Americas Migration Brief - October 13, 2025
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🌎 Regional
A Refugees International report investigates the role of multilevel development banks in supporting responses to migration across Latin America and the Caribbean: “MDBs can play a differentiated role in helping to mitigate the impact of the aid cuts (by the US), while also improving the sustainability of the host country’s response. They finance large-scale investments that support migrant integration while simultaneously strengthening national systems.”
🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
EFE highlights the lack of access to the education system for Venezuelan migrant children in Trinidad and Tobago, noting that many children are illiterate and that some spend their days begging for money on the street.
“Many migrants and their families must work multiple jobs to survive, often pushing themselves to exhaustion. Children are sometimes left alone for long hours, making them vulnerable to trafficking and abuse,” notes IOM.
🇪🇨 Ecuador
Ecuador has announced a new “We Boost Your Return to the Country” initiative to “simplify the return process for Ecuadorian migrants, offering advice and support in the importation of personal belongings and household goods,” reports El Mercurio.
🇦🇷 Argentina
Julia Albarracín at MPI’s Migration Information Source reviews the history of migration in Argentina, writing, “even if Congress walks back some of these more recent changes, it is clear that Argentina has entered a new migration era. Amid a range of economic and other challenges, the country has embraced more restrictions while also integrating with fellow MERCOSUR Member States. Although immigration from Europe is no longer a central policy goal, the government remains focused on selective types of immigrants and has built up obstacles for others.”
🇨🇴 Colombia
A paper at Migration Studies argues that Colombia’s historic move in 2021 to regularize Venezuelan migrants with a 10-year protected status was motivated by three factors: “the pragmatic response to challenges in border control, the economic and legibility benefits of migrant regularization, and the pursuit of international reputation gains.”
🇺🇸 United States
Government documents released as part of an IRAP lawsuit confirm that the Trump administration is delaying permanent residency applications by those granted refugee or asylee status. (IRAP)
In another challenge to the integration of those that have successfully been granted protection in the US, IRAP also notes, “In June 2025, the Trump administration ended a longstanding exception that allowed families of refugees and asylees who could not lawfully marry, often due to laws that discriminated against refugees or LGBTQ couples, to reunite in the United States.”
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🇪🇨 Ecuador
Ecuador’s Ombudsman’s office and UNHCR wrote a 300-page report (including an executive summary) investigating internal displacement in the country, noting, “Ecuador still lacks administrative records and systems that allow for the systematic identification and monitoring of internal displacement caused by insecurity or violence.”
An estimated 5.4% of households across the country had at least one member internally displaced between 2022 and 2024 due to violence, with an estimated total of 316,000 individuals internally displaced during this period.
🇭🇹 Haiti
“The number of children uprooted by Haiti’s spiraling gang violence has nearly doubled in the last year to 680,000… Meanwhile, with more than 1,600 schools directly affected by the violence – including 1,080 that were closed this year either because of armed groups or because they were taken over by those fleeing them – one in four children are now out of school, the United Nations leading child welfare agency, UNICEF, said in a new report,” explains Miami Herald. More than 1.3 million total Haitians are currently internally displaced due to gang violence. (see UNICEF report and press release)
🇨🇷 Costa Rica
Confidencial interviewed Omer Badilla, Director General of Immigration and Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica, about the country’s efforts to address asylum application backlogs, looking to resolve between 3,000 and 4,000 cases per month. Within the framework of the new strategy, the Costa Rican government has approved 10,616 new refugee cases, while resolving around 60,000 total cases—many of which Badilla asserts were “from people who had already lost interest in applying for asylum or who, for one reason or another, fell into a different immigration category, left the country, etc.” (see also AMB 9/15/25)
Badilla additionally noted, “We have some upcoming relationships with the Inter-American Development Bank. There’s international cooperation very interested in entering the refugee sector. And that cooperation means providing the Refugee Unit with more lawyers, so we can have faster responses, care, interviews, and much greater access. The Refugee Unit only has six people who are permanent staff from the Immigration Directorate. The other 40 or 50 are thanks to international cooperation. I tell you very frankly, without international cooperation, Costa Rica truly would not have the capacity to address the demand for asylum applications.”
🇨🇼 Curaçao
The Dutch Council for Refugees highlights how migrants have no legal pathway to apply for asylum in the Dutch constituent country of Curaçao.
🇺🇸 United States
“President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to set a refugee admissions cap at 7,500 people this fiscal year, a record low that prioritizes white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity,” reports Reuters.
A new poll finds that “more than two-thirds of voters support the United States having a refugee resettlement program that helps bring people seeking safety to the United States. This includes 79 percent support among Democrats, 68 percent among Independents, and 59 percent among Republicans… Notably, Republican support for refugee resettlement increased by 12 points since this same poll was conducted one year ago.” (Refugee Advocacy Lab)
“The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on Monday, accusing Louisiana’s new immigration detention center, “Louisiana Lockup,” and the Trump administration of indefinitely locking up immigrant detainees in the facility and punishing immigrants for the same crime twice, in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause,” reports Reason.
“Immigrant detention centers are increasingly using solitary confinement, particularly in states including Arizona, report Steph Solis and Jessica Boehm of Axios. Many of the confinements, which last two weeks or longer, count as psychological torture, according to a report by Harvard University researchers. Axios obtained data indicating that between April 2024 and August 2025, nearly 14,000 people were placed in solitary confinement nationwide, including about 1,500 in Arizona.” (via National Immigration Forum’s The Forum Daily)
Meanwhile, the entirety of ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight has been placed on furlough as part of the government shutdown. (Washington Post)
WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Weekly Border Update, noting, “Tensions are very high in Chicago as the Trump administration intensifies an immigration enforcement operation. Border Patrol agents shot and wounded a woman, the second discharge of firearms after the September 12 ICE killing of a Mexican man; on both occasions, subsequent information has cast doubt on DHS’s initial version of events.”
🇨🇦 Canada
In response to controversies over the proposed Bill C-2, “the Liberal government has split its border security bill in two in the hope of seeing some measures pass swiftly while giving Canadians more time to evaluate other, more contentious ones,” says CBC, explaining that Bill C-12 includes measures to “expand the Coast Guard’s role, tighten the immigration and refugee system, enhance information sharing on sex offenders and better control chemicals used to make illicit drugs.”
Paying subscribers have access to the full archive of AMB Weekly Briefs. Check out AMB 9/1/25, 8/25/25, 6/23/25, and 6/9/25 for more on Bill C-2.
Similarly to C-2, the newly proposed C-12 has received criticism from migrant advocates. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, for example, asserts, “Bill C-12, introduced last Wednesday, replicates Bill C-2’s erosion of migrant and refugee rights. These include provisions that strip people from their right to a hearing of their refugee claim before the Immigration and Refugee Board if more than one year has passed since they first entered Canada. Another provision would grant the government wide latitude to cancel valid immigration documents including permanent residency.”
Key pathways for Canadians’ private sponsorship of refugees have frozen new applications since last November in an effort to address backlogs, reports The Globe and Mail, noting, “Applicants in the queue are being processed, but no new applications are being accepted. The pause is set to lift on Dec. 31, although documents obtained by the Canadian Press suggest the immigration department has discussed extending the freeze to 2028 to clear the backlog.”
“Refugee advocates are extremely upset about the pause, saying that volunteers who have been working to bring in refugees facing immediate danger can’t even get them in the queue. Advocates also worry that the many groups who have generously sponsored refugees over the years will lose momentum, skills and interest if the pause continues.”
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎 Regional
Catherine Osborn at Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief highlights the recent expansion of full free movement for four Caricom nations (see last week’s AMB), noting “(IOM’s Patrice Quesada) added that many Caricom countries are likely taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to the new policy. Jamaica plans to join the four-country regime in the future, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said this week, adding that the country still needed to refine some administrative policies.”
Antigua and Barbuda partakes in the OECS free movement regime and Caricom’s CSME but has “no immediate plans” to join the formal full free movement arrangement in Caricom out of a fear of a “migrant rush,” according to prime minister Gaston Browne. (Antigua.news)
“Professor Justin C Robinson, who leads the Five Islands Campus of the University of the West Indies in Antigua, cautioned that while free movement offers genuine economic promise for participating nations struggling with demographic challenges and skills shortages, lessons from the United States and Europe suggest that success hinges on managing what he called uneven effects… Success will require Caribbean leaders to go beyond economic arguments and actively address the infrastructure, employment, and social integration challenges that have derailed migration policies elsewhere, he told Barbados Today.”
🌎🇺🇸 United States and Regional
Guatemala has received its first flight of third country (Honduran) deportees from the US. Guatemala will transfer the migrants to Honduras, reports Reuters.
This comes despite the fact that the US has maintained regular deportation flights to Honduras, as well. (see, for example, the ICE Flight Monitor September report)
“Ten people deported by the US have arrived in Eswatini, its government said, the second group of third-country deportees to be sent to the southern African kingdom by the Trump administration in what lawyers and NGOs have described as violations of their human rights,” reports The Guardian. Local rights groups in Eswatini have sued over their country accepting third country deportees, explains BBC.
“Burkina Faso says it has refused a proposal from the Trump administration to accept (third country) deportees from the United States,” notes AP.
🇧🇷 Brazil
Eight years after the Migration Law and one year since the second Comigrar (National Conference on Migration, Refuge and Statelessness), Brazil’s government published the decree establishing the National Policy on Migration, Refuge and Statelessness, reports MigraMundo. The National Plan to implement the policy will be published within 90 days.
UNHCR “welcomes” the national policy, stating that it “(advances) the nationwide protection and support of vulnerable groups, including refugees… (and) establishes a comprehensive framework involving federal, state and municipal governments, civil society, international organizations, private entities and the affected populations themselves.”
MigraMundo reviews different public reactions to the policy, noting approval from many, but some concerns that the policy does not adequately address the situation of the Brazilian diaspora and citizens abroad.
🇪🇨 Ecuador
Ecuador has announced its National Implementation Plan (2025-2029), “which establishes the first national-local model for migration governance, aligning national migration strategies with the realities of local communities,” says IOM.
Labor Migration
🇸🇻 El Salvador
The Salvadoran government is looking to recruit migrant health care workers to help staff the country’s new national public hospital network. (El Universo)
🇺🇸 United States
Niskanen Center proposes reforms for the H-2A visa for seasonal agricultural work, including that removing the seasonality requirement would open up the visa for more year-round agricultural sectors. Recommendations also include beefing up protections—“Although multiple agencies conduct robust vetting of employers and employees prior to an H-2A worker’s arrival in the U.S., oversight during the work period is also critical to ensuring that promised wages are paid and that working conditions are as described. DOL has previously reported that declining staff numbers have undermined its ability to carry out worksite investigations and inspections to the extent desired.”
The Nation highlights a new rule decreasing the Adverse Effect Wage Rate for H-2A workers and allowing employers to charge workers for the housing they are legally required to provide. In California, for example, “Bad housing is one of the most common complaints among farmworkers. Nevertheless, regardless of its condition, workers will pay $3 an hour for it. The California Department of Housing and Community Development responsible for all employer-provided housing in the state, won’t be much help. It only has three inspectors, and in 2022 it failed to issue a single citation for illegal conditions, while issuing permits without making inspections.”
“At the end of June, Trump scrapped the Farmworker Protection Rule, regulations put in place by Julie Su, Biden’s labor secretary, that provided minimal protections for H-2A workers. By getting rid of it, growers can now bar outsiders (community groups or unions) from H-2A housing, give workers contracts in languages they can’t read, retaliate against those who complain of bad conditions, and even stop using seat belts in the vehicles transporting them to the fields.”
🇨🇦 Canada
“Canadian company that employed temporary foreign workers gets record fine for abuses — but workers won’t get any money: The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is calling on Ottawa to compensate migrant workers from fines collected.” (Toronto Star)
Migrants in Transit
🇧🇷 Brazil
A group of 23 Cuban migrants were found abandoned by smugglers in the northern Brazilian border state of Roraima reportedly en route to southern Brazil. The case highlights the recent growth in Cuban migration to Brazil, reports CiberCuba. (see also g1)
🇺🇸 United States
“Illegal crossings along U.S.-Mexico border plummet to lowest annual level since 1970” (CBS)
Borders and Enforcement
🇨🇱 Chile
Chile is launching phases II and III of the Integrated Border System (Sifron), “a program launched in 2023 that uses advanced technology to control a border area plagued by clandestine entry points into the country,” per EFE. Irregular migration entries have dropped 48% since peaking in 2021, notes a press release.
🇺🇸 United States
“Chicago Declares City Property Off-Limits to ICE” (Migrant Insider)
The “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center is set to return despite a previous court ruling calling for its closure. (The Guardian)