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Table of Contents

1. Integration and Development

2. Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

3. Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

4. Labor Migration

5. Migrants in Transit

6. Borders and Enforcement

Integration and Development

🌎 Regional

• A pair of UNHCR publications (1, 2) “show how supportive public policies and partnerships with private companies can drive long-term solutions for refugees while creating prosperity in host countries,” per a press release.

  • “UNHCR engaged with more than 1,500 companies across the region in programmes ranging from relocation to specialized training. At the same time, national and local governments supported those efforts through policies and concrete measures that facilitated access to documentation, formal employment, and financial services, among others. Flagship initiatives such as the Internal Relocation Programme in Brazil and the Local Integration Programme (PIL) in Mexico provided stable integration opportunities for more than 200,000 people over the last decade, while contributing to the local economy and tax base.”

🇧🇿 Belize

• IOM, UNICEF, and UNHCR signed a joint work plan that “prioritizes birth registration, child protection, and efforts to prevent and reduce statelessness. UNICEF, IOM, and UNHCR will support government institutions to ensure that every child is registered at birth and able to access essential services including health care, education, and protection,” per a press release.

🇨🇴 Colombia

• Colombia has extended the deadline for applications for the PEP-Tutor regularization program, reports Infobae.

🇬🇾 Guyana

• “Venezuela was once home to thousands of Guyanese who migrated decades ago to benefit from a thriving Venezuelan economy. Today, thousands of Venezuelans are working in Guyana – ‘the fastest growing economy’ in the hemisphere since its discovery of oil. Many Venezuelans work in mining and construction while many operate food businesses and are employed within the hospitality sector,” reports CIJN, investigating life in Guyana along the border with Venezuela, including for Indigenous Warao migrants.

🇺🇸 United States

• “The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke, part of a push to increase the pace of denaturalizations by assigning the cases to prosecutors in dozens of U.S. attorney’s offices across the country,” reports New York Times, noting, “It also comes just months after Trump administration officials ordered Department of Homeland Security staffers to refer upward of 200 denaturalization cases a month to the DOJ… Between 1990 and 2017, the government filed 305 denaturalization cases, an average of 11 per year.”

• A Georgetown Immigration Law Journal paper “argues that the work authorization afforded to beneficiaries of TPS represents a due process interest in property because of the essential nature of work authorization, as well as the fact that beneficiaries of TPS have a legitimate claim of entitlement to their work authorization. Because work authorization represents a property interest, beneficiaries of TPS cannot be deprived of their work authorization without the procedural due process guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🇪🇨 Ecuador

• A CDH report investigates internal displacement in Guayaquil, Ecuador. “The report recommends that the government recognize internal displacement caused by violence, create a single national registry of displaced persons, and implement a public policy for victims that includes safe relocation programs, rental subsidies, housing improvements, and comprehensive rehabilitation of affected neighborhoods,” notes EFE.

🇨🇼 Curaçao

• “The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) determined that Curacao violated the human rights of seven Venezuelan citizens detained on the island in 2019, in a ruling that again puts the treatment of migrants in the Dutch Caribbean and the responsibility of the Kingdom of the Netherlands under scrutiny. According to the ruling, the authorities failed to justify the use of force during an incident at a detention center, nor did they guarantee basic rights such as timely access to legal assistance,” reports Crónicas del Caribe.

🇧🇷 Brazil

• “A group of civil society organizations working to defend the rights of migrants and refugees has released a public manifesto in support of an Egyptian family that has been detained for 18 days in the restricted area of ​​Guarulhos International Airport, in Greater São Paulo,” reports Metrópoles. The mother is 34 weeks pregnant and has gestational diabetes. The family is awaiting a response for a humanitarian visa request, notes Folha.

🇨🇱 Chile

• With Circular No. 014, the Kast administration has clarified the rules for registering the Chilean-born children of foreigners in the country. While Chile generally has jus soli citizenship rights, children born to “transient foreigners” do not receive citizenship; the new rules instruct officials to record the children of tourists as “child of a transient foreigner.” InfoMigra clarifies that this would not apply retroactively and is “merely an instruction for civil officers that does not modify the law or the Constitution as such, only providing guidelines on how these officials should operate… This does not prevent parents from registering their opposition in writing and requesting SERMIG to rule on the establishment of nationality as specified in the circular.”

  • “This is reminiscent of what happened in Chile between 1996 and 2014 when, in numerous cases, children in Chile were not registered as Chilean citizens due to their father’s immigration status, resulting in cases of stateless children and adolescents who were denied access to nationality and the corresponding basic rights. This led to the creation of the “Chile Recognizes” program in 2016 to address this situation,” says InfoMigra.

🇺🇸 United States

• “A federal appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s directive suspending access to asylum and other legal protections for migrants unlawfully crossing the southern border… The Trump administration can ask the full D.C. Circuit to review the decision or appeal to the Supreme Court,” reports CBS, noting that the executive order introducing the policy was signed over a year ago on Trump’s first day back in office.

• “Republican Representative Chip Roy is taking aim at free speech and freedom of religion, introducing a bill that would target immigrants who support ‘socialism, communism, Chinese communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism’ … The legislation would make any ‘alien’ who supports or has supported those ideologies ‘inadmissible, deportable, denaturalizable, and ineligible for naturalization,’” reports The New Republic, highlighting that the act was named to target New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

• An AP investigation found concerning backgrounds among new ICE recruits, including agents who had “faced lawsuits that alleged misconduct in prior law enforcement jobs.”

• Thomson Reuters fired a longtime employee shortly after she and colleagues “sent a letter to company management in February flagging that ICE could be using Thomson Reuters products unlawfully and asking for greater transparency about the company’s oversight of its contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.” (NPR)

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎🇨🇱 Chile and Regional

• The Kast administration is attempting to restart Chile-Venezuela consular relations in order to facilitate the deportation of Venezuelan migrants in Chile, reports El País.

• Chilean and Bolivian officials met to discuss migration and border coordination. (Infobae)

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• DW examines the case of over a dozen Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian migrants being deported by the US to DR Congo (see last week’s AMB), noting that “all of them were under protection orders from the U.S. justice system and could not be sent to their countries of origin,” adding, “The Associated Press reported that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is providing humanitarian assistance to the deportees. It has also reportedly offered them assisted voluntary return to their countries of origin. David [a lawyer for one of the migrants] considers this coercion.”

  • El País highlights the stories of some of the deportees: “The deportees are hopeful that their respective governments will be able to repatriate them. Although both Cubillos and Rodelo maintain that returning to the country they fled under threat [Colombia] was not part of their original plan, they believe it is now their best option given the circumstances.”

  • “The Peruvian government is arranging for the delivery of safe-conduct passes for four of its citizens who have requested to return to the Andean country,” notes EFE.

  • Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Iowa are attempting to send a Bolivian asylum seeker to DRC as well after a judge ruled he couldn’t be returned to Bolivia due to threat of torture. (Des Moines Register)

  • And: “After halting a U.S. resettlement program for Afghans who helped the American war effort, President Trump is in talks to send as many as 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo,” reports New York Times, noting, “The Afghans have been living in limbo in Qatar for over a year.”

• For a third straight week, Costa Rica has received a group of third-country nationals deported by the US. The most recent group of 25 individuals hail from Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, China, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Bolivia, and Romania, reports EFE. (see last week’s AMB)

  • EFE adds that from the two previous flights, “of the 47 people received, 18 are in the assisted voluntary return program, 12 have stated they do not wish to return to their country of origin, and 2 have withdrawn from one or more of the options. The others have requested more information or have not yet communicated their decision.” Per AR, “A Kenyan woman who arrived in the country on the first flight of deportees from the United States is the first migrant to officially apply for asylum in Costa Rica.”

• Paraguay received a first flight of third-country deportees from the US. The group of 16 deportees are from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Spain. EFE adds, “The agreement between both countries stipulates that a maximum of 25 people per month can arrive in Paraguay, provided they are Spanish-speaking and have the approval of the local authorities.”

🇩🇴🇪🇨 Ecuador and Dominican Republic

• Ecuador and the Dominican Republic have signed an “Interinstitutional Agreement on Consular Cooperation, aimed at improving the mechanisms of assistance and protection to their citizens in third countries where they do not have their own consular representation.” (Listin Diario)

🇻🇪🇨🇴 Colombia and Venezuela

• The leaders of Colombia and Venezuela met, discussing migration, among other issues. (Caracol)

Labor Migration

🇺🇸 United States

• “Pull of the American Dream Weakens for China’s Best and Brightest: U.S. immigration hurdles and fear of crime, amplified by state media, have become reasons for Chinese talent to stay home” (WSJ)

• A Georgetown Immigration Law Journal paper examines opportunities for healthcare worker migration to the US to address “persistent” shortages.

Migrants in Transit

🌎Regional

• A Consultores 21 survey from February 2026 finds that 1 in 3 Venezuelans want to emigrate, reports El Impulso, noting, “the United States is no longer the primary destination on the migration radar, while countries like Colombia, Chile, and Peru remain relevant… Spain is emerging as a destination within a second wave of migration linked to family reunification.”

• The New Humanitarian investigates what happened to the 300,000 migrants stranded in Mexico that had hoped to enter the US to seek asylum until the Trump administration shut down the CBP One app. Data is sparse; “One of the challenges when it comes to tracing what has happened to people undertaking reverse journeys has been keeping track of the various routes that have sprung up – especially with the diminished capacity of UN agencies and NGOs.”

  • Return migration to South America by sea to skip the Darien Gap has reportedly dropped. “One of the main reasons for the recent drop is because ticket prices charged by smugglers have increased from around $100 to about $300… Panamanian migration authorities are now stopping people in a town called Nuevo Tonosí, north of Miramar – the gateway to the Caribbean route – and only allowing through those who have enough money to pay the inflated ticket price.”

  • Northbound migration to Mexico hasn’t stopped altogether, though, as The New Humanitarian notes that “many people – especially Cubans and Venezuelans – head to cities in the Yucatán Peninsula, like Cancún, to join established communities,” among other areas in Mexico.

• As migration has risen in Latin America in recent years, birthrates have also fallen across the region, reports Americas Quarterly. “Rapid rural-to-urban migration is part of the picture. Latin America is now the developing world’s most urban region, with over 80% of its population living in cities. Birth rates are lower in cities than in rural areas, but rural birth rates are also falling, narrowing the gap across the region.”

🇲🇽 Mexico

• “Hundreds of migrants, most of them from Haiti, left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on foot Tuesday seeking better living conditions elsewhere in Mexico. Migrant caravans like the one that left Tapachula used to aim for the U.S. border. But many of the migrants leaving Tapachula on Tuesday said they had lost hope of making it to the U.S. due to the restrictions that the Trump administration has placed on asylum seekers. Instead, the migrants said they wanted to settle down in large Mexican cities, where they may be able to find work and file asylum claims,” reports AP.

Borders and Enforcement

🇨🇱 Chile

• A Senate commission rejected the Kast government’s proposed bill to make irregular entry a criminal offense. (Diario UChile, La Tercera)

  • “Under the old Decree Law 1094, in effect until 2021, irregular entry was a criminal offense. And it was precisely that last year—when the penalty was still fully in force—that registered the highest number of irregular entries in recent history. Since then, with an exclusively administrative system, under the new Immigration and Foreigners Law, entries have steadily decreased,” note law academics Tomás Pascual and Macarena Rodríguez at El País, adding, “In a context of fiscal constraints and complex criminal prosecution challenges, adding a significant burden of new cases to the criminal justice system by criminalizing irregular entry is problematic.”

  • A Centro de Políticas Migratorias report analyzes the proposed law, finding that “criminalizing irregular entry could violate the fundamental rights of migrants. With respect to the effectiveness of criminal sanctions, international evidence suggests that criminalizing irregular migration is ineffective and generates adverse effects, such as the growth of human trafficking networks and the precarious situation of migrants. In Chile, previous experiences have not significantly reduced irregular entries and have resulted in a low number of convictions.”

• Some irregular migrants who would like to voluntarily leave Chile face obstacles to do so, reports El País; challenges include “the cost of airfare, fines for entering the country illegally, and the requirement to obtain a permit for legal departure.” If unable to surpass these, migrants must leave the country irregularly across the border.

• The Kast government has reportedly progressed 40% of the way with its trenchbuilding efforts along Chile’s northern border. (El Norte)

🇨🇴 Colombia

• “The number of foreigners denied entry to Colombia on suspicion of sex tourism and sexual exploitation has registered a significant increase in 2026,” reports RCN.

🇺🇸 United States

• Centrist think tank Third Way published a memo, “How Democrats Can Rebuild the Public’s Trust in Immigration Enforcement.” Recommendations include to “Restore accountability through fair, independent, and transparent processes for addressing abuses committed under Trump,” and to “Adopt a smart enforcement agenda that prioritizes threats to public safety and the integrity of the immigration system.”

• A Georgetown Immigration Law Journal paper reviews the Supreme Court’s 2024 end of the Chevron deference, exploring the impact on immigration removal adjudications: “Deference generally meant that courts upheld the U.S. administrative agencies’ interpretation of the immigration statute and agency orders of removal of noncitizens from the United States… Chevron deference for years had adverse consequences on noncitizens.”

• “Republicans are exploring whether to use the 2026 farm bill as yet another vehicle to funnel money to ICE,” reports Migrant Insider.

• “A federal appeals court issued an order Wednesday blocking a California law requiring federal immigration agents to wear identification, another blow to the state’s attempts to limit the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics,” says AP.

• “‘This Will Kill People’: Laredo Landowners Fight Wall and Buoy Plan Threatening Flood-Prone Communities. As federal officials fast-track billions in border wall construction and floating buoy barriers, local leaders and residents say they’re in the dark, and fear the worst.” (The Border Chronicle)

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Table of Contents

1. Integration and Development

2. Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

3. Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

4. Labor Migration

5. Migrants in Transit

6. Borders and Enforcement

7. More on Migration

Integration and Development

🇺🇾 Uruguay

• A newly introduced bill in Uruguay’s Congress proposes a reform to the country’s migration law to introduce a new immigration category, residency by rootedness (arraigo), modeled on a recent 2024-2025 regularization program for arraigo. The bill would create a residency pathway for those who “entered the country through an authorized immigration checkpoint, requested refuge and reside in the national territory with the intention of remaining there and who, having roots in the country, cannot request or obtain their legal residence in accordance with current regulations”—including those with rejected asylum bids, reports Montevideo Portal. (see also Periódico Cubano; see AMB 3/3/25 and 5/20/24)

🇵🇦 Panama

• “Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino did not rule out studying a possible regularization of Nicaraguans on Thursday, given the difficulties these migrants or refugees face in obtaining documents from their embassy,” reports EFE.

🇨🇴 Colombia

• El Estímulo highlights challenges faced by Venezuelan migrant children in Colombian schools, including discrimination and a lack of integration, noting that Colombian schoolchildren’s bullying is learned from (adult) others, not innate.

🇨🇱 Chile

• Despite the rhetoric from the Kast government, migrants in Chile contribute more to public coffers than they consume. “False information only serves to generate a sense of nonexistent chaos, which, based on legitimate trust in the authorities, citizens may believe to be true. This, in turn, contributes to creating a hostile environment that, sooner or later, leads to discrimination, xenophobia, racism, and dehumanization,” writes Francisca Vargas Rivas at El Mostrador.

🇦🇷 Argentina

• A paper at Estudios demográficos y urbanos explores housing access and arrangements for Paraguayan and Venezuelan migrants in Greater Buenos Aires.

🇺🇸 United States

• “Naturalization applications — both submissions and approvals — are down significantly in the past year, report Anusha Mathur and Ximena Bustillo of NPR… Many experts, and immigrants themselves, say fear is deterring legal immigrants from taking the final step of citizenship as the administration has tightened policies. “There is an understanding that we’re in a political climate where it is unsafe for a lot of immigrants to engage with federal agencies,” said Gianina Horton, a city council member in Aurora, Colorado. “Whether that is true or perceived, it is still a huge influential factor.”” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)

• Immigrants fearful of recent IRS-ICE collaboration under the Trump administration were hesitant to file taxes this year, report New York Times, highlighting a Yale Budget Lab study estimating projected lost tax revenue of roughly $300 billion over a decade.

• “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that an Executive Order that would mandate that banks must collect citizenship information from customers is currently ‘in process,’” reports Time.

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🌎 Regional

• NACLA highlights protection concerns and challenges for migrants as the Milei government has taken an increasingly restrictionist and criminalizing approach to migration; a separate NACLA article considers similar issues in Chile under the new Kast government.

🇭🇹 Haiti

• “A recent International Rescue Committee (IRC) assessment reveals grave protection risks and rapidly shrinking access to public services for civilians in Haiti, as the country continues to face one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The IRC assessment focused on areas experiencing the most severe needs–the Ouest department, where gangs control 90% of Port-Au-Prince, and the Artibonite and Centre departments, where armed attacks have begun to surge. Key findings include: 73% of households report feeling unsafe where they sleep, with the majority of displaced families sheltering in insecure, overcrowded conditions. Only 5.5% reported living in their homes,” notes a press release.

🇺🇸 United States

• “Since October 2025, 4,499 refugees were resettled in the US, according to the Refugee Processing Center. All, except three from Afghanistan, were South African,” reports BBC.

• “In a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend temporary protections [TPS] for Haitian immigrants, a long-shot effort fighting back against President Donald Trump’s attempts to end the program,” reports AP, noting that the bill “faces uncertainty in the Senate, and the Republican president would almost certainly seek to veto it.”

  • Relatedly, “A group of Yemeni immigrants (last week) requested an emergency court order to prevent the Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status from going into effect,” per Center for Constitutional Rights.

• “The United States Has an Internal Displacement Problem: By reorganizing federal disaster policy around the rights of displaced people, the United States could unlock additional federal resources, accelerate the rebuilding of lives and livelihoods, and reduce suffering and economic disruption” (Carnegie Endowment)

  • “Millions of Americans are displaced by disasters every year, and a significant share of them remain displaced for months or years.”

• WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Border Update, noting, “Conditions at ICE detention centers remain dire… ICE’s arrests and detained population have declined. However, reports are proliferating about abusive and inhumane conditions in the agency’s network of detention facilities, where a remarkable 16 people have now died in custody since the start of the year.”

  • A later update from Austin Kocher at his Substack reveals the 17th reported ICE detention death of the year.

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• A group of 16 migrants from Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador were deported by the US to the DRC, reports Reuters.

  • “Once in Congo, the deportees were told they had been granted a seven-day visa allowing them to move freely in the country, which could be extended for up to ⁠three months, ​the Colombian migrant said. The group was also informed that they ​were welcome to apply for asylum in Congo, though officials discouraged them from doing so, warning Congo was dangerous, the migrant said.”

• “Costa Rica received 22 migrants of various nationalities deported by the United States on Friday… the group consists of eight Brazilian migrants, three Romanians, three Uzbeks, two Chinese, two Azerbaijanis, one Irishman, one Indian, one Vietnamese, and one Belarusian,” reports EFE. (see also La Teja)

  • Of the group of 25 third country deportees sent the previous week (see last week’s AMB), 8 have expressed fear of returning to their home country, notes EFE.

  • Looking back to last year, “A handful of families — a portion of the 200 people deported from the U.S. last year to Costa Rica, where they had no ties — have found an unexpected welcome in Monteverde, a mountaintop town in the country’s northwest.” (New York Times, via Latin America Daily Briefing; see also La Teja)

• NACLA highlights US-Ecuador border externalization efforts and cooperation under the Trump and Noboa governments.

• Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has taken a firmer stance voicing concern about deaths of Mexican citizens in US immigration detention, including calling for investigations and “(instructing) Mexican consulates to visit detention centres daily,” says The Guardian.

🇬🇹🇭🇳 Honduras and Guatemala

• “Honduras and Guatemala consolidated a strategic agreement this Thursday by establishing a binational roadmap to regulate and dignify labor migration on their shared border, a process that seeks to transform the flow of temporary workers, between 40,000 and 45,000 each year, into engines of economic and social development for both countries,” reports Infobae. Both countries are a part of the CA-4 free movement agreement in Central America.

  • “The establishment of the bilateral temporary labor migration working group, agreed upon at this meeting, will serve as a technical and political body to analyze migration flows in detail , define institutional actions, and create transparent coordination mechanisms between the two governments.”

🇨🇴🇵🇦 Panama and Colombia

• Officials from Panama and Colombia met for the 29th Meeting of the Binational Border Commission (Combifron) to “strengthen operational coordination, intelligence sharing, and the execution of joint actions against threats that persist in the border area” around the Darien, reports La República. (see also Infobae)

🇹🇼🇧🇿 Belize and Taiwan

• Officials from Belize and Taiwan met to discuss migration and labor, notes BBN.

Labor Migration

🇧🇷 Brazil

• A new bill in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies aims to regulate the situation of migrants working temporarily in the agricultural sector—whether they be international migrants or internal migrants from other regions in Brazil. The bill looks to create “clear rules that ensure dignified conditions for this temporary labor migration. The absence of these parameters generates legal uncertainty and exposes workers to vulnerable situations,” reports MigraMundo.

  • “Among the main points, the bill provides for the creation of a specific temporary visa for seasonal work in the agricultural sector, valid for up to five years and allowing multiple entries into the country, coinciding with periods of higher demand for labor. The proposal also establishes that the granting of this visa must be coordinated with the National Employment System (SINE), in dialogue with employers and workers, to define the permitted activities and the length of stay… According to the bill, employers must also ensure clear information about salaries, working hours, health and safety, as well as guarantee adequate accommodation during the work period.”

🇦🇷 Argentina

• An ILO and RENATRE report investigates temporary labor migration in the agricultural sector in Argentina and implications for the rural labor market.

🇺🇸 United States

• Evaluating 15 years of annual household survey data in the US, CGD examines demand for workers in sectors related to the green transition: “nearly a third of green workers are approaching retirement, the workforce’s expansion has been heavily reliant on immigration, and the states with the tightest labor markets are those where supply growth has stalled. The situation calls for proactive investment, not panic—but the window for action is narrowing.”

Migrants in Transit

🌎Regional

• A UPenn Kleinman Center report examines the relationship between climate change and migration in Central America, introducing a machine learning constructed “sub-national dataset that captures 13 distinct types of environmental adaptations at an unprecedented scale,” based on 25 million media articles since 2012.

  • Findings include that “Slow-onset disasters (e.g., drought) are associated with lower levels of international migration in subsequent months. Alternatively, sudden-onset disasters are associated with higher international migration in later months… Climate disasters are sometimes associated with subsequent violence reflecting resource competition. Environmentally motivated violence is concentrated in areas where agriculture is the dominant mode of production and is associated with increased international migration in later months”

• An R4V map updated for February 2026 visualizes the distribution of the nearly 7 million Venezuelan migrants across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to official statistics.

  • Meanwhile, an Oxford Border Criminologies blog by Erick Moreno Superlano explores how Chavista communes spread narratives to frame emigration as “betrayal” and produce immobility.

🇵🇾 Paraguay

• BBC highlights the migration of conservative Brazilians to Paraguay

Borders and Enforcement

🇨🇱 Chile

• The Kast government conducted its first deportation flight this past week, sending 40 migrants back to Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador on a military plane; 15 of the 40 reportedly had criminal histories. The administration announced plans to conduct three deportation flights per month for an estimated 1,400 total repatriations in the year. There are currently an estimated 336,000 irregular migrants in the country. (Reuters, RTVE, DW, El País)

  • There are currently more than 44,000 irregular migrants in Chile “ready for deportation,” of which 65% are Venezuelan, reports El País, adding that the government claims that 2,180 Venezuelans have left the country of their own accord since Kast’s election victory last December. Chile currently does not maintain diplomatic relations with Venezuela and would be unable to conduct deportations of these individuals.

• The Kast government launched a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the Santiago Metropolitan Region with over 700 officials. (La Tercera, Infobae)

• “Chile says construction of a ditch on the border with Peru to combat irregular migration is 20% complete” (RPP)

• An increasing number of migrants have been detected by Chilean officials attempting to cross into the country from Bolivia, with over 90% returned across the border—the government views this as a success due to improved detection rates, per La Tercera.

🇦🇷 Argentina

• The Milei government continues its immigration enforcement operations among immigrant communities in Buenos Aires. Last Friday, a total of 2,965 individuals were interviewed during one such operation, of which 821 were foreigners. 15 of those individuals were in an irregular situation. (La Nación)

🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos

• “Turks and Caicos Islands recently activated a major multiagency dragnet in response to a surge in illegal migration involving Haitian sloops grounding in several parts of the territory,” reports TC Weekly News, noting in a second article that close to 200 irregular migrants were apprehended within one week.

🇺🇸 United States

• ICE “deported 442,637 people between October 2024 and September 2025, according to newly-released statistics… The top-line figure is about 171,000 people more than the fiscal year before, but far short of Trump’s campaign promise to deport one million people a year,” reports Axios.

• “As part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration campaign, the administration is promoting self-deportation, the euphemism for the voluntary — in reality, pressure‑driven — return of migrants to their countries of origin amid the climate of persecution unleashed in the United States. Self-deporting, however, is no easy task, no matter how willing the individuals may be,” reports El País, highlighting that some migrants that use the CBP Home app are detained, never receiving promised funds due to technical ineligibility.

• Trump administration plans to set up large-scale immigration detention facilities in warehouses are receiving significant pushback from local communities, including in heavily Republican areas. AP reviews the state of proposed sites across the country.

• “The View From Inside Trump’s D.H.S.: Dozens of agents and officials share their stories about working in the Department of Homeland Security during the harsh crackdown on illegal immigration.” (New York Times)

More on Migration

🇦🇷 Argentina

• “Argentina Cancels CBI Master Agent Tender After Two Firms File Challenges” (IMI)

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Table of Contents

1. Integration and Development

2. Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

3. Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

4. Labor Migration

5. Migrants in Transit

6. Borders and Enforcement

Integration and Development

🇵🇪 Peru

• An INEI survey of a probabilistic, representative sample of 3,680 Venezuelan migrant households across 8 Peruvian cities reveals that 16.5% of Venezuelans were in an irregular migratory status at the time of the study in 2024. Other findings include that over 36% of Venezuelan adults had some degree of higher education, 60.5% had at least one account with a financial institution, and nearly 89% of those working were doing so informally. (technical report, El Pitazo coverage)

🇨🇱 Chile

• Felipe González Morales, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, writes at El Mostrador that the Kast administration’s proposed law to restrict access to benefits and public services for irregular migrants—recently passed in the Senate (see AMB 3/30/26)—“presents a series of very problematic aspects from the point of view of International Law and the guarantee of human rights.”

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🌎 Regional

• An IMUMI and UC Berkeley Human Rights Clinic report examines “how the climate crisis is driving forced displacement from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, with a disproportionate impact on women and marginalized communities.” Recommendations include calling for the Mexican state to “guarantee the regular delivery of the Visitor Card for Humanitarian Reasons (TVRH) to people affected by the adverse effects of climate change.” (press release)

🇲🇽 Mexico

• “In Mexico, more than 300,000 people have been displaced in recent years. Although violence associated with organized crime captures public attention, the lack of guarantees for the rights of LGBTIQ+ people is also generating internal displacement that remains insufficiently documented and addressed,” highlights ZonaDocs.

🇧🇷 Brazil

• A HUMANVISA project report, based out of University of Sheffield, maps Brazil’s humanitarian visa policy and relevant actors, noting that these visas are simultaneously “A safe pathway for access to international protection” and “Policies that follow a logic of austerity and the outsourcing of responsibilities to civil society organisations.” They find humanitarian visas to be both a mechanism for protection and an instrument of migration control. Recommendations include “Treating humanitarian visas as complementary to asylum, allowing persons to apply for asylum and residence authorisation for humanitarian reception concomitantly to enjoy both types of protection,” and “Improving family reunification visa procedures so that they are clear, facilitated, rapid, and with the possibility of appeals in case of refusals, so that humanitarian visas need not be used as an alternative mechanism to reunite families in Brazil.” (see also related piece at MigraMundo)

🇧🇿 Belize

• Belize is looking to facilitate easier access to the asylum system, working to “establish a referral system especially with immigration officers and police officers who are more likely to come across asylum seekers in Belize… If they are informed on what to look out for to identify asylum seekers then they can refer these persons to (the Refugees Department),” per an official quoted by 7News.

🇭🇹🇩🇴 Dominican Republic and Haiti

• “The Collectif Défenseurs Plus, a human rights organization, denounces the silence of the Haitian government in the face of the acceleration of repatriations and deportations of Haitians, carried out by the Dominican authorities in conditions deemed inhumane,” reports AlterPresse.

🇺🇸 United States

• “3-year-old immigrant was sexually abused in federal custody, lawsuit alleges: The girl was separated from her mother at the border and kept in foster care for months even though her father, a legal permanent resident, had been seeking her release.” (NBC)

• “ICE Agents Shoot Into a Car, Injuring a Suspect in Northern California: A federal official said the agents were pursuing a wanted gang member who tried to run one of them over. Dash cam video complicates the account.” (New York Times)

• “ICE Reports 15th Detained Death of 2026 at Miami Correctional Center in Indiana” -- this continues the consistent trend of one death in ICE custody every 6.0 days, notes Austin Kocher at his Substack.

  • Relatedly, a San Francisco Chronicle investigation reveals that “at least 17 people in ICE custody died after medical staff delayed or failed to provide critical care that might have saved their lives.”

• “A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked, for now, the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ethiopians in the United States, reports Nate Raymond of Reuters. The judge wrote that the administration did not follow the lawful process for ending TPS and that “armed conflict and natural disasters continue to create dangerous conditions” in Ethiopia.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)

• “DHS is using powerful spyware cyber weapon Graphite to surveil suspected migrants, journalists, activists, and critics, according to an official DHS response to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after they requested information on surveillance by ICE. Graphite is a more modern and powerful version of Pegasus, which is banned in the United States,” explains Pirate Wire Services.

• “Temporary Protected Status protects families while also boosting the U.S. economy: Newly updated analysis finds that TPS helps protect hundreds of thousands of families while also filling worker gaps in the U.S. workforce.” (Fwd.us)

• “Dozens of US and international human rights organizations are decrying the Trump administration’s plans to establish a migrant “camp” for fleeing Cubans at the Guantánamo Bay military base if the island nation’s crisis worsens under pressure from the US, according to a letter to members of Congress on Friday,” notes The Guardian.

🇨🇦 Canada

• Following the passing of Bill C-12 (see AMB 3/30/26), the Canadian government has sent letters to some 30,000 asylum applicants telling them they may not be eligible for asylum. (CBC)

• “Artificial intelligence is being used to bolster immigration and asylum cases in Canada by generating fake narratives, including references to fabricated court decisions. Both the federal department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an independent tribunal that rules on asylum applications, say they have detected the use of AI in applications containing fake or inaccurate information,” reports The Globe and Mail.

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• “Costa Rica received 25 foreign nationals deported by the United States on Saturday afternoon, as part of the memorandum of understanding signed at the end of March… The migrants are from Albania, Cameroon, China, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Kenya, and Morocco,” reports La Nación, noting, “The IOM offered its cooperation to migrants so that, free of charge, they receive lodging, food and humanitarian assistance during the first seven days of their stay in the country, starting from their entry… Those who, during the first seven days after their arrival, express their desire to remain in Costa Rica may do so legally. A temporary immigration regularization program will be authorized for humanitarian reasons. The DGME added that migrants may, at any time, apply for the special refugee category, complying with the ordinary procedures established in the legislation.” Diario Extra adds that the temporary regularization would be for a one-year period. This comes after Costa Rican officials previously asserted that the country would not accept any Latin American deportees and would specifically try to accept nationalities uninterested in remaining in the country. (see last week’s AMB)

• “Preparations may already be underway for Belize to receive an initial group of migrants under the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, with indications that international support has been mobilized to assist in the process. Sources within government have indicated that (UNHCR) has reportedly secured funding from the United States to support the accommodation of a first round of transferees,” reports LoveFM. However, “Minister of Foreign Affairs Francis Fonseca pushed back against the reports, stating that Belize has not yet reached the stage of receiving migrants under the agreement.”

• “Last year the U.S. Trump administration struck a deal with El Salvador’s government to deport hundreds of immigrants — mostly Venezuelan — to an infamous maximum security prison built by President Nayib Bukele. The benefits for the Trump administration’s migration crackdown were evident. Bukele’s goals, beyond currying favor with Donald Trump, were less evident; he obtained the repatriation of gang leaders detained in the U.S. who could provide incriminating evidence regarding past negotiations with MS-13. A new documentary by Frontline and El Faro delves into the “deal within a deal”,” explains Jordana Timerman at the Latin America Daily Briefing.

  • “Ultimately, Bukele was not pleased with the outcome of the CECOT deal with the Trump administration, according to James Bosworth. “His government expected gang members, but instead received many innocent Venezuelan migrants who had no criminal record or ties to Tren de Aragua. While Bukele has no problems detaining innocent Salvadorans, the high level of attention and backlash on the Venezuela issue caused him some reputation damage both in his country and the region. Bukele blames the Trump administration for not sending the right people, whether they maliciously lied or simply didn’t care. That dispute is the reason that additional transfers of migrants have not occurred.” (Latin America Risk Report)”

• “The United States is negotiating with three countries to take over the nearly one thousand Afghans who have been stuck in (a) camp located at a former U.S. military base in Qatar, report Robbie Gramer and Michelle Hackman of The Wall Street Journal. After the halt of visa processing and relocations for Afghan nationals in November, people in the camp are in legal limbo. Initially, the Trump administration set March 31 as deadline to shut down the camp, but after missing the deadline, it’s looking for alternatives including some economic incentives for people to move back to Afghanistan, the Journal reports.” (via The Forum Daily)

• The new foreign minister of Mexico, Roberto Velasco, discussed migration and security issues over the phone with his US counterpart, Marco Rubio. (El Economista)

Labor Migration

🇨🇦 Canada

• “More than 400 US-trained doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers have made the move to British Columbia (B.C.) in the past year — thanks to new rules that make it faster and easier to get licensed and start working,” reports CIC News.

🇺🇸 United States

• The New York Times highlights the impact of the Trump administration’s changes to the H-1B skilled worker program: “The effects have been uneven across employers, with the burdens falling most heavily on smaller firms, nonprofits and rural hospitals that are having a harder time gaining access to the program because they cannot cover the costs anymore.”

• The Trump administration has “systematically (restricted) many of the visa pathways that admit workers and family members to the United States, dramatically slowing the legal immigration system,” says MPI, breaking down “Step by Step, Unprecedented Efforts to Slow Legal Immigration.”

  • However: “While these actions have stymied many forms of legal immigration, the administration is facilitating entry through selected streams at the high- and low-income ends. Applications are open for the Trump “gold card,” which offers permanent residence for those who pledge to contribute $1 million to the government upon approval. The administration also has worked to facilitate seasonal immigration of generally low-wage temporary workers on H-2A agricultural worker visas and H-2B nonagricultural visas. It lowered the wage levels required for H-2A workers, tried to streamline the application process, and restored waivers of in-person interviews for H-2A visa renewals. It also opted to maximize use of a congressional option to expand H-2B visas, nearly doubling the number available.”

Migrants in Transit

🌎Regional

• A Georgetown ISIM and CLAS report “examines the impact of changes in US policies on the transit countries with particular attention to the cuts in US assistance, the closing of the US border, deportations and the likely taxation of remittances sent home by migrants.” The report covers all countries along the transit migration path from Colombia north to the US.

• UNHCR surveyed a non-representative sample of Venezuelan migrants residing in several South American countries and Guatemala, finding that “35% expressed an inclination to return to Venezuela: 9% with immediate intent (within 12 months), 10% considering the move, and 16% expressing a general preference for repatriation. Family reunification drives return aspirations, but most respondents indicate that return would require major economic and political stabilization in Venezuela.”

  • On a similar note, The New York Times highlights challenges some Venezuelans in the US face should they want to return home: “Many Venezuelans… had their passports confiscated when entering the United States, under a longstanding federal policy to speed up deportation should they be denied asylum — leaving them unable to fly home. Venezuelan officials require a valid passport or a government-issued travel permit for entry by airplane. This document is available only in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, or in select consulates in Latin America, which have been overwhelmed by such requests.”

🇧🇷 Brazil

• Oiapoque, a small city in the Brazilian Amazon, is receiving an influx of internal migrants looking for work in newly licensed offshore drilling efforts. (AP)

🇰🇾 Cayman Islands

• Cayman Compass highlights the story of one Cuban’s maritime journey en route to the Caymans.

Borders and Enforcement

🇵🇪 Peru

• The Peruvian government has declared a 60-day state of emergency along the country’s border with Chile, aiming to “restore internal order through strict territorial control to combat organized crime, irregular migration, and illicit trafficking,” per RPP. Efforts to combat migration and other concerns include the use of drones, thermal cameras, and light armored vehicles, as well as “the implementation of a physical blockade and armed surveillance of all informal entry points identified by intelligence. Likewise, the decree mentions that foreign citizens attempting to enter the national territory through unauthorized locations will be immediately returned, while the National Police and the Armed Forces will conduct permanent and continuous motorized patrols along the entire border line.” (see also BioBioChile)

🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago

• A group of 13 Venezuelan migrants were apprehended off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, reports Daily Express.

🇺🇸 United States

• “A federal judge on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from rushing deportations of Somali migrants, despite finding the administration had most likely singled out the community for quicker removal hearings,” notes New York Times.

• “Detention numbers have declined considerably to about the levels at the end of FY 2025 in September 2025—so the lowest in six months…. even with the decline, these numbers are at historical levels and that it’s not unusual for detention numbers to fluctuate. Still, this is quite a decline,” writes Austin Kocher at his Substack, explaining, “the decline in detention numbers comes from some combination of fewer immigrants without criminal histories are being arrested and possibly more are being released.”

  • “For the first time I can recall, for as long as I’ve been looking at detention data, the total number of people with criminal convictions is now the smallest of the three groups [the other two groups being those with pending criminal charges and “other immigration violators”]. It’s not by much, but if you’re looking for another data point that contradicts the administration’s wild claims about “the worst of the worst”, there you have it. Remember that these are ICE arrests only; I do not include CBP arrests in this data.”

• “New Data Reveals ICE Has Set Aside $257 Million to Pay Local and State Law Enforcement” -- as part of the 287(g) program (Fwd.us)

• “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 800 people following tips ​shared by federal airport security officials from the start of Donald Trump’s presidency through February 2026,” reports Reuters.

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Table of Contents

1. Integration and Development

2. Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

3. Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

4. Labor Migration

5. Migrants in Transit

6. Borders and Enforcement

7. More on Migration

Integration and Development

🇧🇷 Brazil

• “Brazil received two visits from United Nations agencies related to migration issues this March,” reports MigraMundo, noting comments from the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants praising Operation Welcome but calling for “institutionalization and long-term planning” for Brazil’s leadership on migration issues. Preliminary recommendations from the rapporteur include “creating a national strategy for teaching Portuguese as a second language, and ratifying the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families – which began its process in the National Congress in 2010 and has been awaiting a decision from the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies since 2022.” (see also UN, EFE)

🇪🇨 Ecuador

• UNHCR interventions efforts have improved labor formality and financial inclusion among refugees in Ecuador, per an impact evaluation report. Furthermore, “4 out of every 10 enterprises supported by UNHCR create additional jobs, 33% of which are filled by Ecuadorians.”

🇨🇱 Chile

• “For Venezuelans across Chile, Maduro’s fall briefly offered hope that the crisis that forced millions to leave their country might finally begin to ease. Yet as the country moves into a new political era under Kast, that moment of optimism has given way to a familiar reality: lives shaped by uncertainty and futures constrained by immigration laws that offer no clear path to regularization,” says NACLA.

🇬🇹 Guatemala

• Infobae highlights the Guatemalan government’s efforts to reintegrate returnees, including through job training, skills certification, and healthcare access.

🇸🇻 El Salvador

• USCRI examines challenges faced by Salvadoran returnees.

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🌎 Regional

• A Fundación Refugiados Unidos report investigates repression in Venezuela—as well as transnational repression—and the impacts on those seeking protection in neighboring Colombia. The authors highlight, “Bureaucratic mazes and fear of returning: interviewees are afraid to return and to use Venezuelan consular services. This exacerbates their precarious situation, since, for example, banks require individuals to be physically present to resolve account freezes, which would expose exiles to a real risk of detention or disappearance if they return to Venezuela. Similarly, they prefer to avoid interactions with consular offices.”

🇺🇸 United States

• “Fourteen people have died in ICE custody so far in 2026, already more than all of 2024… In-custody death counts are the most visible measure we have, but they represent only one part of a broader spectrum of harm that detention inflicts, harm that extends before, during, and after people’s time in custody,” explains Austin Kocher at his Substack.

• A federal judge has “voided the Trump administration’s decision to end the immigration parole status of migrants who entered the country under the Biden-era CBP One policy,” reports CBS, noting that out of more than 900,000 beneficiaries, “It’s unclear how many will benefit from the ruling since some may have been deported already or gained another lawful status. The Justice Department is likely to appeal the ruling.”

• “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will resume processing most asylum applications, but a pause remains in place for nearly 40 countries, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News. The administration paused the applications after an Afghan national was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November… At the time the freeze was announced, the asylum backlog numbered nearly 4 million cases, notes Ximena Bustillo of NPR.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)

• “Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, the only U.S.-run Afghan refugee camp, is shutting down, reports Kadia Tubman of Scripps News. The camp has housed more than 1,000 Afghans and their families who have been thoroughly vetted and approved for resettlement. “Abandoning our allies doesn’t make America safer,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, citing the breaking of a promise “that we will not leave them behind.”” (via The Forum Daily)

• “The DNA Archive Built to Identify the Border’s Missing Has Vanished: The Colibrí Center for Human Rights was a vital link between families and their missing loved ones. But now it’s gone dark.” (The Border Chronicle)

• The New York Times highlights Stephen Miller’s role in the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

• WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Border Update, noting, “Democratic legislators’ demands for reforms to the Homeland Security Department’s ICE and Border Patrol components have held up 2026 funding for all of DHS, even as those specific agencies have separate funding from the giant appropriation that Congress passed last July. Passage of a bill to fund everything but ICE and Border Patrol appears imminent, while Republican leaders are considering using the “reconciliation” budget maneuver to guarantee three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol without reforms.”

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• Multiple pieces of news and analysis related to third-country deportation agreements:

  • “The Trump administration’s mass deportations agenda includes a focus on deporting some unauthorized immigrants to countries other than where they were born… The number of people deported under these agreements has so far been a fraction of the total deportations conducted by the Trump administration because, except for Mexico, most countries have agreed to accept at most a few hundred deportees. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates about 15,000 third-country deportations (13,000 of them to Mexico) occurred between January 20, 2025, and December 31, 2025,” explains MPI, adding, “it appears the focus on expanding deportations to third countries is less about achieving numbers than it is incentivizing people to “self-deport” or deterring would-be irregular arrivals by making clear their future could be completely out of their hands if they are sent to countries such as Ecuador, Eswatini, or Uzbekistan, where they have no ties.” MPI additionally characterizes the different agreement types and highlights legal challenges.

  • Looking specifically at deportations of those seeking asylum in the US: “More than 13,000 migrants have been ordered deported to so-called “safe third countries” after their asylum cases were canceled, according to data from San Francisco-based Mobile Pathways. More than half the orders were for Honduras, Ecuador or Uganda, with the rest scattered among nearly three dozen other countries… According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the rights groups Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 of them are thought to have been deported,” reports AP.

  • Uganda has received the first flight of third-country deportees from the US under an August 2025 agreement, reports The Guardian, noting, “The Uganda Law Society said it would be filing legal challenges to the deportations in Ugandan and regional courts.”

  • “DR Congo to receive ‘third-country’ deportees from the US under new deal: DRC gov’t says deportees will begin to arrive this month, under a ‘temporary’ arrangement paid for by the US.” (Al Jazeera)

  • Costa Rica will not accept Latin American migrants as part of the agreement to receive third country deportees from the US, reports La Nación. Costa Rican security minister Mario Zamora said that the deportees will be allowed to seek asylum in the country—but he also stated that they will specifically only accept those nationalities less inclined to remain in the country. (see last week’s AMB)

  • “As President Trump searches the world for countries willing to accept thousands of migrants deported from the United States, he is finding that some of the most receptive leaders are strongmen, autocrats and human rights abusers,” says New York Times.

• A George W. Bush Institute report explores what a “smart foreign policy to manage migration” might look like for the US: “The executive branch should prioritize international cooperation and capacity-building with countries of origin, transit, and destination as an important part of its migration management efforts.”

• “The government of Mexico on Monday condemned the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and voiced concerns about the deaths of its citizens in immigration detention facilities in the United States,” reports New York Times. Mexico plans to take the situation to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), notes EFE.

• Panama conducted a deportation flight to Colombia with support from the US under an MoU dating back to the Biden administration (La Estrella de Panamá; see AMBs 11/3/25 and 7/8/24)

Labor Migration

🇨🇦 Canada

• A Broadbent Institute report focused on Canada “(highlights) the role unions continue to play in organizing opposition to exploitative labour mobility programs and promoting immigrant and migrant workers’ rights, and showing how this may be shaping the attitudes of union members more broadly… 56 per cent of union members see immigration as having positive impacts, versus 41 per cent of respondents who were not union members… Whereas older research found that union members were disposed toward restrictionist immigration policies to limit labour supply, this appears to be far less the case today,” explains The Maple.

🇺🇸 United States

• The Trump administration has moved to lower wages and facilitate temporary labor migration in the agricultural sector, reports Axios, contrasting this with obstacles for high-skilled migration introduced by the Trump administration.

  • Axios notes, “These changes enraged the United Farm Workers, a union that’s long struggled against migrant labor undercutting its members. The UFW is suing the Trump administration over the changes. “There is nothing “America First” about expanding exploitative guest worker programs that undercut and displace American workers,” Teresa Romero, UFW president, said in a statement on the lawsuit, adding that the changes allow “big agricultural corporations to exploit cheap foreign labor.””

• “As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S.” (New York Times)

• “The Trump administration’s deliberate delay in visa renewals for foreign doctors in the United States is forcing some to stop working, Simon J. Levien of Politico is the latest to report,” notes The Forum Daily, adding, “Many of the hospitals and other health care settings experiencing the impacts are in rural and underserved places.” (see also New York Times)

Migrants in Transit

🌎Regional

• Spain may soon become a less attractive destination for Venezuelan migrants: Infobae reports that although the European country has announced a mass regularization program for those already there, a previously oft-used humanitarian permit pathway for Venezuelans is set to close.

• Venezuelan migration has dropped at the Chilean border in recent weeks, reports Vilas Radio. Irregular entry has been falling for multiple years, as noted in AMB 10/13/25.

Borders and Enforcement

🇨🇱 Chile

• Diario UChile questions if the new Kast administration’s planned ditches at Chile’s northern border are effective measures, particularly when considering sustainability and the financial outlay in the long-run: “The most paradoxical thing is that international experience shows that these kinds of actions tend to displace and make migration more dangerous, and don’t actually achieve their objective to stop it.”

• Three weeks in, the Kast administration has yet to conduct a deportation, notes El Mostrador. The president stated, “Within the next few months, you will see a continuous system for the deportation of migrants. We are analyzing how to do it, both by air and by land.”

• The Kast administration’s proposed bill to make irregular entry a crime is “a bad idea” and—in addition to potential unconstitutionality—creates complications for the practice of migrant returns to Bolivia at the Chile-Bolivia border, writes former National Migration Service head Luis Eduardo Thayer Correa at El Mostrador, touting enforcement efforts adopted under the Boric administration.

🇺🇸 United States

• “ICE data continues to show spikes in arrests driven by immigrants with no criminal history. Since the last update to detailed data in the middle of October, ICE’s total arrests of what it classifies as “other immigration violators” (OIV, people with suspected immigration violations but no other criminal history) shot up sharply while the corresponding number of people with charges and convictions actually slightly declined,” explains Austin Kocher at his Substack, breaking down new Deportation Data Project data.

• “Despite messaging from the Trump administration that immigration enforcement operations would be more targeted, federal officers continued detaining immigrants with no criminal records in Minneapolis even after public backlash, report Emmanuel Martinez and Marianne LeVine of The Washington Post.” (via The Forum Daily)

• “A group of President Donald Trump’s MAGA allies released a playbook Wednesday to fulfill the largest deportation push in U.S. history. It could very well split Trump’s coalition,” reports Politico, explaining that the plan “rests on one crucial pillar: A major immigration enforcement crackdown on workplaces… That strategy almost certainly promises to alienate some of the Trump administration’s allies in the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries, which all rely heavily on undocumented labor.”

🇰🇾 Cayman Islands

• Cayman Islands announced new visa restrictions for entry and transit for Peru and Venezuela, as well as adding in-transit visa requirements for Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (Cayman Compass)

More on Migration

🌎Regional

• “In December 2025, the U.S. government did two anomalous things in the span of a week: it launched a new citizenship by investment (CBI) program — the Trump Gold Card, Corporate Gold Card, and Platinum Card — selling U.S. residency or citizenship for between $1 million and $5 million. Then, it banned the citizens of Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica from entering the country as immigrants, students, tourists, or on business, citing those nations’ CBI programs as a national security threat… The U.S. has every right to pressure Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica to reform programs that pose genuine national security risks. However, it does not have the credibility to do so while launching a program that contains design-level gaps that, if left unaddressed, create conditions for similar misuse,” says Niskanen.

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Table of Contents

1. Integration and Development

2. Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

3. Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

4. Labor Migration

5. Migrants in Transit

6. Borders and Enforcement

7. More on Migration

Integration and Development

🇨🇱 Chile

• Chile’s Chamber of Deputies passed a bill to restrict access to benefits for irregular migrants, as well as to prioritize Chilean nationals in the country’s public health and education systems. The bill now goes to the Senate. (press release; see BioBioChile on what benefits migrants do have access to)

  • The children’s ombudsman has criticized the bill as discriminatory and incompatible with the Chilean constitution and Law of Guarantees for Children, notes La Tercera.

• La Tercera reveals more information about the recently out-of-office Boric administration’s planned regularization program, which was never launched and implemented. (see also AMB 3/16/26)

  • The new Kast government’s migrations director Frank Sauerbaum told La Tercera, “We are not going to carry out a mass regularization as proposed by the Boric administration. Instead, we will establish a process to regularize the status of those who truly meet the requirements in Chile.”

  • A pair of articles at InfoMigra argue that regularization would help improve security and avoid fiscal waste.

🇨🇴 Colombia

• In a new ruling, Colombia’s constitutional court is urging the ministry of education to “design and implement a protocol for the validation of academic degrees aimed at people recognized as refugees or asylum seekers.” (press release)

• La Nación highlights integration challenges for Venezuelan migrants in the Colombian education system, including discrimination and bullying.

🇨🇼 Curaçao

• “The government of Curaçao has officially launched the “Rib’e Lugá” program, a temporary initiative aimed at registering and legalizing undocumented individuals living on the island,” reports Curaçao Chronicle, explaining, “Rib’e Lugá is open to individuals who can demonstrate that they entered Curaçao before November 13, 2025, continue to reside on the island, and do not have a criminal record… The program will officially begin on May 1, 2026. The registration period will last three months and will be conducted entirely online. Applications will be assessed based on clearly defined criteria, with the possibility of obtaining a temporary residence permit ranging from one to three years, depending on the purpose of stay. Several pathways to legalization are included, such as employment, self-employment, and family reunification. Special attention will also be given to the protection and future of minors.”

🇲🇽 Mexico

• “A group of about 500 migrants traveled through southern Mexico Wednesday, protesting long waits for paperwork and requesting authorization to move to areas with greater employment prospects,” reports AP.

🇬🇹 Guatemala

• In 2025, the Guatemalan “Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance provided care to more than 10,000 returnees in Guatemala City and the border municipality of Ayutla, San Marcos… Among the labor reintegration initiatives, 1,311 repatriated citizens participated in job training processes, and of these, 850 people managed to enter the labor market,” reports Infobae, reviewing achievements from the year.

🇺🇸 United States

• A Journal on Migration and Human Security paper estimates “that beneficiaries of birthright citizenship will have contributed $7.7 trillion to the U.S. economy through their income between 1975 and 2074.”

• “White House immigration advisor Stephen Miller is pushing Texas lawmakers to make it harder for undocumented children to attend publicly funded schools, reports Lauren McGaughy of The New York Times. Such a policy would challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling in Plyler v. Doe, under which states must pay for elementary schoolchildren’s public education no matter their immigration status. Lawmakers in several states are considering such legislation, College of Charleston education professor William McCorkle writes in The Conversation.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily; see AMB 3/9/26)

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🇭🇹 Haiti

• A Mercy Corps report examines internal displacement in Haiti, noting that “life inside IDP sites is defined less by access to temporary shelter and more by ongoing exposure to violence, high rates of gender-based violence (GBV), near-total livelihood collapse, and extreme food insecurity, all compounded by weak reporting mechanisms and inadequate protective infrastructure.” (see last week’s AMB)

🇨🇷 Costa Rica

• Confidencial highlights the challenges faced by Indigenous Miskito women that have fled to Costa Rica from Nicaragua, including exploitation, discrimination, and violence.

🇸🇻 El Salvador

• “A group of 18 Venezuelan men whom the U.S. (deported to) a notorious Salvadorian mega-prison are demanding that Salvadorian authorities be held internationally accountable for violation of human rights – detailing new allegations of torture, sexual assault and medical neglect, reports the Guardian.” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)

🇺🇸 United States

• “A federal judge on Monday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing a new ‌policy that would subject thousands of refugees to arrest and detention if after a year in the United States they had yet to obtain green cards… plaintiffs alleged the policy exposed over 100,000 lawfully ⁠admitted refugees whose adjustments of immigration status applications are pending before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ​to potential detention.” (Reuters)

• The Supreme Court appears to lean towards siding with the Trump administration on a case on “metering,” in which officials can “turn away asylum seekers when officials deem U.S.-Mexico ​border crossings too overburdened to handle additional claims,” per Reuters. (see last week’s AMB)

• “In a growing number of cases, the Trump administration has recently begun admitting to judges it is unable to defend some of its decisions to detain immigrants. In dozens of cases over the past several weeks, Justice Department lawyers have declined to push back on detainees’ claims that they’re owed a chance to make a case for their release. In those cases, the administration has simply agreed to provide a bond hearing, or even outright release,” reports Politico.

  • Mother Jones reveals that ICE has also taken away immigration documentation and not returned it upon release: “Again and again, according to 10 immigration lawyers interviewed for this story, immigrants in Minnesota have been released from detention centers without the work permits, Social Security cards, licenses, and other documents that prove their status.”

• “Although fewer children are now at the Dilley, Texas, detention center than earlier this year, conditions for those detained are still concerning, reports Garance Burke of the Los Angeles Times. Court documents filed Friday cite many cases of children lacking adequate food, medical attention or mental health care.” (via The Forum Daily; see last week’s AMB)

• “San Diego County Sheriff’s officials failed to investigate at least seven reported sexual assaults at the privately run Otay Mesa immigration detention center in 2025, and records show the agency has ceded control of the cases to civilian administrators employed by the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractor,” reports Cal Matters.

• “Human Impact Project: A living database documenting reported incidents of harm related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.” (HUMSI)

🇨🇦 Canada

• Bill C-12 has passed and become law, adjusting Canada’s asylum system through “1. New eligibility requirements for asylum claims; 2. A modernized asylum process; 3. Domestic information sharing; 4. Immigration document and application authorities.” (press release)

  • “The United Nations Human Rights Committee is sounding the alarm over Canada’s immigration and borders bill, saying its measures may weaken refugee protection and compromise the country’s compliance with international human rights obligations,” reports Toronto Star. A coalition of civil society groups also criticized the new law.

  • An estimated 19,000 asylum claims filed in Canada last year will be retroactively disallowed under the new law. (Toronto Star)

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎 Regional

• “Even as the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) aggressively pursues full membership in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the territory is maintaining a firm refusal to adopt the community’s free movement of labour policy,” reports TC Weekly News.

  • Similarly, in BVI, “Premier Dr Natalio Wheatley has stated that the United Kingdom does not support the free movement of people into Overseas Territories such as the Virgin Islands, noting that migration policy is not solely determined by the local government,” notes BVI News.

🌎🇨🇱 Chile and Regional

• Following concern in Peru over Chile’s planned border trench at the Chile-Peru border, the two countries agreed to (continue to) work together on migration issues and exchange data and information. (Infobae, EFE, Vilas Radio)

• “Frank Sauerbaum, director of the Chilean National Migration Service, held a meeting with the United States Embassy in which the issue of relations with Venezuela was addressed in order to seek diplomatic mechanisms that would allow the expulsion of the migrant population in irregular condition,” reports TalCual.

  • “For now, there is no exact date for the expulsion of the Venezuelans, but the goal - said the Chilean official - is to advance the relationship with Venezuela as soon as possible. He announced that they will move forward with other nationalities while they resolve the situation with Venezuela. “We are going to prepare the first charter flight to Colombia for the second week of April with around 60 people,” he stated.”

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• Costa Rica and the US signed an MoU for up to 25 third-country deportations per week to the Central American nation. Costa Rica’s president “said the deal is voluntary and nonbinding, allowing Costa Rica to decide which deportees to accept or reject, including the choice of specific nationalities. Under the agreement, the U.S. government provides financial support and the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, covers the costs of deportees’ housing and meals, the Costa Rican president’s office said in a statement.” (New York Times)

  • Costa Rica’s ministry of national security—not the migration directorate—will manage the implementation of the agreement. Public statements reveal that the head of the migration directorate was not involved in the agreement, which was handled at the presidential level in the country. It is not clear if the Catem shelter in the south of the country would be used to receive arrivals or not, and further details have not yet been clarified. (CR Hoy, La Nación, Tico Times)

    • Of the 200 migrants deported to Costa Rica by the US last year, 30 remain seeking refuge in the country, reports La Teja.

  • Opposition politicians in Costa Rica have criticized the deal. (Delfino, Tico Times)

• “Dominica has completed the framework for the standing operating procedures governing its participation in the Third Country National Arrangement (TCNA) with the United States, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced on Wednesday… Skerrit did not provide a timeline for full implementation,” notes Dominica News Online.

• “The Trump administration defeated a lawsuit on Wednesday from nonprofits targeting the government’s agreement with El Salvador to send US-based individuals into confinement in their prisons,” reports Bloomberg.

• “The Trump administration secretly made a deal in which Cameroon is receiving U.S. deportees from other countries, Hamed Aleaziz and Pranav Baskar of The New York Times report. The U.S. government stayed quiet when Cameroon’s government cracked down on protesters in the fall and used $30 million designated for the Cameroon office of the U.N. refugee agency as a bargaining chip, Aleaziz and Baskar report. The agreement is part of the administration’s broader use of third-country deportations.” (via The Forum Daily)

• “In a memo to Secretary Rubio made public by POLITICO, officials detailed a broad strategy to steer Western Hemisphere countries away from Cuba’s medical assistance programs. The State Department is offering nations that agree to stop hiring Cuban doctors financial backing for healthcare upgrades, including telemedicine and virtual training, as well as guidance on sourcing medical workers through what the memo calls “ethical third-country recruitment.” The document, marked sensitive but unclassified, described a two-to-four-year timeline to wind down Cuba’s medical missions across the region entirely,” explains CEDA’s US-Cuba News Brief.

🌎🇪🇸 Spain and Regional

• Colombian and Spanish officials met in a high-level technical meeting to “design (Global Skills Partnerships) that promote job skills training and facilitate regular, orderly, and development-oriented migration,” per a press release.

• Spanish and Ecuadorian officials met to discuss “the development of pilot programs, global alliances and cooperation schemes in labor mobility.” (EFE)

Labor Migration

🇪🇨 Ecuador

• Ecuador’s foreign minister Gabriela Sommerfeld “said that Ecuador is making progress in labor mobility agreements with Spain, Italy, Germany, the United States, Israel, Hungary, the United Arab Emirates and Australia,” according to Expreso.

🇨🇷 Costa Rica

• “Salvadoran migrants help address the shortage of bus drivers in Costa Rica” (EFE)

🇵🇦 Panama

• “Panama has introduced a new residence permit for researchers, scientists and exceptional talent professionals, with a pathway to permanent residence after a two-year provisional period,” explains Fragomen.

🇩🇴 Dominican Republic

• A new resolution requires “that applications for renewal of temporary work permits (TT-1) for non-resident foreigners must be accompanied by a formal employment contract, registered with the Ministry of Labor, making it clear that this type of authorization does not cover informal activities,” reports Diario Libre.

  • “Various sectors expressed yesterday that, although they recognize the legality of the measure, it could generate adverse effects in the current context,” reports Diario Libre.

🇺🇸 United States

• “A new proposed rule from the Trump administration will make it more expensive to hire H-1B visa holders and sponsor employment-based immigrants by significantly raising the required prevailing wage,” reports Forbes.

• “Under Trump, legal immigration to U.S. is falling from most countries: The State Department issued about a quarter million fewer visas in the first eight months of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024.” (Washington Post)

Migrants in Transit

🌎Regional

• “Mexican authorities found 229 migrants on Monday packed in the back of a truck traveling through the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, the first such encounter in months, marking a potential uptick in migration since President Donald Trump took office,” says CBS.

  • “This year, shelters in southern Mexico told the AP that in addition to receiving non-Mexican foreigners deported by Trump, they have once again begun to take in Central Americans heading north, although in very small numbers.”

• “Cuba’s deepening crisis has not translated into a surge in irregular migration, with just 24 migrants arriving in Cayman so far in 2026,” reports Cayman Compass.

Borders and Enforcement

🇨🇱 Chile

• The Kast administration plans to have Chile’s Migration Service “work with the tax authorities, investigative police and the Labor Ministry to conduct enforcement, levy fines and initiate expulsions… Under a proposal now before Congress, additional migration control measures would make hiring undocumented migrants a criminal offense rather than just an administrative violation, introducing possible jail time and the temporary or permanent closure of businesses,” reports Bloomberg.

🇺🇸 United States

• The Border Chronicle highlights how the Trump administration has militarized the US-Mexico border.

• “The federal government is installing 17 miles of buoys along the Rio Grande to impede border crossings — and plans 519 miles more, reports Martha Pskowski of Inside Climate News and The Texas Tribune. Private companies are executing the $1 billion Department of Homeland Security (DHS) project, which experts say could shift the river channel and exacerbate flooding, Pskowski reports. On the land-based barrier front, a team at The Washington Post delves into DHS’s significant border wall expansion now under way.” (via The Forum Daily)

• “President Trump is seeking to lower the profile of his mass deportation effort, and has directed his top advisers to adopt a new approach on one of his central campaign promises,” reports Wall Street Journal.

• “Trump Has Detained the Parents of More Than 11,000 U.S. Citizen Kids… Trump has deported moms of U.S. citizens at four times the rate of his predecessor.” (ProPublica)

• The Trump administration has stacked the Board of Immigration Appeals with aligned judges, resulting in the court “significantly (narrowing) the due process and relief from deportation available for immigrants,” per NPR.

  • Even still, the courts system has pushed back on many Trump administration immigration policies. An MPI analysis explores resistance in the courts.

• “Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey signed legislation on Wednesday to prohibit on-duty law enforcement officers, including immigration agents, from wearing masks. Federal officials have already said they will ignore the new rule, which is likely to lead to a court challenge,” reports New York Times, adding, “A similar mask ban was signed into law last week in Washington State, and Democrats have introduced bills in 17 other states that would prohibit the police from wearing masks.”

More on Migration

🇩🇲 Dominica

• “Dominica’s Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) has suspended the processing of applications from Iranian nationals,” reports IMI.

Writing to you from Washington DC on what happens to be International Migrants Day, this year has had a lot going on, to say the least. Since starting the Americas Migration Brief in January 2023, I have written an annual special edition in December to review the year’s migration trends and outline key issues I’m watching in the new year. Check out the editions from 2023 and 2024.

Given time constraints during this busy second year of my PhD program, I am keeping this year’s version short. If you’d like to support this newsletter and my research and migration policy work more broadly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the AMB. A paid subscription also grants you access to the full archive of weekly briefs. If you are unable to commit to a recurring paid subscription at this time, I also accept one-time donations by PayPal here.

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2025 has been a year of much change across the Americas. The Trump administration’s draconian policies have left the US-Mexico border quiet (thus far)1 and have terrorized local communities across the US. The repercussions of Trump’s policies across the hemisphere have been many, including a lack of funding and support for host countries across the region, new pressures to reintegrate returnees, and stalled progress on cooperation. Regional, collaborative, and constructive approaches to migration management have been thrown into disarray by the Trump administration’s personalistic, bilateral-focused negotiations and incessant flip-flopping.

While enforcement has grabbed headlines, quieter efforts to expand labor migration have grown. Debates over recruiting high-skilled migrants in countries such as Canada and the US have proliferated, while many in Latin America have looked for new pathways to outside of the hemisphere. Spain has continued to emerge as a leading destination for Spanish-speaking migrants in the region. And Ecuador, for its part, has inked new circular migration deals with countries such as Israel, Italy, and the UAE.

Large-scale movement across the region has slowed in 2025, but the push factors for once-historic migration levels in the 2020s have not gotten any better. Indeed, economic and security conditions have not improved in many countries, the acute crisis in Haiti persists, and the dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua remain resilient (more on Venezuela below). Challenges remain across the hemisphere, and few countries have displayed a willingness to accept new arrivals in the current moment. As a bright spot, though, Brazil has continued to grow as a welcoming destination for Cuban, Haitian, and Venezuelan migration.

With that, the following is a non-exhaustive list of key issues I’m paying close attention to in the new year:

• Latin America’s Right wants to mimic Trump on migration

• Venezuela’s future hangs in the balance

• Canada could strengthen regional ties

• The Caribbean’s free movement coalition could expand

• Reintegration requires investment

An anti-incumbent wave has brought new conservative governments to power across Latin America with promises of securitized, hardline immigration policy. Many of these leaders have invoked the policies of US president Donald Trump, planning to emulate the US Border Patrol model and pledging to deport irregular migrants who they frame as criminals. Last Sunday, far-right politician José Antonio Kast won the second round of Chile’s presidential elections, centering his campaign on immigration and security. How far are Kast and other leaders willing to go? Mass deportations are an expensive, logistically-complicated, and rights-averse endeavor, as the US and the Dominican Republic have shown. Furthermore, they are not necessarily as popular as some claim, as overreach with this has led to public pushback against Trump. Plus, with many countries currently lacking diplomatic relations with Venezuela, promises to deport the many Venezuelan migrants across the region, in particular, are hollow.

Kast, for his part, has already shifted his rhetoric towards promoting “self-deportation,” indicating recognition that a mass deportation campaign would be difficult in practice. In Argentina, meanwhile, Milei has flipped the script on the country’s once generally welcoming approach, attacking migrants rhetorically and rewriting laws to limit protections and facilitate expulsions. However, immigration is not an important political issue in Argentina, and it is unclear just how committed Milei may be to this apparent distraction from the cost-of-living challenges voters care more about. Amid rising insecurity, Ecuador’s Noboa and Peru’s interim president Jerí—the latter to be replaced in upcoming elections next year—have also adopted more securitized approaches. But the scope and future of these measures remain to be seen.

Venezuela’s Maduro regime is the most vulnerable it has been since 2019. For the roughly 8 million Venezuelans living abroad—the vast majority within Latin America and the Caribbean—the fall of the dictatorship would be reason for rejoicing and considering returning home. At the same time, chaotic efforts to dislodge the Maduro regime may well produce even more displacement from the country—something we have seen in years past. The country’s kleptocratic, repressive dictatorship is the root cause of ballooning displacement over the last decade, but to suggest that Maduro’s removal is a simple and easy solution misses the mark. A myriad of experts have written about this issue from a variety of perspectives; I have neither the time nor the space to litigate this debate here, but I will underscore that the unclear future of Venezuela is closely tied to the future of migration trends across the Americas.

Canada could strengthen ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. Full disclosure, I contributed to a recent report by the Canadian Council for the Americas outlining a new strategy for Canadian engagement with the region. Canada’s Carney government has an opportunity to expand relationships in the hemisphere and fill gaps left by the Trump administration, including on migration. Restarting the Safe Mobility Initiative and building strategic bilateral labor migration pathways would be mutually beneficial, while establishing a new mobility pact with Mexico could re-energize relations at a critical juncture. In the Caribbean, meanwhile, Canada could take leadership on humanitarian support for Haiti, establishing new partnerships with a regional leader in granting protection, Brazil.

Can the Caribbean full free movement coalition expand? CARICOM’s Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines expanded from the bloc’s limited free movement regime to full free movement on October 1, 2025.2 Despite fears of mass migration and chaos by some, the initiative has quietly been a great success. Dozens of citizens have taken advantage of the new regime to cross borders, work, and set up lives with their families with ease. As fears of instability have been allayed, could other CARICOM nations join the fray? Jamaica, for example, was one of many countries previously considering the matter. With the September 2025 election in the rearview mirror, the Holness government could now be in a better position to conduct previously mentioned public consultations and join the initiative. Creating a free movement regime has been a boon for the Caribbean, and now time will tell if the coalition of beneficiaries can grow.

Finally, reintegrating those returning home requires investment. Reintegration has long been a relatively invisible quagmire, but skyrocketing deportations have highlighted the importance of such efforts. Will countries succeed and offer these returnees a reason to stay, or will frustrations build and eventually spark a new stage in hemispheric migration as many of those returned home set their sights abroad once again? IDB has a series of illuminating new studies looking at the returnee population and reintegration in Honduras, and MPI has examined some of the new policies adopted in Central America and Mexico to respond to the recent wave of deportations. More research and dedicated programming is certainly needed, but successful reintegration could in fact turn a challenge into a development opportunity for the region. In a similar vein, it remains to be seen how much Mexico can capitalize on stranded immigrants previously en route to the US to effectively integrate them and fill labor gaps. As has been the case for centuries, human mobility offers new opportunities to all those involved—conditional on good policy and adequate investment.

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