Americas Migration Brief - August 3, 2026
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
🇧🇷 Brazil
The Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP) published a report exploring migrant children’s access to health care and the importance of the education system for improving access: “The disparity between recognition of the right to education and lack of awareness of the right to health among migrant populations reveals how health systems in their countries of origin shape perceptions that persist and influence behaviors in the host country. Overcoming this disparity requires not only information, but also qualified cultural mediation, and schools are the most strategic setting for this mediation to take place.”
A paper at Globalizations based on interviews with “key policy implementers” explores how Brazilian bureaucrats pragmatically leveraged regional policies such as the Cartagena Agreement and the Mercosur Residence Agreement to regularize the status of Venezuelan migrants.
🇺🇸 United States
“MPI estimates the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population reached a new peak of 15.8 million as of mid-2024, after holding steady at around 11 million throughout the 2010s.” (MPI)
“For many longtime TPS holders, our immigration system offers no other way to legally stay in the United States and out of harm’s way. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been here for decades, have a U.S.-citizen child, work steadily, pay taxes, speak fluent English, employ others or are employed in a job your community can’t fill. None of that adds up to an accessible path to legal status on its own. TPS was created by Congress four years after it passed the 1986 legalization program for undocumented immigrants — the last such effort in forty years. The absence of alternatives has created an unreasonable reliance on TPS… Termination of TPS is absolutely appropriate when the criteria for designation are no longer met, but many terminations under the Trump administration fail to meet that test,” explains former DHS official Royce Bernstein Murray at Securing Americas Promise, calling TPS “the Glue Holding Together a Broken Immigration System.”
A CMS report investigates the labor market integration of asylum seekers in New York City in the 2020s. Recommendations include “the need for flexible long-term funding for legal support, increased funding for programs addressing other workforce-related needs, legislation to increase State legal service funding, federal policies to streamline the work authorization process, the expansion of language access and childcare programs for immigrant New Yorkers, and a need for coordination and communication both amongst City agencies and between the City and community-based organizations.”
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎 Regional
A paper at International Affairs examines migration governance in Latin America, finding, “the erosion of rights-based migration governance in Latin America is not simply a product of under-implementation of regional policies for reasons of national institutional weakness or a lack of regional enforcement mechanisms. Instead, its core finding is that policy ambiguity and adhocracy may be strategically layered onto existing institutional limitations, allowing states to recalibrate their responses and preserve discretionary control over migration in the face of shifting domestic and international pressures.”
“Beyond Persecution: Rethinking the 1951 Refugee Convention in the Caribbean Context” (The UWI St. Augustine Law Journal; via Forced Migration Current Awareness)
🇻🇪 Venezuela
“A month after twin earthquakes rocked Venezuela, most foreign rescue teams have departed and international media attention has faded, yet survivors continue to grapple with spiralling needs and intractable challenges amid a deeply politicised aid response… With nearly 24,000 survivors living in state-run displacement camps and thousands more left homeless, dozens of local and international organisations are struggling to respond to mounting needs and navigate the challenges of working in a country battered by a long-standing humanitarian crisis,” says The New Humanitarian.
“The situation is even worse for many of those displaced by the disaster who are not staying in official camps and face even more acute needs. Across La Guaira, Caracas, and other cities, thousands continue to sleep rough outside damaged apartment buildings while they wait for engineers to determine if their homes are structurally safe. Others camp near the rubble that buried their loved ones… Many have also chosen not to stay in state-run shelters because they distrust the authorities.”
🇨🇴 Colombia
Almost 16,000 Colombians were displaced due to armed conflict in the country in the first half of 2026, reports France24, citing an Ombudsman’s Office report.
🇪🇨 Ecuador
A report and a working paper published by Refugee Law Initiative explore internal displacement in Ecuador. (via Forced Migration Current Awareness)
🇧🇿 Belize
“An estimated five hundred to six hundred people seeking refuge from across Central America have entered Belize over the past several months, placing greater importance on how frontline officers identify and handle potential asylum cases,” reports LoveFM, noting that the Belize Refugee Department is conducting trainings with officials “to establish clearer intervention and referral procedures while ensuring that persons who may qualify for international protection are properly identified.”
🇨🇱 Chile
SERMIG has notified municipal offices participating in the Sello Migrante program that they may no longer submit humanitarian visa applications for migrant children; they may, however, provide orientation and assistance to families submitting applications. (InfoMigra)
“Procedural Barriers to Accessing Asylum and Judicial Outcomes in Chile (2013–2024) is a repository of 584 judicial decisions that document the various administrative obstacles to formalizing asylum applications in Chile. The dataset includes 292 rulings from the Court of Appeals (first instance) and 292 corresponding decisions from the Supreme Court (second instance). Each record includes case metadata, the main procedural barriers encountered, and the final judicial outcomes at both levels of the judicial system, facilitating an evidence-based analysis of access to the refugee status determination procedure and appeal trends over eleven years.” (link; via Forced Migration Current Awareness)
🇺🇸 United States
“A Guatemalan man deported from the U.S. and his wife, who recently self-deported to join him, were found dead, with their hands tied behind their backs, in a sugarcane field in southwestern Guatemala. Their 1-year-old daughter was discovered alive beside them, reports Reuters.” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)
“The Justice Department’s immigration judges central to the Trump administration’s deportation agenda will play a more prominent role in adjudicating asylum applications under a regulation announced Monday. The interim final rule from US Citizenship and Immigration Services amends regulations to allow asylum officers to refer certain affirmative asylum applications from noncitizens to immigration judges without first interviewing the individual. The revisions, which take effect immediately after scheduled publication Tuesday, remove from existing regulations references to an applicant’s “right” to an interview with an asylum officer,” says Bloomberg.
“Immigration courts scrutinize asylum applications in a more adversarial manner than USCIS asylum officers do, the agency acknowledged in the Federal Register notice,” explains World.
“Immigration enforcement during the second Trump term is driving a quieter, more diffuse wave of family separations inside the United States, often through detention, deportation, and pressures to depart the country voluntarily… The administration has curtailed reunification and legal aid services while repointing child-welfare efforts in ways that dovetail with its deportations agenda, blurring the line between child protection and immigration enforcement.” (MPI)
Relatedly: The Office of Refugee Resettlement—which helps respond to unaccompanied migrant child arrivals at the US border—has been providing tips to ICE, leading to more than 12,000 arrests under the second Trump administration. (Reuters)
“More than 24,000 unaccompanied children facing deportation stand to lose access to federally funded legal help as the contract funding that work expires on July 31,” notes Austin Kocher at his Substack, citing the LA Times.
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎 Regional
The Mayors of the Americas Task Force on Migration launched a regional vision and action agenda. Two new members have joined the coalition leadership—Montevideo, Uruguay and St. Louis, USA—and key principles include to promote migrant inclusion and regional collaboration at the local level. (see also press release and El País)
Task force member and Mexico City head of government Clara Brugada highlights in an El País column local efforts aligned with the agenda and notes, “In addition to strengthening our own response, we are promoting an unprecedented continental alliance: to chart, from the cities, from the local level, a geography of solidarity and dignified human mobility.”
🌎🇻🇪 Venezuela and Regional
Chile and Venezuela are set to restart consular relations as the two countries work towards the full normalization of diplomatic ties that have been broken for over two years. (AP; see AMB 4/27/26 on the Kast government’s focus on restarting ties to facilitate deportations)
The new Peruvian government of Keiko Fujimori is also starting a process of restarting diplomatic relations with Venezuela, which have also been broken since 2024 over electoral fraud in the latter country . (AFP)
🌎🇨🇴 Colombia and Regional
Colombian president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella has announced that he will end diplomatic relations with Cuba and Nicaragua, as well as close the Colombian embassies in Barbados and Haiti (among other countries), too. (El País, EFE)
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
The US is negotiating with Uruguay to deport Cuban migrants to the South American country; “Uruguay entered the negotiations partly because it needs immigrant workers, and partly to win favor with the Trump administration, a senior Uruguayan official said,” per New York Times. (see AMBs 1/19/26 and 3/23/26 on Cuban migration to Uruguay—independent of the US)
The head of Uruguay’s ruling party has requested information from the foreign ministry, emphasizing the importance of “respect for human rights and non-interference in the affairs of countries like ours,” according to La Diaria.
“The Government of Jamaica says it has formally sought answers from the Trump administration over the deportation of Jamaican nationals to the African Kingdom of Eswatini under the United States’ third-country deportation programme,” reports Radio Jamaica News, adding, “The Foreign Ministry said following reports that three Jamaicans were sent to Eswatini, Jamaica’s High Commission in South Africa confirmed that two refused to return to Jamaica.” The third, who did return to Jamaica, had been “held in a maximum-security prison in the African nation for more than seven weeks without charge.”
A 30-year old Egyptian-born man who has lived in the US since he was 4 years old “has spent the last three months confined in a decommissioned hotel in Equatorial Guinea, after ICE deported him there without warning,” notes Arizona Daily Star, reporting, “Soliman said he’s one of 17 deportees from the U.S. confined in the hotel-turned-prison, where living conditions are inhumane and deteriorating.”
Labor Migration
🇺🇸 United States
“The Trump administration is considering attaching a $100,000 price tag on international students’ ability to work in the U.S. after they graduate from an American university,” targeting the OPT program, “which allows international university graduates to work for one to three years on their student visas,” reports Wall Street Journal.
Migrants in Transit
🌎 Regional
4Mi surveyed 306 Venezuelan migrants returning to Venezuela from other South American countries, finding that “Although 88% of all respondents had been earning some form of income before beginning their return, 36% reported being unable to make a living in the host country. Of these (n=111), 66% were in an irregular situation.”
🇲🇽 Mexico
“Hundreds of migrants stranded on Mexico’s southern border intend to form a new caravan to advance to the center and north of the country, which would be the fourth contingent of the year,” reports La Jornada, explaining, “The migrants maintain that they want to leave Tapachula because they feel trapped, they have been in the process of regularization for months before the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance and do not receive a response, they cannot find work and the few jobs are poorly paid, among other hardships. They said they intend to go to other regions in the center and north of the country where they can continue with their paperwork and find better jobs and living conditions.”
🇵🇾 Paraguay
In Paraguay, “During the first six months of the year, more than 33,000 people submitted residency applications, a figure that represents a 62% increase compared to the same period last year,” notes El Nacional.
Borders and Enforcement
🇦🇷 Argentina
With an emergency decree, “Argentine President Javier Milei has banned entry into the country and authorized the expulsion of foreigners who have offended Argentinians,” reports El País, adding, “The presidential decree has been harshly criticized by legal experts, social leaders, and politicians. Many pointed out that if a similar law were in effect in other nations, Milei himself would be banned from entering numerous countries whose governments, citizens, or cultures he has denigrated and insulted.”
Argentine academic Ana Paula Penchaszadeh tells Página12, “it supposedly seeks to defend Argentinians from hate attacks, but the president himself closed the INADI (National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism) shortly after taking office, and has himself delivered a huge amount of hate speech… What worries me is that it’s unclear what constitutes hate speech in this context, what it means to desecrate national values and symbols. How do we differentiate these from the legitimate right to criticize, to free expression, or to protest—rights that are absolutely in question under this government? Furthermore, who is going to make that distinction? Can an immigration authority honestly carry out this task? It sounds absurd. It expands the discretion of immigration authorities and creates anxiety within the migrant community regarding which expressions can be punished.”
🇺🇸 United States
“Over 600,000 People Booked Into ICE Detention Centers Since Start of Trump II Administration: 65,000 people are currently in ICE detention, but the full impact is much larger and most detained people are deported.” (Austin Kocher)
“The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans… The recent arrests appear to be an expansion of an arrangement between the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” reports New York Times, explaining, “Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and visitors overstay visas each year. Many with expired visas occupy a legal gray area, as they are awaiting visa extensions or green cards and have been issued work permits. Such individuals were not prioritized for deportation in the past unless they had committed crimes, and they were rarely detained while waiting for visa extensions or green cards. But that has changed under President Trump, whose administration has undertaken a campaign of mass deportation and views all visa overstays as illegal.”