, countries like Colombia have called for an honest assessment of the system’s failings. Now, thanks to a resolution spearheaded by Colombia and passed over U.S. opposition, that review is happening. The details still matter: how independent the expert panel will truly be, who funds it, and whether the review can influence the hard architecture of the drug control treaties.

“Vienna was very much a space where delegates would just pat each other on the back on how well we’re doing the war on drugs,” Pereira said. “The spirit of Vienna created a sort of lockdown situation on debate, true debate,” added Walsh. “Civil society enlivened the Vienna atmosphere” in recent years, he noted, “with new debates, new arguments.” Now, this international space has become more dynamic.

The guests also discuss coca leaf: its decades-old listing as a Schedule I narcotic, Bolivia’s and Colombia’s ongoing push for a scientific review, and the possibility of a pivotal vote in 2026. They stress how traditional knowledge—especially from Indigenous communities—must be recognized as legitimate scientific input during that review.

Underlying it all is a major diplomatic shift. Colombia is using the UN system to demand drug policy grounded in health, human rights, and development—not militarized prohibition. But with Petro’s term ending in 2026, it’s unclear who will pick up the baton.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is signaling a return to zero-tolerance drug war policies—and burning bridges with potential allies in the process. “They behaved so terribly. I mean, they broke with all diplomatic niceties,” said Fordham. “The U.S. just went for it in their opening statement… It was frankly an embarrassing, but also pretty shocking statement.”

Despite the uncertainty, all three guests agree: civil society is no longer on the sidelines. NGOs and experts are shaping debates, challenging rigid thinking in Vienna, and holding governments to account.

Read more:

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.

Back in the Headlines at Age 84

30 years ago, I was in Costa Rica working at the foundation that Oscar Arias founded with his Nobel Peace Prize money. It was my first paid job in this field (if $800 per month, minus my $400 in student loan payments, counts as “paid.”)

By vindictively revoking his visa, the Trump administration just did “don Óscar” a favor, raising his profile again at age 84. He held a news conference about it yesterday, covered by the New York Times and other outlets.

“I don’t know why they have revoked my visa,” Mr. Arias said at the news conference. “I don’t know if the revoking of my visa is some sort of punishment, because I say what I think.”

Mr. Arias has been critical of the Trump administration on social media. In February, he wrote on Facebook that Mr. Trump behaved like “a Roman emperor, telling the rest of the world what to do.”

“If someone wants to punish me in the hopes of silencing me, that isn’t going to work,” Mr. Arias said on Tuesday. He said that he did not have plans to travel to the United States, and did not provide information about what kind of visa he had and when it was set to expire.

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.

Let’s Get Back To a Place Where This Is Wrong

A big majority of Americans want images like these to stay on the margins of society because they’re so extreme, harmful, divisive, abusive, violent, disqualifying, and wrong.

I refuse to believe otherwise, and so should you.

Whoops, Forgot About the Venezuelan Invasion

Today in the House Intelligence Committee, top agency chiefs presented their “Annual Worldwide Threats Assessment.”

But something weird happened. Their 31-page document made zero mention of any “predatory incursion” from Venezuela’s government, in league with the Tren de Aragua criminal group.

That incursion, the White House told us just 12 days ago, is so severe that it forced President Trump to invoke the 1798 Wartime Renditions Act, I mean, “Alien Enemies Act.”

In fact, the only mention of Venezuela at all—and there are none about the Tren de Aragua—plays up the reduction in arrivals of Venezuelan migrants.

Imagine, forgetting all about being invaded, even as the White House insists that it’s happening. It’s almost as though the U.S. intelligence community doesn’t see any invasions or incursions happening, either.

(cc: Judge James Boasberg and U.S. Supreme Court justices)

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.

DHS Shuts Down Its Own Oversight

The New York Times was the first to report yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is firing nearly all staff at, or shuttering, three internal oversight agencies: its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), its Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, and its Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO).

It shouldn’t be this easy for one of the world’s largest law enforcement agencies, DHS, to obliterate its internal oversight. In fact, it isn’t, at least in the case of CRCL, read a March 13 letter from the ranking Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois):

The DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) Office is fulfilling statutorily- required missions, and the CRCL Officer is a statutorily-required position that the Secretary must fully support with sufficient personnel and resources.

It appears that the Trump DHS is trying to get around this by keeping the position of the CRCL officer, but eliminating that officer’s staff and reassigning duties to less-empowered individuals elsewhere in the Department.

At WOLA we’d published criticisms of DHS Civil Rights/Civil Liberties for slowness, unresponsiveness, and a lack of “teeth” to improve abusive behavior. But as bad encounters with DHS personnel grow more likely, we’re all going to miss DHS CRCL when it is gone.

New York Times and other coverage of the mass firings, meanwhile, includes this chilling quote from Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’s new assistant secretary for public affairs, who is a regular source of chilling quotes.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”

In Latin America we’ve often seen quotes like this one from autocratic leaders and security forces. Defining basic oversight as adversarial or aligned with enemies.

This was constant In Colombia, where I worked a lot in the 90s and 00s. Álvaro Uribe even called human rights defenders “spokespeople for terrorism” while military-aligned paramilitaries were massacring communities and military “false positive” killings were worsening. Today, Colombians are still counting the dead.

WOLA Podcast: The Alien Enemies Act

Here’s a half-hour podcast with a slightly different format. Because it’s mostly about migration, which I work on at WOLA, I do most of the talking. WOLA, though, also has experts on Venezuela, Laura Dib, and El Salvador, Ana María Méndez Dardón, who answer some of my questions here.

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

On March 15, 2025, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for only the fourth time in U.S. history. The target, this time, is citizens of Venezuela. His administration sent hundreds out of the country, and into a Salvadoran prison, on mere suspicion of ties to a criminal organization, the Tren de Aragua.

In this explainer episode recorded on March 21, with help from WOLA’s Venezuela Director Laura Dib and Central America Director Ana María Méndez Dardón, Defense Oversight Director Adam Isacson walks through what has happened over the past six dark days in U.S. history.

  • The Alien Enemies Act did not use any standard of due process, and many of those sent out of the country, it is now very apparent, were documented in the United States and were not guilty of anything. All it took was for U.S. agents to decide that they did not like the way these young men looked.
  • The Trump administration ignored a clear order from a federal judge to turn the planes around and is now resisting that judge’s demands for information. The result is one of the most severe constitutional crises in U.S. history, which is unresolved as of March 21st.
  • Rather than simply deport them, the planes took 238 citizens of Venezuela straight to El Salvador, where authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele took them straight to a notorious mega-prison where those inside are cut off from the outside world and never seem to emerge.

This alarming story is far from over, but this episode lays out some of the most pertinent facts and context in half an hour.

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.

Who Did the Trump Administration Just Send to El Salvador’s Dungeons?

The list below is an excerpt from tomorrow’s Border Update, which I’m still drafting. But it deserves to be shared separately.

On March 20 CBS News obtained and published a full list of all 238 Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a judge’s orders. It appears that 137 had no due process at all—they were sent under the fourth-ever invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The other 101 apparently had orders of removal.

But even though none committed any crimes in El Salvador, the government of Nayib Bukele sent them directly to the “Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” a mega-jail built about two years ago to hold gang members, from which no prisoner is known to have been released.

For many of their loved ones, the CBS list was the first confirmation of their whereabouts. “Family members of the men say they’ve had no way to communicate with their loved ones,” noted Jonathan Lemire and Nick Miroff at the Atlantic, “So they study the [Salvadoran government’s] propaganda videos for glimpses of sons and spouses among the deportees.”

Here are profiles that I’ve seen of 15 of them, with links to sources. They really do not seem to be gang members at all.

  • Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Agüero, 27, had been living in Dallas with his wife since December 2023, when they entered the United States with a CBP One appointment. In early February 2025, Aguilera was arrested while taking out the trash outside their home, his wife told the Miami Herald. He has a nine-month-old U.S. citizen son. His tattoos include his older, Venezuelan-born son’s name, his name and his mother’s name, and a reggaeton lyric. His mother says he has no criminal record.
  • ”JABV,” a 24-year-old who was abducted and beaten for carrying out campaign work on behalf of opposition leader María Corina Machado in 2024. His attorney stated that he has no criminal record in either the United States or Venezuela, no removal order, and “his tattoos are a Rose, a Clock and a Crown with his son’s name on it.”
  • Franco Caraballo, a 26-year-old barber detained in Dallas on February 3 when he reported to a regular check-in with ICE. His wife, Johanny Sánchez, insists he has no gang ties. “She struggles even to find logic in the accusation,” the Associated Press reported. Caraballo has several tattoos, including an image of a clock commemorating his daughter’s birthday. He had called Ms. Sánchez on the evening of March 14, Reuters reported, to tell her that he was probably being deported to Venezuela even though he had a pending asylum claim.
  • ”L.G.,” who has no removal order and a pending asylum claim. His attorney stated, “L.G. has three tattoos: one is a rosary, the other is his partner’s name, and the third is a rose and a clock.”
  • Edwuar Hernández, a 23-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old barber from Maracay, Venezuela, had a clean criminal record. He tried to make a living in Peru for four years before migrating to the United States. “He doesn’t belong to any criminal gang, either in the US or in Venezuela… he’s not a criminal,” his mother told the BBC. “My brother doesn’t belong to any criminal group, has no criminal history or record in any country and they have unjustly sent him to El Salvador simply because of his tattoos,” the Guardian reported that his brother wrote on Instagram.
  • Ali David Navas Vizcaya, who was detained in early 2024 when appearing for an appointment with ICE. His mother told AP “he has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.”
  • Andy Javier Perozo, a 30-year-old father of five from Maracaibo who was doing food delivery gig work, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old former professional soccer player who was imprisoned and tortured after marching in two early-2024 demonstrations against the Maduro regime. Reyes has a tattoo of the Real Madrid soccer team’s logo and had a picture of himself in his social media feed making a rock-and-roll hand gesture that DHS officials decided was a gang sign. He had already submitted a document showing he had no criminal record and a declaration from the tattoo artist, to no avail. He has two daughters, aged two and six.
  • Ringo Rincón, a 39-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Anyelo Jose Sarabia, age 19, is an asylum seeker detained during a scheduled January 31, 2025 check-in with ICE in Dallas. His brother’s statement reads, “The tattoo on his left hand is of a rose with money as petals. A picture of the tattoo is below. He had that tattoo done in August 2024 in Arlington, Texas, because he thought it looked cool.” (His sister said something similar to Reuters.) Another tattoo is the words “strength and courage,” and another is a bible verse; both were applied by Anyelo’s brother, who has no criminal record in the United States or Venezuela.
  • ”E.V.,” who fled Venezuela after being imprisoned and tortured for participating in a 2022 protest. His attorney said he “has only one arrest in the U.S., which resolved with a non-criminal disposition under New York state law and for which he received a sentence of a one-year conditional discharge.” He has “tattoos of anime, flowers, and animals.”
  • Henry Javier Vargas Lugo, a 32-year-old, had been living and working odd jobs in Aurora, Colorado after trying to make a living as a mechanic in Colombia for seven years. He entered the United States with his mother and daughter. “He has several tattoos, including crowns with his niece and mother’s name, a clock on his arm and a rosary,” the Miami Herald reported.
  • Mervyn Yamarte, a 29-year-old who entered the United States in 2023 after passing through the Darién Gap and lived in Dallas, is “‘a good, hardworking boy’ who had never been involved in crime,” his mother told the Guardian and the BBC. His wife said the same to the Washington Post, which reported that armed ICE officers showed up on March 13 at the townhouse where he and three friends from Maracaibo had been living, and hauled them away. Yamarte’s younger brother witnessed the arrest; he said that the agents asked whether he had tattoos. One of Mervyn Yamarte’s tattoos is his daughter’s name. Another reads, “strong like Mom.” Yamarte appears—shaved, wincing, but recognizable—in the video shared by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on March 16.
  • An unnamed client of Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), is an LGBTQ+ artist and asylum seeker whose tattoos included a verse from the Book of Isaiah. “They’re fairly benign. Clearly not gang tattoos,” Toczylowski told Mother Jones. “In my 15 years of representing people in removal proceedings in the United States, this is the most shocking thing that I’ve ever seen happen to one of our clients,” she told the Guardian.

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.

That’s Not How This Works, Chief

You’ve probably seen it, but we should keep raising up what an ICE official actually wrote to a federal court on Monday:

Regarding all of the Venezuelan men shipped off to Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison without proof of criminal behavior: “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.”

“TdA” is the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan organized crime group whose true strength and influence are a matter of debate. In his sworn statement to a federal court, the acting director of ICE’s Harlingen, Texas field office, Robert L. Cerna, is imputing individuals’ associations with Tren de Aragua without even bothering to prove them.

And the notion that “the less we know about you, the scarier you must be, so you have no rights” is as dangerous as it is unhinged.

Saving Private… Who Exactly?

Image from Northern Command

U.S. Northern Command announced that the Navy has sent an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer—which “can carry 96 missiles, including Tomahawk Land Attack cruise missiles”—to the point where the US-Mexico border hits the Gulf of Mexico.

At Stars and Stripes (which shamefully called the body of water the “Gulf of America”), Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, very diplomatically said that it’s not really clear what the U.S.S. Gravely—a ship that until recently was shooting down Houthi missiles and drones in Yemen—might end up doing along the border.

“It is a bit unique to deploy a capability of this level for this mission set, but I think it goes to the commitment the Navy has to the president and the secretary of defense to support the southern border operations,” Caudle said.

One thing is for sure. For now at least, migrants can forget about landing their tank battalions, Normandy-style, on Texas beaches.

Just a Monumental, Tragic, Stupid Screwup

Click on the photo to enlarge in a new window.

Here are photos of some of the young Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador’s terror prison on Saturday. With no chance to defend their good name. On the merest suspicion of membership in a criminal group.

Their relatives say it’s all false. It’s looking like a monumental, tragic screwup. Get them out and at least give them a hearing.

The captions and sources, clockwise from top left:

  • Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez, 29, is one of 238 Venezuelans accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation and sent over the weekend to El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center. His sister recognized him in a video shared on social media, where masked guards shaved the detainees’ heads and escorted them into cells at the maximum-security facility. As the camera panned across the scene, Yamarte slowly turned his gaze toward it. (Yamarte’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Agüero, 26, from the Venezuelan Andes in Táchira, had been living in Dallas with his wife since December 2023. In early February, Aguilera Agüero was detained by authorities while taking out the trash, according to his wife. Authorities were actually searching for someone else, but Aguilera Agüero spent several weeks in detention, awaiting deportation to Venezuela. Now, his mother, Miriam Aguilera, fears her son may be among the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador. (Aguilera’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Franco Caraballo, 26, a Venezuelan migrant whose family believes he was sent from the United States to a prison in El Salvador, takes a selfie with his wife Johanny Sanchez, in this undated handout picture provided by his family. (Franco Caraballo’s Family/Handout via REUTERS)
  • Henry Javier Vargas, 32, originally from Vargas state on Venezuela’s coast, had been living in Aurora, Colorado, for nearly a year when he was detained on January 29. Prior to migrating to the U.S., Vargas spent seven years in Colombia, working as a mechanic in Bogotá. Vargas’s family was able to identify him in a video posted by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, showing the detainees arriving in El Salvador. In the footage, his hands are shackled, and his head is bowed in a moment of despair (Vargas’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Ringo Rincón was living in Dallas when he was arrested. His girlfriend says she believes he has been taken to a prison in El Salvador with his roommates. (Roslyany Caamaño / The Washington Post)
  • Francisco García, a barber, with one of his customers. (Photo courtesy of Sebastián García / El Estímulo).
  • Andy Javier Perozo with his mom, Erkia Palencia, and a note wishing her happy birthday. (Courtesy of Erkia Palencia / The Washington Post)

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.

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.

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.

Sending in Soldiers to Apprehend 0.015 Migrants Per Day

In the United States, on U.S. soil, we rarely give combat-trained soldiers—which includes National Guard personnel—the ability to confront or arrest civilians. It only happens during emergencies.

In south Texas, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just did that. It deputized 300 Texas National Guard personnel, operating under the authority of Texas’s state government, to apprehend migrants and enforce federal U.S. immigration law.

Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez @USBPChiefRGV on Twitter

HISTORY IN THE MAKING! On Friday, USBP Chief Michael W. Banks deputized the first 300 soldiers from Texas Military Dept. w/Title 8 authority to execute immigration enforcement duties alongside Border Patrol agents in the #RGV. Huge Thanks to the State of Texas & our TMD partners!
“History in the making” indeed.

They’ll be doing that in Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, which covers the borderlands between Falcon Lake and the Gulf of Mexico.

If you’re using soldiers in such a drastic capacity, risking long-term distortions in U.S. civil-military relations, there must be a real emergency going on in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, right?

Wrong. The Sector’s chief says that they’re only apprehending 50 migrants per day right now.

AP reporter Valerie Gonzalez @ValOnTheBorder on Twitter:

In the RGV, the busiest part of the border as of December, the number of daily arrests went down, too. BP RGV Chief Gloria I. Chavez said it’s down to about 50 a day, or less.

In 2020, the last year before CBP decided to stop publicizing staffing strength, Border Patrol had 3,119 agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Let’s say it’s 3,000 now. Add 300 soldiers and you’re at 3,300 agents or soldiers.

50 migrant apprehensions per day ÷ 3,300 agents/soldiers =

Each agent or soldier is apprehending an average of 0.015 migrants per day.

No emergency. A historic change in soldiers’ ability to confront civilians on U.S. soil—but no emergency.

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.

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