Authors: Ariana Ramos Mercado, Christian Baca
Welcome to LAWG’s Migration News Brief, a compilation of recent top articles and reports related to issues of U.S. immigration and enforcement policy and migration from Central America and Mexico.
Spotlight
ISLA EL ESPÍRITU SANTO DIGITAL TOOLKIT 2024
Latin American Working Group, July 2024
“In El Salvador, there’s a small island known as Isla El Espíritu Santo, or the “Coconut Island.” The island’s small population relies on coconut crops and lives relatively isolated from the mainland. Two years ago, President Nayib Bukele’s State of Exception began to target the islanders through arbitrary arrests.”
El silencio no es opción
Cristosal, Julio de 2024
“El análisis general de los primeros dos años de vigencia del régimen de excepción retrata un modelo de Justicia, el del gobierno actual, diseñado para imponer tanto a presuntos delincuentes como a miles de personas inocentes, sin distinción alguna, castigos injustos por cuanto no toman como fundamento para la detención y encarcelamiento indicios razonables ni hechos probados, sino la palabra de los captores —agentes de la Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) o de la Fuerza Armada—, convertidos en máxima expresión territorial de un gobierno autoritario que controla el espacio cívico y todas las instituciones sin ningún contrapeso”.
US Enforcement
FACT FOCUS: A look at ominous claims around illegal immigration made at the Republican convention
Elliot Spagat and Melissa Goldin, AP News, July 17, 2024
“After Donald Trump triumphantly entered the hall on the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the program turned to one of his signature issues: illegal immigration. An ominous video of chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border led into to a speech by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared, ‘We are facing an invasion on our southern border.’ Here’s a look at some of the claims made Tuesday…”
Migrants, homeless families dropped at MBTA stop because Massachusetts emergency shelters are full
Brandon Truitt, CBS News, July 17, 2024
“The state of Massachusetts has made it clear that its emergency shelter program is at capacity. That has not stopped dozens of migrants from heading to the state through several federal programs.”
How would mass deportation of migrants under Trump actually work?
Laura Strickler, Didi Martinez, Chloe Atkins and Julia Ainsley, NBC News, July 16, 2024
“The party platform for this week’s Republican convention promises the “largest deportation effort” in U.S. history if Trump wins. But the costs would be “astronomical,” one expert said.”
Border Patrol agents recorded the fewest monthly migrant apprehensions since 2021 on southern border
Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune, July 16, 2024
“The number of migrants apprehended by federal authorities after illegally crossing the border into Texas decreased roughly 32% in June — a sharp drop seen across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to federal statistics released this week.”
SENATOR J.D. VANCE IS NO MODERATE; VANCE CHAMPIONS TRUMP’S EXTREME ANTI-IMMIGRANT AGENDA
Immigration Hub, July 15, 2024
“Today, Donald Trump announced Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his Vice Presidential pick. The Ohio lawmaker, who’s supported several anti-immigrant bills in the Senate and previously defended Trump’s comments about migrants “poisoning the blood of America,” is aligned with Trump’s extreme immigration agenda that would rip families apart and see long-settled immigrants deported en masse.”
Managing Migration at the US-Mexico Border: Recommendations for the Biden Administration
Women’s Refugee Commission, July 8, 2024
“This brief proposes several solutions to better process people requesting asylum at the US-Mexico border. These recommendations would allow the Biden administration to manage the border in a fair, orderly manner while supporting US communities and upholding our obligations to protect people fleeing persecution.”
Mexican Enforcement
‘Mexico City is another border,’ Josephine sister tells migration conference
Luis Donaldo González, Global Sisters Report, July 18, 2024
“At an international and interdisciplinary conference on migration held July 3-9 in Mexico City, human rights activist Josephine Sr. María Magdalena Silva Rentería denounced the government’s lack of interest in addressing the migration crisis.”
Mexico and Colombia dismantle transnational sex trafficking ring
Interpol, July 12, 2024
“Authorities in the Americas, supported by INTERPOL, have successfully dismantled a criminal network involved in the trafficking of Colombian women to Mexico, arresting its leaders and safeguarding eight victims.”
Diverse Flows Drive Increase in U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population
Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, Julia Gelatt and Jennifer Van Hook, Migration Policy Institute, July 2024
“Amid all the noise and understandable public interest in how record levels of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border are affecting the size of the unauthorized immigrant population, it is more important than ever to have reliable estimates.”
Pain as Strategy The Violence of U.S.-Mexico Immigration Enforcement and Texas’ Operation Lone Star against People on the Move in El Paso-Ciudad Juárez
The Hope Border Institute, July 2024
“On June 4, 2024, President Biden announced the Proclamation on Securing the Border. Together with the accompanying Interim Final Rule (IFR), the administration imposed a suspension of normal asylum processing at the U.S.-Mexico border when the seven day average of encounters with migrants by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reached 2,500.2 This executive action significantly limits the chances of bonafide asylum seekers to present their protection claims and increases the chances of forced removal.”
Root Causes
Mexico
EPU 2024 México ante la comunidad internacional: deudas y pendientes en derechos humanos
Centro Prodh, Animal Político, 18 de julio de 2024
“Por primera vez desde que está sujeto al Examen Periódico Universal (EPU), el Estado mexicano rechazó 14 recomendaciones realizadas por 115 países, relacionadas con seguridad, justicia y movilidad humana, de suma relevancia para atender la crisis derechos humanos que vive el país”.
With Haitian migration growing, a Mexico City family of doctors is helping out
Mariana Martínez Barba, AP News, July 17, 2024
“Last year, the Hernández Pacheco family began to notice a number of Haitians arriving at an apartment across the street from their medical clinic on the outskirts of Mexico City…Nearly a year later, Haitian migrants make up a good portion of the medical practice of the clinic, which is staffed by Hernández Pacheco and her mother and two of her siblings who are also doctors. The Bassuary clinic offers free consultations, and the family also began giving food to the Haitians, and eventually helped some find work, including at the clinic.”
Mexican President Urges Stepping Up Gun Control in US In Wake of Trump Shooting
teleSUR, July 17, 2024
“On Tuesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) urged the U.S. government to better regulate weapons sales following the campaign rally shooting of former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.”
Guatemalan family seeks return of relative’s body more than a decade after he disappeared in Mexico
Sonia Pérez D., AP News, July 16, 2024
“Nearly a decade after Guatemalan authorities were told that Mexico had sent the wrong body to a Guatemalan family searching for their missing teenage relative, that unidentified body is still buried in Guatemala and the family’s relative is waiting in a Mexico City morgue.”
52,3 millones de dólares se enviaron de Ecuador a México en remesas el primer trimestre del 2024: ese país es ruta de los migrantes hacia Estados Unidos
El Universo, 12 de julio de 2024
“El éxodo de ecuatorianos hacia Estados Unidos continúa, y las remesas, tanto recibidas como enviadas, también crecen. Los $ 983,3 millones recibidos desde la potencia norteamericana en el primer trimestre de 2024, según datos del Banco Central del Ecuador, son llamativos, pero el dinero que envían los connacionales hacia México también genera suspicacias por los últimos acontecimientos denunciados en la frontera México-estadounidense. En el primer trimestre de 2023, Ecuador envió $ 31.2 millones hacia México”
Guatemala
Exfiscal anticorrupción de Guatemala sale al exilio en medio de persecución en su contra
Infobae, 18 de julio de 2024
“La exfiscal anticorrupción guatemalteca Virginia Laparra anunció este jueves que saldrá al exilio para “preservar su vida”, tras dos años en prisión por un supuesto caso administrativo en su contra y una sentencia de cinco años de prisión conmutables dictada la semana pasada por un tribunal…Entre 2020 y 2022, Laparra estuvo en prisión por un supuesto caso de abuso de poder que fue impulsado por la denuncia del juez Lesther Castellanos, quien tiene diversas acusaciones de corrupción en su contra, incluida una sanción por parte de Estados Unidos”.
Presidente Arévalo evalúa situación de los derechos humanos con alto comisionado de ONU
Pablo Reyna, Agencia Guatemalteca de Noticias, 16 de julio de 2024
“El presidente Bernardo Arévalo evaluó hoy la vigencia de los derechos humanos en Guatemala con el alto comisionado de las Naciones Unidas, Volker Türk, en misión oficial en el país…Evaluamos la situación de los derechos humanos en Guatemala y cómo se puede ayudar para mejorar en este rubro y que beneficie a la población, recalcó”.
Guatemala Issues Historic Apology for Black Market Adoptions
The Tico Times, July 12, 2024
“Guatemala’s president on Friday offered an official apology to one of the many families whose children were taken away and adopted abroad in a multimillion-dollar black market.Osmin Tobar and his brother J.R. were seven and two years old when they were picked up by officials in a poor district of Guatemala City in 1997, ostensibly for having being abandoned. Before Guatemala moved to end the practice in 2007, about 5,000 children were put up for adoption each year, mostly by American couples who paid about $50,000, according to human rights groups.”
El Salvador
El Salvador: Rights Violations Against Children in ‘State of Emergency’
Human Rights Watch, July 16, 2024
“The 107-page report, “‘Your Child Does Not Exist Here’: Human Rights Abuses Against Children Under El Salvador’s ‘State of Emergency,’” documents arbitrary detention, torture, and other forms of ill-treatment against children under President Nayib Bukele’s ‘war on gangs.’ Detained children have often faced overcrowding, lack of adequate food and health care, and have been denied access to their lawyers and family members. In some cases, children have been held, in the first days after arrest, alongside adults. Many have been convicted on overly broad charges and in unfair trials that deny due process.”
“Su hijo no existe aquí”
Human Rights Watch, 16 de julio de 2024
“El 1 de julio de 2022, policías y soldados de El Salvador detuvieron a Carolina González (seudónimo), una estudiante de 17 años de un pueblo rural del departamento de Sonsonate. No le mostraron una orden de detención. La acusaron de colaborar con las pandillas. Según Carolina, la llevaron a una delegación policial donde estuvo detenida durante siete días con mujeres adultas. Un agente de la policía intentó coaccionarla para que identificara a un miembro de una pandilla, a quien ella no conocía, a cambio de ser liberada”.
Cerca de 110 mil personas presas en El Salvador
Prensa Latina, 14 de julio de 2024
“El comisionado de Derechos Humanos y Justicia de El Salvador, el colombiano Andrés Guzmán, precisó que hasta el 25 de junio de 2024 hay en los centros penales salvadoreños esa cifra de personas privadas de libertad.”
Estado salvadoreño sigue sin responder ante CIDH por retrocesos en derechos humanos
Claudia Espinoza, La Prensa Grafica, 12 de julio de 2024
“Organizaciones defensoras de derechos humanos expusieron ante la CIDH las muertes, capturas arbitrarias, deudas de la guerra civil, ataques a la prensa y la falta de información pública. El Estado negó los hechos y no respondió a consultadas del organismo regional.”
Denuncian “muerte de bebés” en las cárceles de El Salvador
DW, 11 de julio de 2024
“Al menos 176 niñas y niños de El Salvador quedaron en orfandad por la muerte de alguno de sus progenitores presos bajo el régimen de excepción usado por el presidente Nayib Bukele desde marzo de 2022 para combatir a las pandillas, según denunció el miércoles (10.07.2024) la organización de derechos humanos Cristosal.”
At least 261 people have died in El Salvador’s prisons under anti-gang crackdown, rights group says
AP News, July 10, 2024
“The human rights organization Cristosal said Wednesday that at least 261 people have died in prisons in El Salvador during President Nayib Bukele’s 2 1/2-year-old crackdown on street gangs.”
El Salvador’s president threatens to use gang-crackdown style tactics against price gougers
AP News, July 7, 2024
“In a speech late Friday, he threatened to use the same tactics on wholesalers and distributors who he blamed for a recent steep rise in the prices for food items and other basic goods…’Well, I’m going to issue a message to the importers, distributors and food wholesalers: stop abusing the people of El Salvador, or don’t complain about what happens afterward.’”
Honduras
Garifuna land rights abuses persist in Honduras, despite court ruling
Aimee Gabay, Mongabay, July 17, 2024
“Since the early 17th century, the Garifuna Afro-Indigenous peoples of Honduras have lived on the country’s northern Caribbean coast, where they collectively own large tracts of rich coastal land and sustain their livelihoods on subsistence agriculture and small-scale fishing. But ever since palm oil plantations, tourist developments and other harmful practices have expanded across their ancestral lands and their way of life and territory have been under threat.”
Cada semana muere un Hondureño en la ruta migratoria a Estados Unidos
Haydi Carrasco, La Prensa, 16 de julio de 2024
“Reportes de la OIM que 463 hondureños fallecieron en accidentes de tránsito, ahogados y hasta por condiciones climáticas extremas entre 2014 y julio de 2024. Los migrantes fallecieron en Honduras, Guatemala, México y Estados Unidos”
CIDH: Mega cárcel en Islas del Cisne compromete derechos humanos
Breidy Hernández, 12 de julio de 2024
“La CIDH y defensores de derechos humanos señalan que cárcel podría exacerbar las violaciones a los derechos de los privados de libertad y sus familiares, así como plantear serios desafíos logísticos y ambientales”
Regional
The UN condemns increasing gang violence and criminal activity in Haiti that is undermining peace
Edith M. Lederer, AP News, July 13, 2024
“The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution condemning “in the strongest terms” the increasing gang violence and criminal activity in Haiti that is undermining peace, stability and security in the country and the region.”
Migración en tránsito Darién Colombia – Panamá
Organización de Panamericana de Salud, 9 de julio de 2024
“El Tapón del Darién, una vasta región selvática que se extiende a lo largo de la frontera entre Colombia y Panamá, ha sido históricamente una de las zonas más difíciles de atravesar en América Latina. Esta región, caracterizada por su terreno accidentado y su densa vegetación, representa un reto para la población migrante que busca cruzar desde Sudamérica, hacia América Central y, eventualmente, Norte América”.
La población de Cuba cayó un 18 % entre 2022 y 2023, según un estudio independiente
EFE, 8 de julio de 2024
“La población de Cuba cayó un 18 % entre 2022 y 2023, principalmente por la migración, hasta situarse en los 8,62 millones de personas, según un estudio demográfico independiente listo para su publicación al que ha tenido acceso EFE”.
Gender and LGBTQ+
Under increasing pressure to migrate, more women are dying at the US-Mexico border
Jessica Kutz, The 19th, July 3, 2024
“In Southern Arizona, on an over-100-degree day in June, humanitarian aid workers found a group of migrants standing in a thin slice of shade formed by the large steel slats of the border wall. Among them were a pregnant woman, an elderly woman, two women showing signs of heat exhaustion and young children. In total, about 30 people had crossed into the United States and were waiting for the Border Patrol to pick them up so they could make an asylum claim.”
Dominican activists protest against a new criminal code that would maintain a total abortion ban
María Teresa Hernández,The Hour, July 18, 2024
“Activists in the Dominican Republic protested on Wednesday against a bill for a new criminal code that would keep in place the country’s total abortion ban.”
Hurricane Beryl: The need for an LGBTQ-inclusive disaster response in the Caribbean
Tenesha Myrie, Washington Blade, July 17, 2024
“Caribbean countries are experiencing the effects of climate change (Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, 2021). Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the region by 25-30 percent (U.S. Agency for International Development, 2018).”
Haitian women and girls face ‘alarming’ violence in displacement camps: UN
Al Jazeera, July 17, 2024
“Haitian women and girls are facing an “alarming” level of violence, including threats of rape, in makeshift displacement camps that have sprung up as a result of a surge of gang violence in the Caribbean nation, the United Nations says.”
Collective Statement on Priority Areas to Protect the Rights of and Ensure Well-Being for LGBTQ+ Migrants in Mexico
Women’s Refugee Commission, July 11, 2024
“Developed through a collaborative effort involving 20+ experts from 10 prominent organizations, this collective statement outlines the current needs for priority interventions to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ migrants in Mexico.”
Las agresiones contra las defensoras de derechos en Honduras aumentan un 58%
Efeminista, 11 de julio de 2024
“En la última década, 27 defensoras han sido asesinadas en Honduras y desde 2012 las agresiones a las activistas han aumentado un 58 %, según un informe de la Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras)”.
Climate
Decades of water mismanagement threaten Yaqui culture in Mexico
EHN Curators, July 18, 2024
“The Yaqui tribe in Sonora, Mexico faces cultural and environmental devastation as the Yaqui River dries up due to overuse, drought, and dam construction.”
Mexico’s mangroves: From protectors of sea life to narco-hideouts
América Armenta and Jesús Bustamante, El País, July 16, 2024
“Organized crime in Mexico has found in the mangroves an ideal, remote spot to hide their synthetic drug laboratories, leaving fishermen in Sinaloa to deal with contamination affecting their homes and livelihoods”
Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean present advances in climate adaptation in agriculture
FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, July 7, 2024
“The annual meeting of the region’s Platform for Climate Action in Agriculture (PLACA) was attended by eleven high-level representatives of agriculture and livestock in Latin America and the Caribbean. This platform enables agreement and prioritization of regional actions to strengthen capacities for productive agricultural development that is adapted to the effects of climate change and is resilient and low in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”
DESPLAZAMIENTO POR RAZONES CLIMÁTICAS, una aproximación desde los derechos de las mujeres
Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, julio de 2024
“De acuerdo con proyecciones del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC), para el 2050, entre 31 y hasta 143 millones de personas tendrán que desplazarse como consecuencia del cambio climático en América Central, América del Sur, África Subsahariana y Asia Meridional. Si se pone en perspectiva esta estimación, es como si dentro de dos décadas, más del total actual de la población en México tuviera que desplazarse”.
2024 Investment Climate Statements: Guatemala
U.S. Embassy Guatemala, July 2024
“Despite steps to improve Guatemala’s investment climate, international companies choosing to invest in Guatemala face significant challenges. Complex laws and regulations, inconsistent judicial decisions, bureaucratic impediments, and corruption continue to impede investment. Citing Guatemala’s CAFTA-DR obligations, the United States has raised concerns with the Guatemalan government regarding its enforcement of both its labor and environmental laws.”
Actions, alerts, resources
ISLA EL ESPÍRITU SANTO DIGITAL TOOLKIT 2024
Latin American Working Group, July 2024
“In El Salvador, there’s a small island known as Isla El Espíritu Santo, or the “Coconut Island.” The island’s small population relies on coconut crops and lives relatively isolated from the mainland. Two years ago, President Nayib Bukele’s State of Exception began to target the islanders through arbitrary arrests.”
- *The Migration News Brief is a selection of relevant news articles, all of which do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Latin America Working Group.
P.S. Do you know of someone who might be interested in receiving the Migration News Brief? Tell them to email tdelmoral@lawg.org.
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