Americas Migration Brief - February 9, 2026
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🌎 Regional
“One month on from the early-January capture of Nicolás Maduro… most Venezuelans outside the country are not yet ready to make a definitive decision about return. Instead, most are in wait-and-see mode, closely tracking political signals, economic conditions, and security developments before reassessing their options,” writes Diego Chaves-González for MPI, explaining that, as “large-scale return in the near term is likely to be untenable,” it is important that regional governments help support stabilization through sustaining regularization and integration efforts for migrants, promoting regional dialogue, and securing predictable financing for shared stability objectives.
🇧🇷 Brazil
Carlos Brito’s job market paper focused on Venezuelan migration in Brazil employs a differences-in-differences strategy, finding that “refugee shelters had no impact on crime or congestion in local public schools. However, they boosted natives’ support for far-right candidates and reduced votes for the incumbent. Effects are largely driven by shelters hosting culturally diverse refugees comprising different indigenous ethnicities.”
An NIESR discussion paper “investigates the allocation of Venezuelan migrants into the Brazilian labour market. Using a rich employer-employee administrative data and georeferenced information from firms… Overall, the results suggest that Venezuelan migrants have predominantly been allocated into lower-quality jobs within less productive firms, offering valuable insights into the economic integration challenges faced by displaced populations.”
🇵🇪 Peru
ODI Humanitarian Practice Network reflects on a community-based program response to Venezuelan migration in Peru, finding that “outreach in protracted displacement settings should be understood as a long-term investment in relationships, not as a tool for rapid case identification or coverage targets.” Other findings include that “Responses embedded in host communities must address shared vulnerabilities to remain socially and politically viable.”
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
“Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander announced that 7,324 migrant children have been registered in Trinidad and Tobago as part of the ongoing migrant registration programme,” reports Guardian. This comes out of a total of “12,400 applications submitted and 16,466 incomplete or unsubmitted applications… Venezuelans make up the majority of submissions with 10,286 applications, followed by Cubans (641) and Jamaicans (530).” (see last week’s AMB)
Inkstick highlights the distinct vulnerability faced by Venezuelan women in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly those in an irregular status.
🇨🇷 Costa Rica
La Prensa reviews Costa Rican president-elect Laura Fernández’s immigration-related proposals. They include strengthening border patrol, expanding the immigration police force, and establishing more migration detention centers. At the same time, Fernández has proposed “facilitating the integration of the regularized migrant population into the education and labor systems. This would include providing legal documentation for nearly 40,000 minors who are currently studying without regular immigration status.”
🇺🇸 United States
“The strong emotions about the border often expressed by many Trump voters can lead to misperceptions that they are against immigration altogether. In fact, while the Trump voters who oppose immigration are very concerned about the issue, the reverse does not hold: many of those who are concerned about immigration actually support immigration in principle, so long as it is legal and well-managed,” finds More In Common, examining different types of profiles of Trump supporters and their attitudes about immigration.
Lauren Gilbert at her Substack reviews literature on immigrant “cultural assimilation” in the US.
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🇺🇾 Uruguay
“As of June 2025, according to official figures provided by government entities, there were 70,829 people in Uruguay who had been forced to flee: 1,461 refugees, 31,975 asylum seekers, and 37,391 people in need of international protection, the vast majority from Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. Of that total, 85% resided in Montevideo,” reports La Diaria, adding, “in 2025 alone, some 15,000 people entered Uruguay from Cuba.” However, more Venezuelans left than entered Uruguay last year. (see AMB 1/19/26)
🇺🇸 United States
“A federal judge in DC paused the Trump administration’s move to strip more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants of (TPS) set to expire Feb. 3 at midnight,” reports Bloomberg.
“Justice Department Board of Immigration Appeals judges and others who assisted with training of three dozen new judges in October told the recruits asylum should be granted only in rare circumstances,” reports Bloomberg.
“The Cruel Conditions of ICE’s Mojave Desert Detention Center: How immigration authorities have weaponized medical neglect to encourage self-deportations.” (The New Yorker)
Meanwhile: “Two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19 were recently identified at a massive immigration detention center in El Paso… News of the infections comes less than a week after two cases of measles were identified at the South Texas Family Residential Center. The immigration detention center is 70 miles south of San Antonio.” (Texas Tribune)
“Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good’s Killing. Washington Told Them to Stop. Federal prosecutors had a warrant to collect evidence from Ms. Good’s vehicle, but Trump administration leaders said to drop it. About a dozen prosecutors have departed, leaving the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office in turmoil.” (New York Times; see AMB 1/12/26)
“Despite judge’s order, ICE sent an immigrant to Mexico instead of back to Minnesota” (Minnesota Star Tribune)
Separately, looking at Kilmar Abrego García’s case and others’ like his, NPR reports, “It’s impossible to quantify how many such mistaken deportations are happening — as only a small subset of immigrants have lawyers to argue for their return. But judges have stepped in with other cases.”
“ICE and CBP officers in Minneapolis will wear body cameras, Noem announces” (Politico)
“A day after the Trump administration promised to remove 700 federal law enforcement officers from Minnesota, residents who were hopeful that the immigration crackdown might be waning said that they saw little sign of a withdrawal… More than 2,000 immigration agents still remain in the Twin Cities area,” reports The New York Times.
“New York is creating a team of legal observers that will don purple vests to monitor and record the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement officers as they seek to detain and deport migrants, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.” (Reuters)
WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Weekly Border Update, noting that Senate Democrats are looking to oppose the 2026 DHS budget “unless it includes a series of reforms to DHS law enforcement agencies. Negotiators now have until February 13 to reach an agreement and pass it, or else DHS will shut down—although ICE and CBP will still have funding from the “big bill” Congress passed last July.”
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎Regional
Although Belize is implementing the new full free movement regime with three Caricom neighbors, the agreement is not formally represented in national legislation. As such, the government last week “introduced the Caribbean Community (Free Movement and Contingent Rights) Bill, 2026 in the House of Representatives, noting that since the initiative began, only two persons are currently residing in Belize on an indefinite stay while 83 individuals have entered and exited the country under the free movement mechanism,” reports LoveFM.
Bolivia has a key role to play in South America as a country of (Venezuelan) transit migration and should play a more prominent role in regional cooperation under the new Paz government, argues Sebastián Diez Arauz at El País.
Chilean president-elect José Antonio Kast is touring Europe, discussing restrictionist migration policy with politicians across the region, per Diario UChile.
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
A coalition of civil society organizations and human rights activists wrote to the Mexican government, calling for a rejection of the reimplementation of the “Remain in Mexico” program with the US. (see last week’s AMB about a potential restart)
Honduran president-elect Nasry Asfura met with US president Donald Trump, discussing migration, among other topics. Asfura said, “We were talking about TPS, which is still pending. I prefer to reserve comment on the rest of the migration issues, but we agreed to review the laws and the work we need to do for Honduras,” reports La Prensa.
US and Ecuadorian officials met, discussing migration, among other topics. (press release)
🇨🇴 Colombia
Colombia’s new Vice Ministry of Migration and Consular Affairs will have three directorates: the Directorate of Migration Affairs and International Protection; the Directorate of Consular Services; and the ‘Colombia Nos Une’ Directorate, “responsible for formulating public policies for the Colombian diaspora, returnees, and the regular migrant population,” per Infobae. (see AMB 12/1/26)
Migrants in Transit
🌎Regional
Mixed Migration Centre reviews migration trends across Latin America and the Caribbean in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Central American migrants are increasingly turning to Spain and Europe as an alternative to the US, according to AULA Blog. (see also last week’s AMB on Spain’s new regularization program)
Borders and Enforcement
🌎Regional
A series of papers at Revista de Investigación en Migraciones explore “crimmigration” and the securitization of immigration in Latin America.
🇳🇮 Nicaragua
Nicaragua has removed Cubans’ visa exempt status. (Diario Las Américas)
🇦🇷 Argentina
Argentina is moving forward with the creation of a Migration Security Agency. Despite criticisms of such a move (see last week’s AMB), the Milei administration has “assured that the format of the future agency ‘is completely different’ from that of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” reports EFE.
🇺🇸 United States
“Migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border are at their lowest level in more than 50 years” (Pew Research Center)
A working paper from UC Berkeley Public Law amassing a dataset of more than ten million Border Patrol apprehensions finds, “First, there is little evidence that discrete border enforcement policies have had significant short-term effects on whether people come to the United States. Second, there is strong evidence that border policies affect how migrants choose to enter—for example, whether they travel through ports of entry or try to evade inspection, and whether they apply for admission from their home countries or at the border. Together, these findings suggest that policymakers should be more skeptical of deterrence theory and more focused on the capacity of border policies to affect the time, place, and manner of entry.” (see related Just Security article)
“As the Trump administration’s efforts to acquire large warehouse-style detention centers moves forward in several states, some communities targeted for potential sites are voicing strong opposition, report Sophie Alexander and Fola Akinnibi of Bloomberg. Residents of New Hampshire, Utah, Texas and Georgia, among others, pushed back in January against warehouse-to-detention conversions, prompting some owners to publicly refuse to sell, Alexander and Akinnibi note.” (via The Forum Daily)
“Cuban Deportees Who Were Transferred to Guantánamo Sent Back to U.S.” (New York Times)