Americas Migration Brief - July 28, 2025

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Consulte aqui uma versão em português do boletim traduzida por inteligência artificial.

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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

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Integration and Development

🌎 Regional

• An UNESCO report finds that Costa Rica maintains the most robust policies in Central America for the inclusion of migrant children in the education system, reports Divergentes, adding, “In contrast, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala lack educational reintegration mechanisms for minors returning to their countries of origin or in transit.”

🇨🇷 Costa Rica

• Confidencial highlights the challenges faced by Nicaraguan migrants looking to start their own business in Costa Rica, including the process of business formalization, as many in Nicaragua are accustomed to working in the informal sector.

• Of the 200 migrants from across the world deported by the US to Costa Rica earlier this year, about 90 remain in the Central American country with the opportunity to work and remain, and just 2 remain at the Catem shelter along the Costa Rica-Panama border. (Monumental; see AMB 7/14/25)

  • Costa Rica “was never prepared to provide adequate care” to the group, denounces the Ombudsman's Office. (EFE)

🇵🇪 Peru

• Peru’s migration agency has ruled out the possibility of a large-scale regularization program for Venezuelan migrants without status, reports Rostros Venezolanos, noting that among the nearly 1.5 million foreign-born individuals registered with the agency, 54% are in an irregular situation.

  • “Instead of a mass process, (Superintendent) García Chunga indicated that a more targeted approach is being evaluated, aimed at those who have already established strong ties in the country.”

• Rostros Venezolanos notes that a lack of diplomatic relations and consular services for Venezuelans in Peru means that many migrants are unable to get documentation in order to renew their status or conduct other migration-related processes.

🇸🇻 El Salvador

• A law proposed by the Bukele government would establish a registry of “Jobs for Returning Salvadorans,” in addition to granting tax breaks to employers that hire returnees. (El Diario de Hoy)

🇺🇸 United States

• The Trump administration is increasingly targeting DACA recipients, who arrived to the US without status as children and have received work permits and legal protections from deportation. The Department of Education is set to investigate five universities for offering scholarships to DACA recipients, claiming they discriminate against US citizens, reports The New York Times.

  • The Los Angeles Times highlights the ICE arrest of a deaf DACA recipient during a work raid: “He was sent to an immigration detention center in El Paso, where he spent weeks unable to communicate with his attorney or his family… Diaz was released July 8. He is one of an unknown number of immigrants with permission to live and work in the U.S. who have been caught in the dragnet of President Trump’s deportation campaign.”

• “A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide,” reports AP.

🇨🇦 Canada

• “Ontario is planning to sidestep the federal government and begin issuing work permits to asylum seekers living in the province using a clause written into the constitution,” reports Global News.

  • “The premiers of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories are seeking greater control over immigration to address local labour shortages and economic demands,” says Canada Immigration News.

• Canada has developed a tailored program to support the integration of nurses educated abroad. (CIC)

Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights

🌎 Regional

• CEJIL calls for states to grant refugee status to Venezuelan nationals that have had their passports stripped by the Maduro government in retaliation for activism, journalism, and criticism of authoritarianism and abuses by the Venezuelan state.

🇸🇻 El Salvador

• “The biggest exodus of journalists, lawyers, academics, environmentalists and human rights activists in years is a dark reminder of (El Salvador’s) brutal civil war decades ago, when tens of thousands of people are believed to have escaped. Exiles who spoke to The Associated Press say they are scattered across Central America and Mexico with little more than backpacks and a lingering question of where they will end up,” reports AP,” I note at the Latin America Daily Briefing.

🇺🇸 United States

• “In January 2025, an estimated 6.4 million immigrants had temporary protections… As of September 2025, nearly 1 million immigrants will have lost all temporary protections,” says Fwd.us, additionally highlighting these individuals’ industries of employment and the negative impact of their loss of status on the US economy.

• An appeals court will allow the Trump administration to deport Afghans and Cameroonians with TPS, lifting an order to halt removals while the courts consider the legality of the administration’s move to end TPS for those countries. (The Hill, Reuters)

  • As well, “The Trump administration is rolling back programs that were created to assist more than 250,000 Afghans with planned resettlement in the United States… Many now fear they will be sent back to Afghanistan, where they could face retribution from the ruling Taliban” due to their work supporting the US military, reports Washington Post. A group of Afghans stranded in the UAE was recently returned to Afghanistan, notes Reuters.

• Following the reconciliation bill (the “Big Beautiful Bill”), the Trump administration is now implementing new fees for humanitarian-based applications such as asylum and TPS. (Fragomen)

• Despite previous reporting (see last week’s AMB), The Guardian notes that both US and Guatemalan officials deny the deportation to Guatemala of a Chilean-born US permanent resident named Luis Leon, highlighting a lack of corroborating evidence for key details in the story told by Leon’s family members and initially reported by local newspaper The Morning Call.

• An American Immigration Council report exploring the first six months of the Trump administration’s immigration policy asserts that it is “corrosive to the rule of law itself.” Findings include that “Asylum at the southern border is effectively dead” and that “Legal immigration pathways are being jammed by massive fee hikes, processing freezes, and opaque barriers that make it nearly impossible for even lawful applicants to get or maintain status… The Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics have caused immigrants of all legal statuses to constantly worry about their daily and future safety in the United States.” (press release)

• “Conditions in immigration detention centers in the United States are even worse than previously reported, according to a report released Monday by Human Rights Watch. The document describes flagrant and systematic violations of international standards and the U.S. government's own regulations on immigration detention,” reports El País. (HRW report here)

Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation

🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional

• Following the prisoner swap that sent migrants previously deported from the US to El Salvador back to their home country of Venezuela (see last week’s AMB), one of the Venezuelan migrants is now suing the Trump administration for wrongful detention and removal. Many of the migrants report being violently beaten and abused in the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador. (New York Times, The Independent, AP)

• “Mexico is seeking the repatriation of 14 nationals being held at the United States' detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz",” reports Reuters.

  • Advocates are calling for the detention center to close due to “appalling conditions,” reports The Guardian.

• Belize is reviewing a proposal from the US for a “Safe Third Country” agreement to send those seeking asylum in the US to the Caribbean country. (BBN)

• “Across Africa, and in the tiny nation of Eswatini, fury has erupted over the arrival of foreign deportees from the United States,” reports CNN.

  • “Critics say the Trump administration is leveraging foreign aid, visa bans, security cooperation, and tariffs to pressure African nations to accept U.S. deportees,” notes Foreign Policy.

• DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is set to meet with Argentine president Javier Milei to discuss migration, among other topics, including the potential of Argentina joining the US Visa Waiver Program. Chile is the only Latin American country that currently has access to the program. (La Nación)

🇨🇴🇪🇨 Ecuador and Colombia

• “The Colombian government announced this Friday that Ecuador has begun deporting Colombian citizens who were in Ecuadorian prisons "unilaterally" and without first agreeing on protocols for this task,” reports CNN, adding, “The Colombian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Ecuador ignored its requests to design mechanisms that would allow for a transfer ‘in dignified conditions, with respect for their rights, and in a safe and orderly process.’” More than 800 Colombians have been deported thus far, per Infobae.

🇪🇸🇵🇾 Paraguay and Spain

• Paraguay and Spain have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on circular migration, opening up new temporary labor migration opportunities for Paraguayans. (press release)

Labor Migration

🇺🇸 United States

• “The administration plans to reintroduce a modified version of the 2021 proposed rule that changed the annual H-1B visa lottery to a salary-based selection, writes Stuart Anderson for Forbes. The change will affect international students, early-career professionals and individuals earning lower wages by prioritizing high-income individuals, Anderson notes. Experts warn the rule will disadvantage U.S. recruiting international talent.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)

• US Representative and Texas Republican Monica De La Cruz has proposed legislation for a “Bracero Program 2.0” that makes changes to the H-2A visa for temporary migrant labor in the agricultural sector. Texas Tribune reports, “The proposal would streamline the application process for employers and launch a regional pilot program that would allow workers to change jobs within a state without having to reapply for a visa… However, the program would also lower wages for H-2A workers in Texas.”

  • Carlos Marentes, a farm labor leader and expert on the original Bracero Program, “is concerned about the bill’s proposed wage rate. He fears it will drastically cut farm workers’ paychecks,” reports Border Report, adding, “‘Bracero 2.0’ is a misnomer.”

Migrants in Transit

🌎 Regional

• A Mixed Migration Centre report explores trends across Latin America and the Caribbean in the second quarter of 2025.

Borders and Enforcement

🇩🇴 Dominican Republic

• The Dominican Republic is beefing up its enforcement efforts by hiring around 400 new immigration agents and renovating the Haina Migration Processing Center. “The new agents will be deployed in 19 provinces across the country as part of the territorial expansion plan, which aims to have an operational presence in all 32 provinces by the end of this year,” reports Prensa Latina.

🇺🇸 United States

• “The Trump administration is increasingly relying on Border Patrol agents to help carry out the president’s mass deportation plan and arrest immigrants in cities far from the nation’s southern border — a departure from the agency’s traditional role that some lawyers and advocates consider alarming,” reports Washington Post.

  • Immigration Research Initiative examines the profile of the immigrants ICE is arresting, noting, “ICE increasingly arrests people through methods that do not target those with a criminal conviction.” Additionally, “The areas with the largest change in arrests relative to the pre-Trump average arrest are Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego and Denver (areas of responsibility).”

• “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has directed personnel to sharply increase the number of immigrants they shackle with GPS-enabled ankle monitors,” notes Washington Post.

• “The Trump administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate the largest immigrant detention center in the country at Fort Bliss, an Army base in El Paso, report Sophie Alexander, Fola Akinnibi and Rachel Adams-Heard of Bloomberg. The U.S. Army is allocating $232 million for the project, continuing the trend of detention spaces on military bases. The tent facility is expected to offer 5,000 beds,” notes The Forum Daily.

• “U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday paved the way for the United States to deport certain lawful permanent residents, saying Washington determined some had supported Haitian gang leaders connected to a U.S.-designated "terrorist" organization,” reports Reuters, noting that experts believe that it is “unlikely that many Haitians would have their green card revoked as a result of the policy because of the difficulty of identifying them and then proving the affiliation in immigration court.”

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