Americas Migration Brief - March 31, 2025
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🇨🇱 Chile
Updated Chilean government statistics estimate that nearly 2 million migrants were living in the country in 2023, including approximately 730,000 Venezuelan migrants. An estimated 337,000 total migrants are in an irregular status, of which 207,000 have been biometrically registered, a precursor for any potential future regularization. (SERMIG; see AMB 12/16/24 on a proposed regularization program in the country)
🇪🇨 Ecuador
Ecuador’s recent presidential debate addressed the issue of migration, with leading opposition candidate Luisa González asserting that she would recognize Venezuela’s Maduro so as to facilitate deportations of Venezuelan migrants, per El Universo. El Barómetro de Xenofobia highlighted concerns surrounding xenophobic discourses.
Less than half of the Ecuadorians deported by the US in the last couple of months have taken part in Ecuador’s social and economic assistance program for returnees, reports El Universo.
🇻🇪 Venezuela
“The first migrant assistance center in Venezuela has opened, located at the Bolívar municipality bus terminal in San Antonio del Táchira, on the border with Colombia. The center's purpose is to serve Venezuelans who have been deported from the United States in recent days,” reports Unión Radio, noting health care services will be provided to deportees.
🇦🇷 Argentina
An ILO report explores job training and skills certification efforts for migrants working in the Argentine construction, service station, and automotive mechanics sectors from 2012-2022.
🇺🇸 United States
“Shifting Priorities: How the Official English Executive Order Could Affect Language Access Efforts” (MPI)
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎 Regional
Doctors Without Borders highlights the violence faced by migrants traveling through Central America and Mexico and calls for greater access to protection.
🇨🇴 Colombia
With over 56,000 Colombians recently internally displaced by armed conflict in the Catatumbo region, a Human Rights Watch report investigates the situation, noting, “While most fled for fear of being targeted or caught in the crossfire, many had been threatened by ELN or 33rd Front members. Some said that following their displacement, people in their communities had told them that the ELN had destroyed their property or taken over their homes.” Displaced persons interviewed by HRW reported continued fear of retaliation by armed groups and overcrowded conditions in places of shelter. (see AMB 2/24/25)
A new Colombian government system for organizing data on refugee processing notes that in 2024, “the Internal Working Group on Refugee Status Determination (RSD) admitted a total of 9,163 RSD applications… 94.5% of the accepted applications correspond to Venezuelan nationals.” (news release)
🇧🇷 Brazil
Brazil’s current humanitarian visa model is restrictive, writes former Lula administration official Paulo Illes on LinkedIn: “Migrants must have the possibility of building their migration project independently, without depending on the mandatory intermediation of a civil society organization.” Presently, access to humanitarian visas is limited by requirements that shelter space is available for offer to migrants. (see AMB 1/6/25)
🇨🇱 Chile
The Jesuit Migrant Service calls for changes to a bill regulating immigration detention centers in Chile, bringing up questions of constitutionality and noting that “The bill also does not address the situation of Chilean children with legal status whose parents are subject to expulsion measures,” and that “The bill does not address measures related to access to protection mechanisms (asylum seekers, unaccompanied children and adolescents), meeting places for legal defense and representation, family coexistence, or hygiene conditions.”
Other comments included, “It's essential to distinguish between those affected by judicial and administrative expulsion measures (and their causes). People who violated criminal law should not be conflated with those who only violated administrative law.”
🇲🇽 Mexico
UNHCR and Mexico’s refugee agency “opened a Multi-Service Center this Friday to serve asylum seekers and refugees in Tapachula, the largest city on Mexico's border with Central America. Hundreds of migrants, mostly Haitians, gathered in front of the new building to seek assistance at the registration or first contact offices,” reports EFE.
A CDH Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas report explores the challenge of organized crime and violence in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, noting the impacts on thousands of forcibly displaced Mexicans. (La Silla Rota; see also AMB 7/29/24)
“The stifling effect of Trump policies on the movement of people heading north is creating new challenges. People on the move are now stranded in precarious living conditions across Mexico, more exposed to potential abuses and violence, and deeply affected by the uncertainty of further policy changes ahead,” reports The New Humanitarian, adding, “funding cuts to foreign aid have forced a reduction in services and are making it harder for humanitarian organisations to provide assistance.”
🇺🇸 United States
Third country deportations are on pause, for now: “President Trump’s efforts to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin hit a new roadblock on Friday, when a federal judge issued a temporary order requiring the administration to give migrants an opportunity to contest their removal on the grounds that they might be at risk of persecution or torture,” reports New York Times.
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to lift a judicial order temporarily halting deportations of Venezuelans through the Alien Enemies Act. The legality of the initiative is currently bogged down in court. (Reuters; see last week’s AMB)
“Lawyers for Venezuelans fighting their removal said Monday that women were returned to the U.S. after El Salvador refused to accept them. That would seem to contradict Justice Department claims in court that they couldn't turn around President Donald Trump's deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act,” reports USA Today.
“The Trump administration on Monday invoked a “state secrets privilege” and refused to give a federal judge any additional information about the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador,” reports AP.
The migrants deported to El Salvador “no longer appear in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador. Because the deportees are not serving sentences, it is unclear how and when they could ever be released from the prison, notes the Associated Press.” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)
Cristosal analyzes the judicial basis of the situation, asserting a failure of compliance with international law.
“Organizations that provide legal aid to migrant children have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after the agency cut funding to the program that provides legal representation to tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors,” reports ABC.
An International Migration Review paper using novel data approaches “provides new statistics on nearly a half million unaccompanied minors navigating removal proceedings in US immigration courts nationwide between 2009 and 2023 (through March), including population demographics, geographic location of cases, representation rates, and case outcomes… During the study period, only 51% of unaccompanied children were represented by an immigration attorney at any time during their removal proceedings… Children who were not represented by an attorney were far more likely to be ordered deported.”
“A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the administration can partially enforce a refugee ban during the ongoing legal battle over an executive order that suspended the resettlement program, reports David Nakamura of The Washington Post. The court did stipulate that the refugee resettlement of those who were already approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services before the executive order must continue, Nakamura notes.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)
With the continued targeting of individuals for speech, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on his plane on Thursday night that the State Department under his direction had revoked the visas of possibly more than 300 people and was continuing to revoke visas daily. He did not specify how many of those people had taken part in campus protests or acted to support Palestinians but said ‘there’s a lot of them now,’” reports New York Times.
Under the Trump administration, “migration policy in the U.S. has turned increasingly more violent. It has also increasingly found ways to turn that state violence inwards on the domestic population,” writes Joshua Collins at Pirate Wire Services.
🇨🇦 Canada
“This week, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issued a bleak assessment of Canada’s immigration detention system, calling for Canada to protect the legal capacity rights of people with disabilities in detention and urging an end to immigration detention altogether,” says Human Rights Watch.
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
Nearly 200 Venezuelan migrants were deported from the US to Venezuela with a connection through Honduras, the first since restarting cooperation after recent squabbles. (El País; see last week’s AMB)
““The Honduran government has strong diplomatic relations with Venezuela and their involvement in the transfer of Venezuelan deportees raises questions about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Trump administration and the two Latin American governments,” reports the Guardian. The deal was reportedly brokered by President Xiomara Castro’s husband, Mel Zelaya, with Trump envoys Mauricio Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell.” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)
Of the 200 asylum seekers and migrants originally deported by the US to Costa Rica, 74 have left the country and 10 are in the process of doing so, reports Monumental, noting that Costa Rica’s foreign minister has said that none of the migrants sheltered at CATEM have sought asylum in the country. (see last week’s AMB on calls to uphold their protection)
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Jamaica, Guyana, and Suriname, discussing irregular migration, among other topics, with officials. In response to “complaints” surrounding travel warnings for US citizens to countries such as Jamaica, Rubio said the State Department would re-evaluate its guidances “to ensure they reflect real conditions on the ground,” per AP.
Caribbean leaders have also continued to deny US claims that Cuban health workers across the region are victims of “forced labor” (The Guardian; see AMB 3/17/25)
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem traveled to El Salvador, Colombia, and Mexico to discuss migration, reports El País. As part of the trip, the US and Colombia signed a memorandum of understanding “that would pave the way for the two countries to exchange biometric data collected from migrants,” per Al Jazeera.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is in the process of developing a “modern migration policy” with revised regulatory frameworks and renewed institutional planning, reports El Nuevo Diario.
Labor Migration
🇸🇻 El Salvador
The Salvadoran government is providing assistance with tax filing in the US to Salvadoran labor migrants abroad. (Diario La Huella)
🇺🇸 United States
“A Trump H-1B crackdown could hit Big Tech hard, with Amazon suffering most” (Rest of World)
Migrants in Transit
🌎 Regional
Amid a trend in return migration southbound from the Darien and boat arrivals from Panama, and challenges faced by Colombian communities receiving these returnees, the Community Council of the Acandí River Basin and the Northern Coastal Zone (Cocomanorte) “reported that the entry of transporters, guides, or any foreign person or institution transporting migrants will not be permitted.” (El Colombiano)
An IOM report maps data on migration movements in the English and Dutch Speaking Caribbean.
🇵🇪 Peru
Amid economic and energy crises in Bolivia, some Peruvian media is reporting about the potential of high rates of Bolivian migration to Peru (a trend already seen last year, as noted in my end of year special edition of the AMB). Peruvian officials, however, have asserted that reports about irregular entries of Bolivian migrants are misinformation, and no such phenomenon has occurred. (La República, La Razón)
Borders and Enforcement
🇧🇷 Brazil
A congressman from the Brazilian border state of Roraima has proposed a new bill to deport immigrants who intentionally commit crimes in Brazil. (Folha BV)
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
“The Director General of Immigration of the Dominican Republic, Vice Admiral Luis Rafael Lee Ballester, and the president of the National Center of Unified Transporters (CNTU), Williams Pérez Figuereo, held a planning meeting to combat the influx of foreigners with irregular immigration status in the transportation sector,” reports El Nacional.
🇺🇸 United States
Hundreds of US military troops wil “station their armored infantry vehicles near the border in the coming days and use night vision surveillance capabilities to monitor open spaces… The troops will also be authorized to conduct foot patrols,” reports Politico, adding, “The service members are prohibited by law from detaining civilians or carrying out law enforcement duties, although they can defend themselves if attacked.”
ICE data shows that the agency is holding close to 50,000 immigrants in detention, up nearly 10,000 from baseline figures during the Biden administration, according to Austin Kocher, who dives into the data.
The Atlantic highlights the work of Tom Cartwright of Witness at the Border, collecting and disseminating data on US deportation flights. “Cartwright’s database shows that ICE has carried out 267 deportation flights under Trump, and that the president is using military-transport planes—whose operating costs are three to five times as high as conventional passenger aircrafts’—at an unprecedented rate. Otherwise Cartwright’s data show that the pattern and frequency of ICE flights haven’t significantly changed under Trump 2.0.”
“The U.S. government has paused the inclusion of Romania in the Visa Waiver Program… (and) is reviewing the designation of Romania to ensure adherence to the VWP’s security requirements.” (Fragomen)
“On March 24, 30 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE Deputy Director Todd Lyons, raising concerns about conditions at GMOC and the Military Detention Center at Guantánamo Bay. They criticized the Trump Administration for failing to meet public safety objectives and for deporting migrants without criminal records who are classified as “low-risk” and requested clarification on several issues, including details about the individuals detained at the facility, the legal justification for their detention, and their access to legal counsel.” (via CEDA’s US-Cuba News Brief)
Fwd.us highlights the role of the three- and ten-year bars in causing persistence of irregular status, calling for a reform: “Regardless of their original intent, the three- and ten-year bars have become ineffective, prohibiting access to existing legal immigration avenues for undocumented immigrants and putting American families at risk of separation. Congress should reform the bars and restore access to the legal immigration process.”
More on Migration
🇺🇸 United States
“Under a new Treasury Department policy, people in Texas and California who use money services like check-cashing stores, currency exchanges (casas de cambios), and money senders like Western Union will be required to fill out a form disclosing their personal information, including their Social Security number. This policy will apply to cash transactions at $200 or more and will not affect banks,” reports The Border Chronicle, explaining how it will affect remittance senders and others.
These poor migrants in El Salvador. "You're not serving a sentence. Therefore, you can never leave."