Americas Migration Brief - August 17, 2026
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🇦🇷 Argentina
“National hospitals will begin charging non-resident foreigners. The national health ministry published the operating procedure that regulates the changes introduced to the Migration Law through Decree 366/2025. Foreigners residing in the country will continue to receive the same care as Argentine citizens, while non-residents will have to pay national hospitals for non-emergency services.” (press release; see also last week’s AMB on legality)
Caref expresses alarm over the move, explaining, “the definition of emergency is strict and excludes preventive checkups, follow-up care for chronic illnesses, prenatal care, and routine vaccinations: the kind of care that prevents a situation from becoming an emergency.” The organization asserts that the policy is “a further step in a context of escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric from the government, which has been deepening measure after measure.”
The Milei government has been posting on social media in a manner reminiscent of Trump’s ICE, reports The Guardian. In one such instance, a 60-year old woman was handcuffed by federal officers in a posted video but subsequently released, possessing no warrant for arrest—“Checks on people’s immigration status existed before, but they have become far more frequent, large-scale operations involving not only immigration agents but federal police. Much like Trump, Milei has turned raids in poorer, traditionally immigrant neighbourhoods into a ‘public spectacle.’”
🇺🇸 United States
A paper at Journal of Urban Affairs leveraging restricted-use individual-level Census data and assembling “a dataset containing crime information for roughly 11,500 neighborhoods across U.S. cities over a decade… (finds) that neighborhoods that experienced greater increases in the share of undocumented residents saw greater reductions in property crime and no detectable change in violent crime.”
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🇨🇴 Colombia
A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Colombia last week, with at least hundreds reported dead, injured, or missing. At least 135,000 have been affected, including at least 1,690 displaced households. (IOM, OCHA)
El Espectador highlights that “some of the hardest-hit areas are places where people settled in search of opportunities,” such as Venezuelan migrants or those internally displaced by Colombia’s armed conflict.
An R4V report examines the impacts of migration, conflict, and climate change on early childhood in Colombia.
🇭🇹 Haiti
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ designated expert on Haiti, William O’Neill, told El País, “Nobody should be deported or forced to return to Haiti. The human rights situation is catastrophic and there is no way any forced repatriation at this moment could be safe, dignified and durable. Therefore, they should not do it. It violates international law and, morally, it is terrible to send people back into this situation.”
🇯🇲 Jamaica
The Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches is calling for the Jamaican government to act with “more dignity and compassion” in response to Haitian maritime arrivals seeking asylum, reports Gleaner; “The JUGC’s call comes against the background of the issuing of deportation orders for eight Haitians who landed in Jamaica on July 17. The orders would see them meeting the same fate as other Haitians who were sent back to their violence-torn homeland without being allowed to present their cases for asylum.”
🇨🇱 Chile
A Venezuelan man in Chile was lit on fire on the street by two aggressors; an investigation is ongoing. (BioBioChile)
🇭🇳 Honduras
“”Land dispossession” and “threats” are the main causes of the forced displacement of indigenous peoples in Honduras, a phenomenon aggravated by “impunity” and which in the last decade has left 48 defenders murdered and 227 complaints of internal displacement, the National Commissioner for Human Rights (Conadeh) warned.” (EFE)
🇲🇽 Mexico
Mexico is introducing a cap of 36 hours maximum for stays in immigration detention centers and will additionally “maintain permanent and random inspections, as part of measures to prevent abuses and incidents such as the fire at a Ciudad Juárez detention center in 2023,” per EFE.
🇺🇸 United States
The Trump administration has ended TPS for nearly 1,100 Somali beneficiaries. (Reuters)
Dara Lind highlights at The New Yorker the “great delegalization” due to the Trump administration’s stripping of TPS protections for more than one million beneficiaries.
Following multiple instances of ICE agents shooting and killing unarmed individuals, the agency is equipping agents with body cameras—but will only release footage when it is in ICE’s “best interest,” as determined by the agency itself. (AP)
“How Trump Is Trying to Weaken Migrant Children’s Legal Defense: After failing to eliminate funding for unaccompanied minors’ lawyers altogether, the Administration is pushing cases toward entities that lack both immigration expertise and the capacity to take them on.” (The New Yorker)
“Ex-ICE agent’s group awarded $158 million to represent migrant children: The Trump administration gave the contract to Our Rescue, which Tim Ballard, the former agent, left in 2023 before being accused of sex trafficking.” (Washington Post)
“Migrant kids are often being held in a South Texas detention center five times longer than a court order allows: The nation’s only detention center for families is routinely holding children beyond the 20-day limit, including an Iranian-born “average American kid” who’s been locked up for 123 days and counting.” (Texas Tribune)
A paper at International Migration Review leveraging a novel data extrapolation method “provides new statistics on nearly a half million unaccompanied minors navigating removal proceedings in US immigration courts nationwide between 2009 and 2023 (through March)… During the study period, only 51% of unaccompanied children were represented by an immigration attorney at any time during their removal proceedings. Representation for unaccompanied minors declined almost every year during the first Trump presidency. Nearly half of children’s cases (49%) ended in deportation order. More children were ordered deported under the first Trump administration (70% of completed cases) than under either the Obama (51%) or Biden (31%) administrations. Children who were not represented by an attorney were far more likely to be ordered deported.”
“The Trump administration plans to spend millions of dollars equipping immigration officers with gloves that can deliver electric shocks. The Department of Homeland Security described the gloves as a “de-escalation device,” but critics have expressed alarm over equipping immigration agents with another tool that they say could actually escalate their use of force,” reports New York Times.
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
“Under the growing practice of third-country deportations, Rogelio Bolufé, a Cuban national, was deported to Guayaquil, Ecuador, with no passport or money and papers falsely calling him Ecuadorian, reports Jose Pagliery of NOTUS. “I look homeless,” Bolufé said. “It’s just inhumane.” Another Cuban national, Roberto Mosquera, has spent more than a year in an Eswatini prison with no charges, writes Nicholas Casey of The New York Times Magazine.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)
The US-St. Lucia third country deportation agreement is a non-binding MoU “with the two governments having agreed on a preliminary figure of no more than 10 individuals per quarter,” reports Gleaner, adding, “Five days before a proposed removal, the United States is expected to provide St Lucia with a flight manifest. St Lucia would then have two days to respond with the cases it approves and identify anyone who would not be allowed on the flight.” St. Lucia has outlined financial requirements for their participation and is awaiting a response from the US on their proposal.
🇧🇩🇨🇦 Canada and Bangladesh
“Bangladesh and Canada on Wednesday discussed shared priorities including strengthening cooperation to prevent fraud and irregular migration to enable legitimate migration as well as finding a durable solution to the Rohingya crisis,” reports Financial Express.
Labor Migration
🇺🇸 United States
“The Department of Homeland Security is advancing a proposal to nix a 60-day window for H-1B workers to find new employment after a job loss,” reports Bloomberg.
Migrants in Transit
🌎 Regional
Raúl Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, has been linked by US investigations “with a large-scale smuggling operation that moved people out of Cuba and brought illicit goods into the country, reports the New York Times. The human smuggling network was known as the Cuban Mafia in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo — “Cuban migrants would be taken to Mexico, where they were held in safe houses until they paid smuggling fees, and were tortured if they didn’t,” reports the New York Times, based on court documents. Two defendants in the case implicated Rodríguez Castro as a collaborator in the organization, who arranged safe passage for the group into and out of Cuba,” explains Jordana Timerman at Latin America Daily Briefing.
🇵🇾 Paraguay
EFE highlights Brazilian migration to Paraguay, noting that Paraguayan president Santiago Peña has voiced support and open arms for Brazilian immigrants. Both countries are in the Mercosur bloc with free movement.
🇭🇳 Honduras
Following recent local controversies and debate, Honduras’ migration agency revealed that of roughly 13,000 Chinese migrants that entered the country between 2022 and 2025, 12,400 subsequently left and 280 regularized their status, leaving approximately 341 whose status remains under review. (Proceso, El País)
Borders and Enforcement
🌎 Regional
“Authorities dismantle a network that attempted to smuggle Bolivians from Peru to Spain” (EFE)
🇨🇱 Chile
A Chilean Chamber of Deputies committee has given the green light for the legislature to advance on a Kast administration proposal to increase the maximum time period of immigration detention for migrants with an expulsion order. “The draft law proposes a maximum detention period of 180 days for individuals facing deportation proceedings. Current regulations stipulate a five-day period,” explains La Tercera. (see last week’s AMB)
🇺🇸 United States
“American taxpayers would pay about $2,358 each for President Trump’s mass deportation push, according to a new calculator tool from the Economic Policy Institute… EPI estimated each area’s share of federal income taxes to calculate how much taxpayers in each state, county and city would contribute toward deportation spending,” reports Axios. (see calculator here)
Meanwhile, New York Times reports that 10 planes bought for deportations by the Trump administration with a $464 million no-bid contract have “barely” been used. “The company that received this contract, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, is led by a chairman who had donated to a political committee supporting the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.”
“The Justice Department on Friday issued a legal opinion giving the U.S. military broader powers to detain migrants accused of trespassing in areas that the Department of Defense controls as part of President Trump’s crackdown at the southern border,” designated as “National Defense Areas.” (CBS)
“While the military is generally prohibited from enforcing laws on domestic soil under the longstanding Posse Comitatus Act, the zones have allowed soldiers to detain migrants accused of entering the national defense areas, which are closed to civilians. The arrangement has allowed the Justice Department to prosecute those arrested in the zones for trespassing on military land. In its opinion Friday, the Justice Department said military personnel can arrest individuals who leave national defense areas before they can be apprehended for trespassing.”
“See Trump’s Plan to Fill the Gaps in the Border Wall” (New York Times)
“Members of an Indigenous group and a Texas recreational outfitter on Friday asked a federal court to block the Trump administration from building the US-Mexico border wall through Texas’ Big Bend National Park,” citing waived environmental laws, reports Bloomberg.
“U.S. Says It Revoked More Than 175,000 Visas Under Trump: Most visas were rescinded over criminal accusations, the State Department said, while some were revoked from people who had celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” (New York Times)