Americas Migration Brief - April 6, 2026
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🇧🇷 Brazil
“Brazil received two visits from United Nations agencies related to migration issues this March,” reports MigraMundo, noting comments from the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants praising Operation Welcome but calling for “institutionalization and long-term planning” for Brazil’s leadership on migration issues. Preliminary recommendations from the rapporteur include “creating a national strategy for teaching Portuguese as a second language, and ratifying the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families – which began its process in the National Congress in 2010 and has been awaiting a decision from the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies since 2022.” (see also UN, EFE)
🇪🇨 Ecuador
UNHCR interventions efforts have improved labor formality and financial inclusion among refugees in Ecuador, per an impact evaluation report. Furthermore, “4 out of every 10 enterprises supported by UNHCR create additional jobs, 33% of which are filled by Ecuadorians.”
🇨🇱 Chile
“For Venezuelans across Chile, Maduro’s fall briefly offered hope that the crisis that forced millions to leave their country might finally begin to ease. Yet as the country moves into a new political era under Kast, that moment of optimism has given way to a familiar reality: lives shaped by uncertainty and futures constrained by immigration laws that offer no clear path to regularization,” says NACLA.
🇬🇹 Guatemala
Infobae highlights the Guatemalan government’s efforts to reintegrate returnees, including through job training, skills certification, and healthcare access.
🇸🇻 El Salvador
USCRI examines challenges faced by Salvadoran returnees.
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎 Regional
A Fundación Refugiados Unidos report investigates repression in Venezuela—as well as transnational repression—and the impacts on those seeking protection in neighboring Colombia. The authors highlight, “Bureaucratic mazes and fear of returning: interviewees are afraid to return and to use Venezuelan consular services. This exacerbates their precarious situation, since, for example, banks require individuals to be physically present to resolve account freezes, which would expose exiles to a real risk of detention or disappearance if they return to Venezuela. Similarly, they prefer to avoid interactions with consular offices.”
🇺🇸 United States
“Fourteen people have died in ICE custody so far in 2026, already more than all of 2024… In-custody death counts are the most visible measure we have, but they represent only one part of a broader spectrum of harm that detention inflicts, harm that extends before, during, and after people’s time in custody,” explains Austin Kocher at his Substack.
A federal judge has “voided the Trump administration’s decision to end the immigration parole status of migrants who entered the country under the Biden-era CBP One policy,” reports CBS, noting that out of more than 900,000 beneficiaries, “It’s unclear how many will benefit from the ruling since some may have been deported already or gained another lawful status. The Justice Department is likely to appeal the ruling.”
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will resume processing most asylum applications, but a pause remains in place for nearly 40 countries, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News. The administration paused the applications after an Afghan national was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November… At the time the freeze was announced, the asylum backlog numbered nearly 4 million cases, notes Ximena Bustillo of NPR.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)
“Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, the only U.S.-run Afghan refugee camp, is shutting down, reports Kadia Tubman of Scripps News. The camp has housed more than 1,000 Afghans and their families who have been thoroughly vetted and approved for resettlement. “Abandoning our allies doesn’t make America safer,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, citing the breaking of a promise “that we will not leave them behind.”” (via The Forum Daily)
“The DNA Archive Built to Identify the Border’s Missing Has Vanished: The Colibrí Center for Human Rights was a vital link between families and their missing loved ones. But now it’s gone dark.” (The Border Chronicle)
The New York Times highlights Stephen Miller’s role in the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Border Update, noting, “Democratic legislators’ demands for reforms to the Homeland Security Department’s ICE and Border Patrol components have held up 2026 funding for all of DHS, even as those specific agencies have separate funding from the giant appropriation that Congress passed last July. Passage of a bill to fund everything but ICE and Border Patrol appears imminent, while Republican leaders are considering using the “reconciliation” budget maneuver to guarantee three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol without reforms.”
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
Multiple pieces of news and analysis related to third-country deportation agreements:
“The Trump administration’s mass deportations agenda includes a focus on deporting some unauthorized immigrants to countries other than where they were born… The number of people deported under these agreements has so far been a fraction of the total deportations conducted by the Trump administration because, except for Mexico, most countries have agreed to accept at most a few hundred deportees. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates about 15,000 third-country deportations (13,000 of them to Mexico) occurred between January 20, 2025, and December 31, 2025,” explains MPI, adding, “it appears the focus on expanding deportations to third countries is less about achieving numbers than it is incentivizing people to “self-deport” or deterring would-be irregular arrivals by making clear their future could be completely out of their hands if they are sent to countries such as Ecuador, Eswatini, or Uzbekistan, where they have no ties.” MPI additionally characterizes the different agreement types and highlights legal challenges.
Looking specifically at deportations of those seeking asylum in the US: “More than 13,000 migrants have been ordered deported to so-called “safe third countries” after their asylum cases were canceled, according to data from San Francisco-based Mobile Pathways. More than half the orders were for Honduras, Ecuador or Uganda, with the rest scattered among nearly three dozen other countries… According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the rights groups Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 of them are thought to have been deported,” reports AP.
Uganda has received the first flight of third-country deportees from the US under an August 2025 agreement, reports The Guardian, noting, “The Uganda Law Society said it would be filing legal challenges to the deportations in Ugandan and regional courts.”
“DR Congo to receive ‘third-country’ deportees from the US under new deal: DRC gov’t says deportees will begin to arrive this month, under a ‘temporary’ arrangement paid for by the US.” (Al Jazeera)
Costa Rica will not accept Latin American migrants as part of the agreement to receive third country deportees from the US, reports La Nación. Costa Rican security minister Mario Zamora said that the deportees will be allowed to seek asylum in the country—but he also stated that they will specifically only accept those nationalities less inclined to remain in the country. (see last week’s AMB)
“As President Trump searches the world for countries willing to accept thousands of migrants deported from the United States, he is finding that some of the most receptive leaders are strongmen, autocrats and human rights abusers,” says New York Times.
A George W. Bush Institute report explores what a “smart foreign policy to manage migration” might look like for the US: “The executive branch should prioritize international cooperation and capacity-building with countries of origin, transit, and destination as an important part of its migration management efforts.”
“The government of Mexico on Monday condemned the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and voiced concerns about the deaths of its citizens in immigration detention facilities in the United States,” reports New York Times. Mexico plans to take the situation to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), notes EFE.
Panama conducted a deportation flight to Colombia with support from the US under an MoU dating back to the Biden administration (La Estrella de Panamá; see AMBs 11/3/25 and 7/8/24)
Labor Migration
🇨🇦 Canada
A Broadbent Institute report focused on Canada “(highlights) the role unions continue to play in organizing opposition to exploitative labour mobility programs and promoting immigrant and migrant workers’ rights, and showing how this may be shaping the attitudes of union members more broadly… 56 per cent of union members see immigration as having positive impacts, versus 41 per cent of respondents who were not union members… Whereas older research found that union members were disposed toward restrictionist immigration policies to limit labour supply, this appears to be far less the case today,” explains The Maple.
🇺🇸 United States
The Trump administration has moved to lower wages and facilitate temporary labor migration in the agricultural sector, reports Axios, contrasting this with obstacles for high-skilled migration introduced by the Trump administration.
Axios notes, “These changes enraged the United Farm Workers, a union that’s long struggled against migrant labor undercutting its members. The UFW is suing the Trump administration over the changes. “There is nothing “America First” about expanding exploitative guest worker programs that undercut and displace American workers,” Teresa Romero, UFW president, said in a statement on the lawsuit, adding that the changes allow “big agricultural corporations to exploit cheap foreign labor.””
“As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S.” (New York Times)
“The Trump administration’s deliberate delay in visa renewals for foreign doctors in the United States is forcing some to stop working, Simon J. Levien of Politico is the latest to report,” notes The Forum Daily, adding, “Many of the hospitals and other health care settings experiencing the impacts are in rural and underserved places.” (see also New York Times)
Migrants in Transit
🌎Regional
Spain may soon become a less attractive destination for Venezuelan migrants: Infobae reports that although the European country has announced a mass regularization program for those already there, a previously oft-used humanitarian permit pathway for Venezuelans is set to close.
Venezuelan migration has dropped at the Chilean border in recent weeks, reports Vilas Radio. Irregular entry has been falling for multiple years, as noted in AMB 10/13/25.
Borders and Enforcement
🇨🇱 Chile
Diario UChile questions if the new Kast administration’s planned ditches at Chile’s northern border are effective measures, particularly when considering sustainability and the financial outlay in the long-run: “The most paradoxical thing is that international experience shows that these kinds of actions tend to displace and make migration more dangerous, and don’t actually achieve their objective to stop it.”
Three weeks in, the Kast administration has yet to conduct a deportation, notes El Mostrador. The president stated, “Within the next few months, you will see a continuous system for the deportation of migrants. We are analyzing how to do it, both by air and by land.”
The Kast administration’s proposed bill to make irregular entry a crime is “a bad idea” and—in addition to potential unconstitutionality—creates complications for the practice of migrant returns to Bolivia at the Chile-Bolivia border, writes former National Migration Service head Luis Eduardo Thayer Correa at El Mostrador, touting enforcement efforts adopted under the Boric administration.
🇺🇸 United States
“ICE data continues to show spikes in arrests driven by immigrants with no criminal history. Since the last update to detailed data in the middle of October, ICE’s total arrests of what it classifies as “other immigration violators” (OIV, people with suspected immigration violations but no other criminal history) shot up sharply while the corresponding number of people with charges and convictions actually slightly declined,” explains Austin Kocher at his Substack, breaking down new Deportation Data Project data.
“Despite messaging from the Trump administration that immigration enforcement operations would be more targeted, federal officers continued detaining immigrants with no criminal records in Minneapolis even after public backlash, report Emmanuel Martinez and Marianne LeVine of The Washington Post.” (via The Forum Daily)
“A group of President Donald Trump’s MAGA allies released a playbook Wednesday to fulfill the largest deportation push in U.S. history. It could very well split Trump’s coalition,” reports Politico, explaining that the plan “rests on one crucial pillar: A major immigration enforcement crackdown on workplaces… That strategy almost certainly promises to alienate some of the Trump administration’s allies in the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries, which all rely heavily on undocumented labor.”
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands announced new visa restrictions for entry and transit for Peru and Venezuela, as well as adding in-transit visa requirements for Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (Cayman Compass)
More on Migration
🌎Regional
“In December 2025, the U.S. government did two anomalous things in the span of a week: it launched a new citizenship by investment (CBI) program — the Trump Gold Card, Corporate Gold Card, and Platinum Card — selling U.S. residency or citizenship for between $1 million and $5 million. Then, it banned the citizens of Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica from entering the country as immigrants, students, tourists, or on business, citing those nations’ CBI programs as a national security threat… The U.S. has every right to pressure Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica to reform programs that pose genuine national security risks. However, it does not have the credibility to do so while launching a program that contains design-level gaps that, if left unaddressed, create conditions for similar misuse,” says Niskanen.