Americas Migration Brief - September 29, 2025
Welcome to the Americas Migration Brief! If you find this newsletter useful, please consider sharing with a friend or colleague.
Se puede acceder aquí a una versión en español del boletín traducida por inteligencia artificial.
Consulte aqui uma versão em português do boletim traduzida por inteligência artificial.
Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🌎 Regional
A CLACSO journal includes multiple papers related to integration issues, including about Venezuelans in Argentina, Mexican returnees from the US, and Honduran children in Mexico.
🇨🇱 Chile
“The president of the National Agricultural Society (SNA), Antonio Walker, reopened the debate this week on the situation of migrants in Chile. Amid the labor shortage facing the agricultural sector, the union leader raised the need to advance a process of “formalization” for migrants already in the country who meet requirements such as a clean criminal record and employment or family ties,” explains Jesuit Migrant Service.
President Gabriel Boric, however, said the proposal is not in the government’s plans, per CNN. Candidates ahead of the presidential election later this year also declined to champion the idea, notes El País. (on candidates’ positions, see more below and in AMB 9/15/25)
🇲🇽 Mexico
“President Donald Trump’s hardline deterrence policies are forcing many asylum seekers and migrants to establish themselves in Mexico rather than the United States, even as the suspension of US aid is making it harder for them to obtain the protections and support they need to integrate into Mexican society,” reports The New Humanitarian, noting an uptick in migrant children enrolling in school in Mexico and highlighting integration efforts.
🇺🇾 Uruguay
A Mixed Migration Centre report based on surveys and interviews “highlights key challenges migrants face in accessing formal employment and housing, despite generally good access to essential services such as regularisation, health and education.”
The latest census and other official reports show that migrants now make up more than 3% of Uruguay’s population, with more diverse origins than previous trends, says Debate.
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🇦🇷 Argentina
Página 12 highlights the stories of LGBTQ Russian refugees seeking protection in Argentina.
🇬🇹 Guatemala
“Climate change is not the main reason people leave Guatemala. But in villages already grappling with poverty, limited access to basic services, insecurity, and lack of opportunities, it is the stress multiplier. It takes daily responsibilities (such as putting food on the table, earning money for school fees, fetching water to drink) and makes them harder to bear until migration becomes the only perceived escape,” says CGIAR, citing a new report that includes an intersectional gender approach to the understanding of the climate change-migration relationship.
🇺🇸 United States
A CNN investigation “identified more than 100 US citizen children, from newborns to teenagers, who have been left stranded without parents because of immigration actions this year… In some cases, ICE appears to have violated protections that still remain in official policies by failing to allow undocumented parents time to find an appropriate caregiver or to make travel plans for their children as they are taken into custody and deported.”
“In the past, immigrants… with a ruling from an immigration judge saying they can’t be deported home had a real chance of securing release into the US, partially out of practicality. But as ICE has further opened the door to sending people to other countries, the agency now routinely prolongs detention, taking advantage of the appeals process and a loophole that allows imprisonment if ICE says a third-country deportation is likely. The main goal of the delays, lawyers and advocates say, is to wear detainees down and get them to give up their fight to stay in the US,” reports Mother Jones, adding, “Lawyers and advocates nationwide say the practice of keeping people in detention after they win in court has become much more entrenched in recent months.”
A further 20 immigration judges have been fired by the Trump administration despite growing case backlogs, particularly for asylum, reports NPR.
WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Weekly Border Update, noting, “throughout the federal courts, legal challenges are proliferating against the administration’s early-July policy of denying bond to nearly every undocumented immigrant in the United States who arrived illegally, which is mandating a growing number of detentions of people who have been living in the United States and pursuing immigration cases for years.”
🇨🇦 Canada
Ricochet highlights stories of migrants in the US fleeing to seek protection in Canada—and the challenges they face, in particularly the US-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement.
Canada granted 300,000 Ukrainians a temporary resident status after Russia’s invasion of their home country in 2022, but many now find themselves in “limbo,” hoping to transition to a permanent status but facing long wait times and a sense of uncertainty, reports CBC.
🇬🇫 French Guiana
“Asylum applications have tripled in one year in French Guiana. The government, caught off guard, is struggling to register requests within the legal timeframe. There are reportedly 22 months of waiting time, while the legal time limit is ten days,” says France Guyane, noting that the vast majority of applications come from Haitians. (see also RFI)
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
“The United Nations human rights office has called on Ghana to halt the deportations of migrants who were recently deported from the United States and had U.S.-court-ordered protections against being returned to their home countries, where they faced the risk of torture,” reports The New York Times.
“At least six of the 11 West Africans deported to Ghana as part of the US crackdown on immigration have been transferred to Togo, their lawyers have said. The group was in the process of suing Ghana’s government to prevent their further deportation, amid concerns over their safety,” reports BBC.
The Ghanaian opposition “have argued that the U.S. deal is unconstitutional and should be suspended because President John Mahama’s administration did not consult the Ghanaian parliament,” according to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
“A Jamaican citizen who had been deported from the United States to a prison in the African kingdom of Eswatini has been repatriated back to his native country, reports the New York Times. The man’s “deportation to a prison in Africa, where he had no ties, generated alarm among rights groups and activists, who argued that he had been unlawfully detained because he faced no criminal charges.”” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)
Ecuador’s foreign affairs ministry criticized the assault of an Ecuadorian citizen by an ICE official in the US, reports El Comercio. The Ecuadorian government is calling for an investigation into the case.
🇩🇴🇨🇺 Cuba and Dominican Republic
Cuban and Dominican officials met to discuss migration, among other topics. “Discussions focused on cooperation in migration and consular matters, including combating human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and other illicit activities linked to irregular migration,” reports Dominican Today.
🇰🇷🇵🇾 Paraguay and South Korea
Paraguayan and Korean officials met to discuss “the possibility of providing institutional support in migration procedures to obtain legal residency in Paraguay” for Korean investors in the country. (press release)
Labor Migration
🌎 Regional
A Mayors Migration Council and Plural Consulting Group report explores the role of cities in promoting regular migration pathways across the Americas, highlighting one-stop shop models, local identity documents and data management, workforce development programs, and labor mobility programs between cities.
🇺🇸 United States
In addition to increasing the cost of high-skilled H-1B visas (see last week’s AMB), the Trump administration is also moving to alter the visa’s lottery system to place greater weight on higher paying jobs, explains Fragomen.
The changes in access to H-1B visas could derail the Trump administration’s push to grow US manufacturing, explains CGD, while New York Times highlights the impacts on Indian workers, who typically win about 7 in 10 visas in the lottery.
🇨🇦 Canada
As the US creates obstacles for high-skilled migrants, Canada should capitalize, writes Daniel Tsai at Toronto Star: “Targeted programs could fast-track the best researchers in climate change technology, modular nuclear reactors, sustainable manufacturing, medical science, and fusion energy. Similar pathways should be designed for artificial intelligence experts, robotics engineers, and next-generation materials scientists… Canada’s tech sector, long overshadowed by the U.S., could position itself as a global leader in sustainability and innovation. International students already rank Canada ahead of the U.S. as a destination, citing American dysfunction as a deterrent.”
After controversy over Canada’s temporary migration pathways in recent years, temporary resident arrivals now continue to decline, reports CIC News.
Migrants in Transit
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
EFE highlights Venezuelan maritime migration—including of Indigenous Warao—to Trinidad and Tobago, noting that smugglers have slowed since the deployment of US navy warships in the Caribbean.
Borders and Enforcement
🌎 Regional
In a pair of incidents this past week, 103 Haitian migrants were apprehended at sea en route to Turks and Caicos, while a separate group of 40 Haitians were apprehended upon landing on shore in Jamaica, reports Miami Herald.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
Since the October 2024 launch of a mass deportation campaign in the Dominican Republic targeting Haitian migrants, over 365,000 Haitian migrants have been deported by the country, reports Haiti Libre.
🇨🇱 Chile
“Chile’s far-right presidential candidate, Jose Antonio Kast, one of the favorites to succeed leftist leader Gabriel Boric in November’s vote, vowed Monday to deport “all” undocumented migrants if victorious,” says AFP. (see AMB 9/15/25 on commentary at a recent presidential debate)
🇺🇸 United States
MPI examines the expansion of fast-track deportations under the Trump administration: “The process, known as expedited removal, historically had applied primarily to unauthorized immigrants who had just arrived across a U.S. land or sea border. The administration has sought to expand use of the fast-track authority nationwide, has reportedly used it to order removals of longtime U.S. residents, and has orchestrated maneuvers to use it on individuals previously covered by various temporary protections as well as those with asylum cases pending at immigration courts and asylum offices.”
“In August, a federal judge in Washington, DC blocked the application of expedited removal to parolees, ruling the government had exceeded its authority. Days later, the same judge blocked the expansion of expedited removal into the U.S. interior, finding that the administration’s policies violated constitutional due-process rights… While the expansion of fast-track removal authority remains paused, officials can continue to apply expedited removal to migrants encountered within 14 days of their arrival and within 100 miles of U.S. borders, as has been policy for more than two decades. This 100-mile border zone includes the largest U.S. cities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—as well as all or the vast majority of 11 states. In total, about two-thirds of the U.S. population (213 million people) reside in this zone.”
“Despite being prohibited by California law, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to arrest migrants in courthouses, reports Nigel Duara of CalMatters.” (via The Forum Daily)
“For years, the federal government has been amassing DNA profiles of noncitizens. But recently released Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data reveal that officials knowingly collected the DNA of approximately 2,000 American citizens and added it to a national genetic surveillance database used by law enforcement,” says Reason.
“According to a report by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, DNA information was submitted to an FBI database of convicted criminals, missing people, and evidence from crime scenes.” (via The Forum Daily)
“Clients of a Trump-Connected Lobbying Firm Keep Landing No-Bid ICE Contracts” (Mother Jones)
🇱🇨 St. Lucia
“Saint Lucia Strengthens Border Capacity Ahead of First National Migration Policy” (IOM)