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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🇨🇴 Colombia
El Espectador looks at Venezuelan migration along the border, in Cúcuta, Colombia. Many humanitarian organizations have left as migration has slowed—but still persists—and “the organizations that still survive have adapted their care model and now focus on job placement and psychosocial support for Venezuelans.” Furthermore, obstacles to integration remain, including challenges in regularizing status, completing consular procedures, and accessing healthcare, among others.
A National Planning Department report characterizes the situation of Venezuelan migrant women in Colombia, with a particular focus on reproductive health, economic opportunities and autonomy, and the risk of gender-based violence.
🇧🇷 Brazil
A Comparative Migration Studies paper explores political and social (in)visibility of Venezuelan and African migrants seeking protection in Brazil due to discrimination back home related to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
🇺🇸 United States
Using National Crime Victimization Survey data, Cato finds, “Because they commit fewer violent crimes, immigrants lower the violent-victimization rate in the United States. Furthermore, at least prior to the current mass deportation efforts, immigrants cooperated more with police to solve violent crimes when they occurred. Americans should trust that their immigrant neighbors help create safer communities.”
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎 Regional
“The human rights defenders’ offices of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama denounced serious abuses against the growing number of migrants returning to South America due to the tightening of U.S. immigration policy,” reports SwissInfo, finding that more than 14,000 migrants returned south from Mexico and the US between January and August. Findings include “a multitude of situations of violence faced by this population, with particular emphasis on physical abuse, extortion, arbitrary detentions, and sexual violence, particularly during their stay in Guatemala and Mexico,” per the report. (see also press release)
A separate Colombian government report looks at the data on reverse transit migration through the country.
Rolling Stone highlights stories of southbound migration: “grappling with the end of hope is the most difficult part.”
Resama reviews the recent landmark Inter-American Court of Human Rights advisory opinion on climate change, as well as its connections with a 2024 resolution by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Key points include that “States have preventive, protective, and reparation obligations: They are required to adopt advance measures to prevent displacement, as well as to guarantee assistance, durable solutions, and reparation to affected persons—with a differentiated approach for vulnerable populations.” (see also AMB 7/14/25)
🇵🇦 Panama
“Panama has remains of more than 200 unidentified migrants: Decomposing bodies were found in rivers and on trails in the Darien jungle, and authorities estimate there are more bodies in the jungle.” (DW)
🇨🇷 Costa Rica
Civil society and migration advocates are criticizing proposed budget cuts that would cut over 150 million colones from migration-related budgets. Applications for refugee status in Costa Rica currently face significant backlogs, and advocates are additionally concerned about the impact on access to work permits and documentation, among other issues. (Delfino)
Groups have also denounced the budget cuts as linked to funding the construction of a “mega-prison” inspired by Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador. (Surcos)
🇺🇸 United States
“A federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration effort to expand fast-track deportations throughout the U.S. under a process known as expedited removal, indicating that officials are trampling on migrants' due process through the policy's expansion,” reports CBS, explaining, that the ruling “paused a January directive that had expanded the expedited removal policy — long limited to border areas and recent arrivals — to anywhere in the country and to those who arrived in the past two years.”
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending TPS for Venezuelans, “saying that plaintiffs are likely to win their claim that the Republican administration’s actions were unlawful,” per AP.
The Trump administration plans to deport over 600 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala that are currently in the custody of the Health and Human Services Department, reports CNN, noting, “The children, ranging in age, are believed to not have a parent in the US, though they may have a relative, one of the sources said. It’s unclear what immigration process the administration plans to use to remove the children, though discussions have included voluntary departure… Advocates and former officials, however, expressed skepticism about children’s understanding of their removal, particularly because many don’t have attorneys.”
However, “A federal judge on Sunday issued a restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting 10 unaccompanied migrant children to Guatemala after lawyers said the removals would violate U.S. laws,” reports Reuters.
Jordana Timerman highlights at Latin America Daily Briefing her new essay in Le Monde Diplomatique: “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s metaphor of an archipelago to describe Stalin’s system of repression provides an illuminating framework for the Trump administration’s treatment of foreigners, who find themselves trapped in a parallel geography of arbitrary detentions, family separations, deportations to abusive prisons, and indefinite legal limbos… As in Bukele’s El Salvador, a distinct class of people emerges whose constitutional guarantees are suspended under the guise of national security, leaving them formally in a democracy but effectively trapped in a repressive archipelago.”
“The arbitrary detention and imminent deportation of three Venezuelan political dissidents and a human rights defender living in exile in the United States would breach international human rights law and refugee law,” warn UN human rights experts. (press release)
“A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October,” despite the Trump administration’s plans to now send him to Uganda. (The Guardian; see last week’s AMB)
🇨🇦 Canada
Certain elements of the proposed Bill C-2 currently in Canada’s parliament may infringe on privacy and Charter rights and could mean that “asylum claimants may be deported from Canada without a full and fair assessment of the dangers they face,” warns a study by the Library of Parliament, reports The Globe and Mail. (see last week’s AMB)
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎 Regional
“Delegations from more than 40 countries will participate in the 15th Summit of the Global Forum on Migration and Development, to be held from September 2 to 4 in the Colombian city of Riohacha,” reports EFE, noting, “The summit will address six core themes: the impact of women on global migration and development; children and youth as innovators for tomorrow's development; the interaction of media and culture to construct and deconstruct the reality of migration; climate change and labor routes; regional cooperation and integration; and new technologies and digitalization to improve migration management and regular migration routes.”
However, attendance is weaker than initially hoped, as controversy surrounding planning, delays, and a location switch led to some planned participants cancelling, including the heads of both IOM and UNHCR. (El Tiempo, Caracol, AMB 4/14/25)
Officials from Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Panama met alongside IOM to discuss intergovernmental cooperation on labor migration management. “As a tangible outcome of this process, a Binational Protocol was signed between the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Costa Rica and the Ministry of Labor and Workforce Development of Panama, aimed at facilitating formal and safe labor mobility between both countries,” per IOM. (see also AMB 8/4/25)
“This agreement opens new opportunities for formal employment for migrants, facilitates access to job placements, and promotes migration that is safe, orderly, and respectful of human rights. At the same time, it strengthens cooperation between Costa Rica and Panama in labor development.”
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to Mexico and Ecuador to discuss migration, among other topics. (AP)
“Rwanda received seven migrants deported from the United States earlier this month, a government spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday, weeks after the two countries reached an agreement for the transfer of up to 250 people” from other nations, reports Reuters. (see AMB 8/11/25)
Labor Migration
🇺🇸 United States
A new Niskanen Center resource keeps track of data on legal (and labor) migration, including processing and wait times.
Migrants in Transit
🌎 Regional
From January to July 2025, just under 22,000 migrants transited north through Honduras, a 92% reduction from the same period last year, reports La Prensa. Those recorded this year include Cuban (83%), Ecuadorian (5%), and Chinese (3%) migrants.
🇧🇷 Brazil
The Brazilian border state of Roraima grew by 3% in the last year, the largest increase among Brazilian states, according to Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) estimates. Venezuelan migration was the main driver of the growth of 21,979 new residents, reports Globo.
Borders and Enforcement
🇪🇨 Ecuador
Beginning today, Ecuador is introducing a visa requirement for those traveling in transit through the country. The requirement will affect 45 nationalities, including travelers and migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and China. (Primicias)
🇨🇱 Chile
Limiting migration and increasingly restrictive border enforcement policies have become a multipartisan consensus in Chile, according to professor Lucas Luchilo. (Perfil)
🇺🇸 United States
“ICE's total detained population has reached its highest verifiable point in several years—and possibly the highest point in history—with 61,226 people held in detention as of August 24,” explains Austin Kocher at his Substack, breaking down the data.
“When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons. Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million,” reports AP, highlighting concerns surrounding the Fort Bliss detention center.
“According to some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, burnout and frustration are mounting as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s intensified enforcement efforts, report Ted Hesson, Tim Reid and Nicole Jeanine Johnson of Reuters. To ease pressure, the agency has begun a rapid recruitment effort, but hiring the thousands of officers needed may take a long time, the team notes,” explains National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily.
More on Migration
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
Inter-American Dialogue explores the remittance marketplace in the Dominican Republic.
🇺🇸 United States
“The Trump administration is reinstating a long-dormant practice of conducting "neighborhood checks" to vet immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship, expanding its efforts to aggressively scrutinize immigration applications,” reports CBS.