Americas Migration Brief - May 25, 2026
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🌎 Regional
A CGD policy paper examines the situation of Venezuelan migrants in Latin America: “Using original survey data from nearly 3,000 Venezuelan migrants across nine Latin American countries, this paper examines how legal immigration status shapes labor market integration and settlement intentions. Legal status is strongly associated with better labor market outcomes… Legal status alone, however, is not associated with wanting to stay in the host country: legal and undocumented migrants report virtually identical settlement intentions.”
An MPI and Mayors Migration Council report “highlights a range of local experiences in supporting urban economic inclusion, drawing in part on consultations with city officials, civil-society actors, and migrants and refugees from cities in around the world,” including in Latin America.
🇨🇴 Colombia
Despite previous policy limiting irregular migrants in Colombia to just emergency health care access, a Constitutional Court ruling “ordered the activation of clear pathways, defined responsibilities, and effective coordination mechanisms to provide care for migrants with serious illnesses. The ruling states that the lack of immigration regularization or affiliation with the healthcare system cannot prevent access to health services when a serious or catastrophic medical condition exists,” as explained by Consultor Salud.
🇨🇱 Chile
The Kast government has proposed a bill amendment “to require public and private offices and health centers, boarding houses, and educational institutions to report the presence of undocumented migrants to the authorities,” per El País.
Chile’s health minister has reportedly “distanced herself” from the proposal, which has caused controversy within the administration. (EFE, La Tercera)
“Less Than 1% of Regularization Requests to the Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior Have Been Approved Since 2022” (InfoMigra)
🇨🇼 Curaçao
“The Curaçao government has officially launched the website and registration portal for the legalization program Rib’e Lugá, opening a new pathway for undocumented migrants on the island to apply for temporary legal residency,” reports Curaçao Chronicle. (see AMB 5/4/26)
As birth rates decline, most population growth on the island is due to migration. (Curaçao Chronicle)
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
“Director of La Casita Hispanic Cultural Centre Andreina Brown is appealing to Homeland Security minister Roger Alexander to provide an update on the fate of ‘hundreds of migrants who have not yet registered’ as part of the Migrant Registration Framework,” reports Express, noting, “a total of 16,408 applicants have been interviewed” for the temporary regularization process. (see AMB 3/9/26)
🇺🇾 Uruguay
A pair of presentations (1, 2) and a paper from the Uruguayan government examine the labor market integration of the migrant population in Uruguay. (see related press release)
Uruguay’s National Directorate of Migration has declared the Migra Móvil initiative—a mobile office that “brings the procedures to the place where migrants and Uruguayans need them”—a success, having assisted primarily with permit renewals. (MediosPublicos)
🇯🇲 Jamaica
“Clarendon has emerged as a national leader in local development planning, becoming the first parish in Jamaica to formally integrate migration into its long-term growth framework,” reports Gleaner.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is looking to develop policies to reintegrate returnees, based in part on the Guatemalan model. (Acento)
Paying subscribers to the AMB have access to the full archive and can read up on Guatemala’s approach in AMBs 3/30/26, 3/23/26, and 1/26/26.
🇬🇹 Guatemala
A paper at World Development examines Guatemalan migration, finding, “Return migration entails important trade-offs, raising GDP but potentially reducing household consumption, especially among remittance-dependent households. Facilitating reintegration and implementing targeted policies can yield win–win outcomes.”
🇭🇳 Honduras
Honduras “announced the strengthening of a comprehensive return and reintegration mechanism for migrant children in Honduras… The objective is to strengthen comprehensive care for migrant children through territorial monitoring mechanisms, responses in health, education, violence prevention and social protection with a human rights approach,” per a press release.
“Congress approves law allowing returning migrants to bring their assets tax-free” (El Heraldo)
IOM highlights two recent efforts to promote reintegration. (1, 2)
🇧🇿 Belize
“Piped Water Transforms Daily Life for Migrants in Belize: The Water Supply and Modernization Program, a collaboration between the Belizean government, Belize Water Services, and the IDB, is transforming the lives of migrant and local families in Belmopan.” (IDB)
🇦🇷 Argentina
EFE highlights the contributions of Venezuelan migrants to Argentina’s healthcare sector.
🇺🇸 United States
An NBER working paper by Elizabeth Cox and Chloe N. East investigates the impacts of ICE arrests on labor market outcomes, finding no evidence that immigration enforcement improved outcomes for US-born workers. Importantly, they find, “there is a negative and significant impact on employment of U.S.-born male workers with at most a high-school education, who work in likely affected sectors.”
“The Trump administration on Friday announced a sweeping policy designed to make it harder for immigrants already in the U.S. to get permanent residency, or a green card… in most cases, those immigrants will be required to return to their home countries in order to apply for an immigrant visa overseas through an American consulate,” reports CBS.
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎Regional
IDMC published this year’s Global Report on Internal Displacement. The report estimates 10.5 million persons were affected by internal displacement in the Americas in 2025, notes EFE, adding, “A large proportion of the internally displaced people in the region fled their homes due to conflict, including more than seven million Colombians, as well as 1.4 million in Haiti, 573,000 in Guatemala, 390,000 in Mexico, 316,000 in Ecuador, 101,000 in Honduras, 82,000 in Peru, 61,000 in El Salvador, and 19,000 in Brazil.”
Earlier this month, “Hundreds of Indigenous families (were) forced to flee their homes in the mountains of central Mexico by intense attacks from a local criminal group, including drone bombings,” per The Guardian.
🇨🇱 Chile
The Chilean government has published a new Circular that “updates and corrects the possible exclusion of access to Chilean nationality for sons and daughters of transient foreigners that could have been generated by the previous Circular No. 014,” explains InfoMigra. (see AMB 5/4/26, which explains previous concerns of statelessness risk)
🇧🇷 Brazil
“A delay of more than four months by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice in publishing rules on granting humanitarian visas has postponed the analysis of new permits,” reports Folha, highlighting concerns for Afghans, in particular.
UNHCR details efforts by the Brazilian government and UNHCR to make interviews for the condition of refugee status accessible for Indigenous Venezuelan migrants in the Brazilian border state of Roraima.
🇲🇽 Mexico
“Dozens of foreign nationals were detained during unusual immigration raids in Mexico City, operations that have sparked fear among migrant advocates and raised questions about Mexico’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics,” reports Latin Times. Red Jesuita Con Migrantes denounces the operations as “persecution,” arguing that migrant irregularity is a “direct consequence of the collapse of the international protection system in Mexico.”
🇺🇸 United States
“The Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to deport asylum-seekers to third countries have stalled thousands of immigrants’ cases and scared thousands more into giving up their asylum claims, according to a CBS News analysis of recently released federal data and interviews with attorneys and immigration policy experts.” (CBS; see more in the next section below on regional cooperation)
“A new analysis suggests that more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. And roughly three-quarters of those children… are likely U.S. citizens,” reports New York Times, citing Brookings.
“The US government has said it will increase the number of white South Africans it admits as refugees this year from about 7,500 to 17,500,” reports The Guardian.
“ICE has awarded a contract to a private security company that has faced accusations of “torture” and “enforced disappearance” to assist in tracking down undocumented immigrant children who arrived in the US alone,” reports The Guardian.
“Some immigrants are being detained after calling police to seek help, Shoshana Walter of The Marshall Project reports in partnership with the Miami Herald. The incidents are increasing as more local law enforcement agencies — some with the requirement or encouragement of state law — sign agreements that allow local officers to enforce federal immigration laws… Now some residents avoid reporting crimes for fear of immigration consequences. That’s not in keeping with broader public safety, as our Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force notes,” explains National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily.
“Since the Trump administration made detention mandatory for immigrants facing deportation proceedings, federal judges have said more than 10,000 times that a detention was illegal, Kyle Cheney of Politico reports. That represents about 90% of lawsuits filed, and it includes a majority of Trump-appointed judges who’ve ruled against the administration, he notes. The outlet also released a database of the rulings.” (The Forum Daily)
“Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers” (Washington Post)
“ProPublica identified 79 children across the United States who were harmed by tear gas or pepper spray deployed by ICE or CBP agents during Trump’s immigration crackdown,” notes Austin Kocher at his Substack.
“Immigration authorities in the United States have increasingly used their powers to curb independent and critical reporting in the current Trump administration, denounced the Committee to Protect Journalists.” (via Latin America Daily Briefing)
🇨🇦 Canada
“Canada: Xenophobic, racist tropes drive online hate against racialized women and LGBTQI+ people” (Amnesty International)
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎Regional
Peru (among other countries) signed on to the Bogotá Declaration and the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Decent Labor Migration at the Conference of Ministers of Labor of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Colombia last week. Priority areas include strengthening circular migration mechanisms, promoting skills recognition and training, and boosting a regional agenda focused on “social justice and inclusive integration,” per a press release. The conference included officials from 20 countries, notes La FM; nearly 20 countries signed on to the documents, according to Caracol.
Officials from across the Americas attended the International Migration Review Forum at the UN earlier this month. Several countries participated in bilateral meetings either on the sidelines of the event or elsewhere across the region, including the following:
“Colombia and Spain strengthen alliance to promote regular migration with a rights-based approach at the UN” (press release)
Chilean and Peruvian officials met to discuss combatting irregular migration, among other topics. (press release)
Panamanian and Guatemalan officials met to discuss migration and their pro tempore presidencies of the Quito Process and Regional Conference on Migration, respectively. (DCA)
The presidents of Panama and the Dominican Republic met and discussed migration, among other topics. (press release)
“CARICOM member states are currently developing a regional migration policy aimed at addressing labour mobility, demographic decline and climate-related displacement,” reports Barbados Today, highlighting comments from IOM’s Patrice Quesada: “He also pointed to St Lucia’s upcoming national migration policy launch as a possible model for other Caribbean countries.”
“Falling birth rates, brain drain: Why Saint Lucia is rethinking migration” (St. Lucia Times; see also IOM news release)
In Belize, meanwhile, the government has been conducting consultation processes “to help shape Belize’s National Migration and Development Policy,” per LoveFM. (see also GBM, LoveFM 1 and 2)
Belize is also holding consultations to update the country’s Refugees Act. (BBN, UNHCR)
“As part of its ongoing work with international partners, Canada is investing in projects that help improve how migration is managed around the world.” This includes several projects focused on Latin America. (press release)
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
The Dominican Republic has agreed to receive “about thirty deportees from third countries each month from the United States, after signing a controversial one-year agreement,” says EFE. Deportees will not include Haitians or unaccompanied minors. The Dominican foreign minister has asserted, “We are not talking about permanent settlement, migrant absorption, or legal proceedings in the country. It is a controlled, temporary transit operation.”
Paraguay received nine third-country deportees from the US from Bolivia, Chile, and the Dominican Republic, reports EFE.
St. Kitts and Nevis received three third-country deportees—from Belize and Jamaica—from the US. They will be “granted the immigration status and legal accommodation ordinarily applicable to CARICOM nationals,” reports Gleaner.
“A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring a Colombian woman back to the U.S. from Congo, after she was deported to the African nation even though it had refused to accept her because it could not care for her medical needs,” reports AP. The New York Times examines the situation for those deported to the country.
“China is slowing its efforts to repatriate Chinese nationals who are in the U.S. illegally, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters, warning that Washington was prepared to increase travel restrictions on the country if Beijing didn’t reverse course.” (Reuters)
US and Mexican officials met and discussed migration this past week. (press release)
Earlier this month, New York Times reported, “The State Department said it would review the 53 Mexican consulates in the United States… The review comes after claims have been circulating in conservative media in recent months that Mexican consulates interfere in American politics and encourage mass migration to the United States.”
US and Honduran officials met and discussed migration, among other topics. (La Prensa)
🇨🇷 Costa Rica
Costa Rica’s migration directorate is in need of institutional reform due to long backlogs for immigration processes and overworked employees, says Eduardo Flores Buitrago at Diario Extra.
🇨🇺 Cuba
“After nearly two years, Cuba published the final version of its new Migration, Foreigners, and Citizenship Laws on May 5.” -- CEDA’s US-Cuba News Brief explains notable changes and what remains the same.
Labor Migration
🇬🇾 Guyana
Guyanese labor minister Keoma Griffith spoke at a recent forum on labor migration and diaspora in Guyana, reports Guyana Chronicle, noting, “According to the minister, Guyana has increasingly become a destination for migrant labour, particularly workers from China, India, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and neighbouring Caribbean countries, as major development projects continue to expand across multiple sectors… Griffith said Budget 2026 outlines plans for a migration policy aimed at recruiting foreign workers to meet labour shortages without compromising the rights and interests of Guyanese workers. According to the minister, the proposed framework will also strengthen diaspora engagement and improve systems for recognising and mapping the skills of overseas-based Guyanese professionals.”
🇲🇽 Mexico
“Mexico has published reforms to the general guidelines for the issuance of visas, effective immediately. The changes impact residence visa processes, particularly the Temporary Residence Visa for Remunerated Activities category, which is the country’s most commonly used work authorization route. The changes expand documentary and compliance requirements, including enhanced employment offer letter content requirements and increased scrutiny of foreign nationals’ professional qualifications, particularly in technical or highly specialized roles,” says Fragomen.
🇺🇸 United States
“A March 2025 Nature poll found that three-quarters of U.S.-based scientists are considering leaving. Britain, Singapore, Australia and Canada are actively recruiting them… Immigration in the abstract is toxic, because voters see illegal crossings and visa abuse by people willing to break the rules. But the resulting backlash does not extend to welcoming top talent via specific, well-designed, legal programs,” writes Alexander Kustov at Washington Post, calling for two concrete moves that “don’t even require action by Congress. First, expand and encourage greater use of the O-1A extraordinary-ability visa. Unlike the H-1B, this established program for top individuals in fields including the sciences has no numerical cap and no lottery… Second, fix how the government sets wages for foreign workers. The Labor Department’s March proposal includes an option that would require employers to pay foreign workers what an American with the same job and experience earns, which would close that gap without crushing the research pipeline. That option needs to be the one the agency picks, and the public comment window closes May 26.”
🇰🇾 Cayman Islands
“Cayman Islands: New Immigration Act Tightens Hiring, Mobility and Compliance Rules” (Fragomen)
🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands
BVI is planning to “introduce a structured immigration quota-setting system as part of planned amendments to the Immigration and Passport Act,” reports CNW, noting, “quotas will be tied to economic, labour, housing and demographic data.”
Migrants in Transit
🌎Regional
“Will Intervention Cause a Migration Crisis in Cuba?” asks Gil Guerra at Popular by Design, arguing that Cubans are less likely to emigrate to the US en masse than many are assuming.
🇵🇾 Paraguay
Paraguay Post highlights an increase in migration to Paraguay: “Of the 40,600 foreigners granted leave to remain last year, 24,526 were from Brazil, many of them students. Argentines, with 4,366 requests granted, were a distant second. The influx is only accelerating: successful applications grew by 85% in January-March compared to the same period in 2025.”
Borders and Enforcement
🇨🇱 Chile
Chile’s Senate voted to approve a bill criminalizing irregular entry into the country. The Chamber of Deputies had approved the bill two years ago. (La Tercera; see AMB 4/27/26 on critiques of the bill)
The Kast government conducted just its second deportation flight earlier this month, sending 40 deportees to Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. (La Tercera)
“Chile’s MAGA-inspired border control” (NPR)
🇵🇦 Panama
Panama has set up a “special regime” for 30 days for the transit and repatriation of Spanish-speaking migrants in Panama to countries of origin in the Americas, notes EFE. “The National Migration Service announced that Venezuelan citizens interested in returning to their country will be able to receive assistance and transportation financed through the migration agreement between Panama and the United States,” reports La Estrella de Panamá.
🇺🇸 United States
Many of the migrants “promised” $1,000 for voluntarily departing the US are either never receiving the funds or receiving them after a substantial delay, according to El País.
“Restoring Credibility and Humanity: A New Framework for Immigration Enforcement” (American Immigration Council policy whitepaper)
“Citing Ebola Outbreak, U.S. Restricts Entry From Congo, Uganda and South Sudan” (New York Times)
“Trump promised to hold 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo. A year later, it’s mostly empty.” (CBS)
🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos
“Irregular migration in the Turks and Caicos Islands remains at significant levels, with Government projecting even higher removals in the new fiscal year,” reports Magnetic Media.