By Martin Mowforth

Both Panama and Costa Rica are under pressure from the wave of migrants passing through the inhospitable Darién Gap at the south of the region heading, mostly, for the border between Mexico and the United States, to the north of the region. In the years from 2014 to 2020, we heard of the primary sources of immigration to the US being the Central American countries of the so-called Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But in more recent years, the wave of migrants from the Northern Triangle has been swollen by a new wave originating from south of the Central American region.

According to official sources in Panama, up to early September 2023, more than 348,000 people had crossed the Darién Gap into Panama, a figure 100,000 greater than the figure for the whole of 2022. Of these, 60,000 were children. Almost a half of this total were Venezuelan, and other significant South American and Caribbean nationalities included Haitians, Ecuadoreans and Colombians. There was also a growing number of people from China and the African continent, especially from Cameroon.

In September, the government of Panama announced that it aimed to intensify its deportation of migrants who enter the country via the Darién Gap from Colombia in an effort to put a stop to irregular immigration into the country. These numbers continue to increase despite the fact that the US has warned that it will not allow entry into the US to anyone who entered Panama through irregular channels.

The Panamanian director of Migration, Samira Gozaine, stated that “within our capability and our budget, we shall increase actions to gradually and progressively increase the deportations and expulsions of migrants who irregularly enter the country.” But she warned of a lack of resources to carry out the newly strengthened policy to the full: “obviously we have limited resources. If 3,000 people enter, we would like to deport those 3,000, but that’s not an operational possibility.”

The Panamanian government has also said that it will strengthen security measures in the frontier settlements and will change the locations of some police control posts. When they cross the frontier, the migrants still have to contend with wild animals, wide rivers, dense jungle and criminal gangs, although with the help of international organisations the government has established a number of posts throughout the country to help migrants.

In September this year, the Costa Rican government declared a state of emergency in response to the excessive number of migrants (more than 386,000 since January) who have entered the country through its southern border with Panama.

Similar to the efforts of the Panamanian government, the Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves announced that deportations and security measures would be increased. Rights groups such as the Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, described these measures as: “misguided and will contribute to more precarious situations for migrants in transit.”

Human Rights Watch Americas director Juanita Goebertus explained that the most serious issue underlying this hardened policy is that “people whose lives are at risk, whose personal integrity is at risk, cannot access the protections they have a right to.” Even former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla described the state of emergency as “misguided” and “highly counterproductive”.

In July, the University of Costa Rica’s fact-checking project, Doble Check, found that President Chaves’ public statements about foreigners in the country “presented a distorted image of the number of migrants in Costa Rica and the state resources directed toward that population,” while failing to recognise the economic contributions made by immigrants.

The United Nations Office for International Migration has called for collective action between Central American governments to provide humanitarian assistance.

Sources:

• Manuel Bermúdez, 08.09.23, ‘Panamá seeks to put a stop to the passage of irregular immigrants through the Darién jungle’, Semanario Universidad, San José.
• NACLA staff, 28.09.23, Untitled email note, North American Congress on Latin America, New York.
• United Nations News, 05.09.23, ‘Record crossings of perilous Darién Gap underscores need for safe migration pathways’, United Nations.

By Martin Mowforth

14 May 2024

Key words: migration; Darién crossing; Panama; President elect Mulino; repatriation.

A January 2024 AFP (Agence France Presse) report relates that over 520,000 migrants crossed the Darién jungle zone of Panamá during 2023. Of these, Panamá’s Ministry of Public Security reported that 120,000 were minors. This is more than double the next highest rate of the passage of Darién migrants which was in 2022.

On its X social network account, the Ministry said that it takes migrants between three and six days to cross the natural border between Colombia and Panamá which is 266 km long and covers 575,000 hectares of land. For humans, the area is one of the most inhospitable on the planet and migrants face many natural dangers as well as exploitation by criminal gangs. In November 2023, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated more than 400 cases of migrants who were victims of sexual assault, 97 per cent of them women, some of them girls. Despite the dangers, crossing the Darién remains an attractive route, and already this year (by the end of April, 147,000 migrants had entered Panama overland from Colombia.

The Ministry also gave details of the origins of the migrants. The greatest number of nationals crossing the Darién are from Venezuela who accounted for around 60 per cent of the total. They were followed by Ecuadorians, Haitians and Chinese with smaller numbers from Vietnam, Afghanistan and numerous African nations.

The situation has forced the Panamanian government and some international organisations to establish migrant care centres at various points in the country. In recognition of the fact that most of the migrants are trying to reach the United States of America, the Panamanian government’s initial response to this phenomenon was to arrange buses to transport the migrants through the country to its border with Costa Rica.

More recently, however, the government has been taking an increasingly hard line in its treatment of migrants who entered the country irregularly. President elect José Raúl Mulino (who takes over the presidency on 1^st July this year) has said he will try to shut down the Darién migration route.

Whether Mulino can effectively reduce the numbers passing through the Darién is uncertain. The large extent of the Darién has limited governmental presence and control. Giuseppe Loprete is the Chief of Mission in Panama of the United Nation’s International Organisation for Immigration and has pointed out that if the government manages to block the legal and well-trodden routes, “migrants run the risk of turning to criminal networks, traffickers and dangerous routes.” One such alternative route could be the dangerous sea route from Colombia to Panama.

Another possible policy option for Mulino would be to massively repatriate the migrants, but Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America says that “… in mathematical terms I don’t know how they hope to massively deport migrants. …. A daily plane, which would be extremely expensive, would only repatriate around ten per cent of the flow (about 1,000 to 1,200 per day). The United States only manages to do about 130 flights monthly in the entire world.”

Sources:

• AFP News Agency, 10 May 2024, Update, https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1788780797757186550
• Tico Times, 7 January 2024, ‘Record Migrant Surge Sees 120K Minors Enter Panama Jungle’, San José.
• Alma Solís, 11 May 2024, ‘Panama’s next president says he’ll try to shut down one of the world’s busiest migration routes’, APNews.
• Martin Mowforth, 27 November 2023, ‘Migration hits Panama and Costa Rica’, https://theviolenceofdevelopment.com/migration-hits-panama-and-costa-rica/

Migration Policy Institute

PRESS RELEASE
August 22, 2024
Contact: Michelle Mittelstadt
202-266-1910
mmittelstadt@migrationpolicy.org

WASHINGTON, DC — Legal pathways for Mexicans and northern Central Americans seeking to enter the United States have grown in recent years, as the U.S. government has increased its focus on managing migration cooperatively with neighbours in the region. With an emerging body of research suggesting that access to legal channels may reduce irregular migration pressures, a new fact sheet out today explores the permanent, temporary and humanitarian legal pathways that exist for citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, how widely these pathways have been used and how these numbers have changed over time.

The fact sheet by Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysts Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee draws on U.S. government data to provide an analytical overview of U.S. permanent and temporary visas and humanitarian pathways available to Mexicans and northern Central Americans.

The fact sheet, U.S. Legal Pathways for Mexican and Central American Immigrants, by the Numbers, finds that:

• Family sponsorship for an immigrant visa (also known as a green card) is a significant route for the arrival of Mexicans and, to a lesser extent, northern Central Americans, with the number ranging from about 80,000 to 120,000 annually for much of the past decade out of an average 469,000 green cards issued yearly to all new arrivals to the United States during the fiscal year (FY) 2014-2023 period.
• Non-immigrant visa issuance more than doubled for Mexicans and northern Central Americans between FY 2012-2019, increasing their share of overall non-immigrant visas from 9 percent to 16 percent. As of 2023, their share stood at 20 percent of all non-immigrant visas, which includes the H-2 seasonal agricultural and non-agricultural visas, F visa for international students, H-1B specialty occupations visa, TN professionals visa and the L-1 intra-company transfer visa.
• Mexicans still dominate the categories of H-2A visas for temporary agricultural workers and H-2B visas for temporary non-agricultural workers, receiving more than 90 percent of H-2A visas and over 70 percent of H-2B visas since FY 2010. While this reflects long-established recruitment practices and networks, a small but increasing share of H-2 visas are going to northern Central Americans. Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans accounted for 18 percent of H-2B visa issuance in FY 2023, up from 5 percent three years earlier and representing a more than eightfold increase in the overall number of H-2B visas issued to these nationals.
• Refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole are increasingly important mechanisms to provide Mexicans and northern Central Americans entry, in particular temporary humanitarian parole,facilitated by the CBP One app to schedule admissions at a port of entry. Mexicans were the fourth largest nationality receiving appointments through the CBP One app between January 2023 and March 2024. Combined, Mexicans and northern Central Americans were 28 percent of CBP One appointments during that period.

“The pathways available for Mexicans and northern Central Americans seeking to enter the United States legally have grown gradually in recent years. These include visas for seasonal work and, in the case of Mexican citizens, high-skilled work; green cards for family members of those already living permanently in the United States; and refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole for people seeking safety,” Ruiz Soto and Selee write. “These pathways account for a small but growing proportion of all migration from these countries; unauthorized migration remains larger, but they hold the potential to increase over time and provide lawful alternatives to otherwise dangerous journeys.”

Read the fact sheet, published by MPI and the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Centre, here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/us-legal-pathways-mexicans-central-americans.

For a policy analysis by MPI and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) of legal pathways within the entire Western Hemisphere, click here.

The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. For more on MPI, please visit www.migrationpolicy.org

In December, the North America Congress on Latin America (NACLA: nacla.org) distributed its online magazine with the heading ‘The Best of NACLA from 2024’ in which they gave short summaries of a few of their major 2024 reports. One of these was entitled ‘Family Separations and Deportations’ which are issues that The Violence of Development (TVOD) website has focussed on over the last few years. The summary includes several links which may be of interest to our readers. Obviously, we would also urge all our readers to follow NACLA which gives an incisive analysis on matters Latin American. The issue of migration through Central America to the US southern border is of course of particular concern to The Violence of Development website.

NACLA summary report for Nov/Dec 2024

FAMILY SEPARATIONS AND DEPORTATIONS

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents still routinely separate children from adult relatives during their custody, according to a final report submitted by a court-ordered monitor tasked with overseeing conditions in U.S. border facilities. Though this most recent report noted small improvements in the treatment of minors, the court-mandated oversight of children—a staple of decades of U.S. immigration law—will partially come to an end in early January as a result of the Biden administration’s repeated demands for its termination. Advocates for child migrants have opposed the administration’s request. Also this week, Human Rights Watch reported that as many as 1,360 children “have never been reunited with their parents” six years after former president Donald Trump implemented his “Zero Tolerance” child separation policy.

In related news, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has deported a mother and her four children, including newborn twins who were born in the United States. Christina Salazar was detained on December 11 after missing an immigration hearing due to complications from a recent cesarean section, even though she had informed the court of the health issue and had been told the hearing would be rescheduled. Just months after giving birth, Salazar and her children were deported to a town in Mexico where they have no connections.

Key words: remittances; migration; employment provision; social stability.

Sources within the BCIE (the Central American Bank of Economic Integration) have leaked their concerns about the possibility that US President Trump may tax the remittances not only of Mexican nationals residing in the USA to their families in Mexico, but may also extend this tax to nationals of all the Central American states. There are serious concerns that the currently untrumpeted intention to tax remittances to pay for the construction of the Border Wall with Mexico could seriously affect the economies of Central American states which include the remittance statistics in their currency reserve projections. The knock-on effect of such an action would be extra hardship suffered by all those families whose major money-earner works in the USA.

A related economic issue arises from the BCIE’s estimate that Honduras needs to create 140,000 jobs this year in order to match demographic projections to the employment requirements of the economy. The best case scenario, however, suggests that a maximum of only 100,000 jobs could be created. Clearly, this has implications for social stability which in turn also has implications for attempted migrations northwards to the USA.

Since Central Americans began to form caravans as a means of migrating to the US border and thence into the United States of America, behaviour at the border has been a major media issue of concern. The article below by Peter Costantini refers more to the most recent group of migrants – Haitians and Africans – rather than Central Americans; but it documents the changing policies practised by the US border agents which affect all those seeking asylum at the US border, a large proportion of whom come from the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras).

We are grateful to CounterPunch – an online journal which in its own words, “covers politics in a manner its editors describe as ‘muckraking with a radical attitude’” – for permission to reproduce the article. The CounterPunch website is at: https://www.counterpunch.org  We are also grateful to Peter Costantini for writing the article which is a summary of a much longer report, a link to which is given at the end of this summary.

Downstream From Del Rio

By Peter Costantini, CounterPunch

12 January 2022

A large encampment of mainly Haitian migrants appeared abruptly in September at a border crossing in the town of Del Rio, Texas. The reactions to it of United States immigration authorities created a media storm that shone a harsh light on racist brutality by the Border Patrol and contradictory responses to asylum seekers by the Joseph Biden administration.

Del Rio, which is across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, hosts a smaller border crossing than those 350 miles downriver in the lower Rio Grande valley and those 400 miles upriver around El Paso. In early September, thousands of Haitian and other Latin American migrants began arriving and crossing the shallows of the river to set up an improvised camp under a bridge. By mid-month, the camp had grown to a maximum of some 15,000 people, without adequate water and sanitation. The migrants were blocked from entering the town to buy food and supplies, which forced them to cross the river to buy them in Ciudad Acuña. Conditions in the encampment were called “deplorable” by the United Nations.

On September 19, Border Patrol officers on horseback tried to physically block families with children crossing the river to bring supplies back to the camp, which had previously been allowed. Videos of the aggressive use of force against peaceful migrants went viral and provoked widespread condemnation as an echo of historical racist aggression against Black people. The Biden administration disavowed the enforcement operation and initiated an investigation, which is ongoing as of early January.

As the political controversy grew, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas quickly mobilized large-scale federal and state resources to dismantle the camp and resolve the migrants’ immigration status. On September 24, Mayorkas announced at a White House press conference that the camp had been completely dismantled and all of the migrants there had been moved to other locations. A large majority had been processed by immigration authorities and either flown to Haiti or accepted into the asylum process.

Ultimately, Mayorkas’s statements and subsequent media coverage revealed that some 8,700 Haitian migrants were eventually expelled back to Haiti; 13,000 were accepted into the asylum process, of whom 10,000 were released to family members or sponsors around the country and 3,000 were still in immigration detention as their asylum cases proceeded; 8,000 had “voluntarily” returned to Mexico and avoided the U.S. immigration system; and another 4,000 were still being processed as of Mayorkas’s speech.

Most of the 8,700 Haitians expelled back to Haiti had left their home country after a devastating 2010 earthquake to migrate to South America. In the past year, the already impoverished country had been wracked by another earthquake that killed over 2,000, a hurricane, the assassination of the president and dissolution of the legislature and much of the police force, and the takeover of large areas of the capital by warring gangs who kidnapped at will and brought the battered economy to its knees. The United Nations and human-rights organisations forcefully criticized the expulsions. Two veteran U.S. diplomats resigned in outrage that the government would send asylum seekers back to a place so mortally dangerous, given that the purpose of asylum is to protect people against having to return to places they left because of persecution. Debates over the handling of the Del Rio migrants revealed acute disputes over immigration policy within the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats.

Nevertheless, the acceptance of 13,000 migrants into the asylum process, nearly 50 percent more than those sent back to Haiti, suggested that advocates of respect for asylum laws still exerted some influence within the administration.

Under Biden, border enforcement has continued to operate under a controversial statute known as Title 42. The Donald Trump administration had launched this public-health emergency provision early in 2020, using it to summarily expel nearly all border-crossers back to Mexico without the possibility of a hearing, effectively shutting down most immigration and denying any chance to request asylum. Public health and human rights authorities inside and outside of the government protested that protecting against the pandemic did not necessitate shutting down immigration and asylum.

The Biden government had already exempted children from Title 42 expulsions, and some families as well – in part because Mexico did not accept the return of families in some border areas. Biden had reduced the use of Title 42 to about 50 percent of cases by mid-2021, while Trump had expelled nearly 90 percent under it in late 2020. For the Del Rio migrants, 40 percent of those processed were expelled, while 60 percent were allowed to enter the normal, pre-pandemic asylum process.

The full report, Downstream from Del Rio, fleshes out the details and context of what happened at Del Rio and analyses the controversies unleashed and their outcomes so far. It finishes by exploring potential policies and strategies to end the violations of immigrants’ human rights at the border, and reform the asylum system to meet the realities of the 21^st Century.

Peter Costantini is a Seattle-based analyst who has covered Latin America for the past three decades.

In 2018, 2019 and early 2020, before the pandemic hit us all, migration flows and rates from the Northern Triangle of Central America to the United States border with Mexico were the subject of relatively frequent attention in mainstream European newspapers as well as in the mainstream US media. The fact that such reports are now less frequent does not mean that the phenomenon has disappeared. For a short time the migrant caravans that were the principal attraction to the ephemeral interests of the western media waned as the lockdowns spread around the globe. But if anything the new conditions of life under the pandemic became worse for a majority of people and the factors driving the local populations of the Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) to strike out for ‘new ground’ were as strong as they ever had been. Those driving factors included particularly the violence of life in this region where gang and police violence and the threats thereof made daily life intolerable and where trying to ignore such violence by ‘keeping your head down’ had for many become a poor coping strategy. It should come as no surprise therefore that the previous few weeks and months have produced a crop of reports of new caravans making their way to the US-Mexico border. A major difference now (towards the end of 2021), however, is that large numbers of Haitians and African people are now joining the many Central Americans who form the caravans.

A few of the more recent reports are summarised below by Martin Mowforth for The Violence of Development website.

In October [2021] numerous reports of massive migrant crossings through the Darien jungle of Panama were made, most notably by UNICEF. On 8^th October the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that “More than 91,000 migrants have crossed Darien Gap on way to North America this year”.

A UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) press release from 11^th October reported on the “highest ever number of migrant children crossing the Darien jungle towards the US” in 2021.  “Almost 19,000 migrant children have journeyed through the Darien Gap so far this year, nearly three times more than the number registered over the five previous years combined. More than 1 in 5 migrants crossing the border between Colombia and Panama are children.” Horrifyingly, “Half of them are below the age of five.”

“Each child crossing the Darien Gap on foot is a survivor,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Deep in the jungle, robbery, rape and human trafficking are as dangerous as wild animals, insects and the absolute lack of safe drinking water. Week after week, more children are dying, losing their parents, or getting separated from their relatives while on this perilous journey. It’s appalling that criminal groups are taking advantage of these children when they are at their most vulnerable.”

“Never before have our teams on the ground seen so many young children crossing the Darien Gap – often unaccompanied. Such a fast-growing influx of children heading north from South America should urgently be treated as a serious humanitarian crisis by the entire region, beyond Panama,” Gough said.

In Panama, UNICEF and its partners are providing psychosocial support and health services to migrant children, especially those who have been separated from their parents. Together with the Panama government, the UN organisation is distributing water every day to 1,000 people and hygiene kits to migrant adolescent girls and women at the three migrant reception centres in Bajo Chiquito, Lajas Blancas and San Vicente.

The numbers of migrants headed for the US have been bolstered by Haitians and those from African countries, and caravans from the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras continue to form and move northwards to the Mexico / US border.

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/2021-records-highest-ever-number-migrant-children-crossing-darien-jungle-towards-us

On 29^th October, Telesur headlined ‘Hundreds of Haitian Migrants Reported Passing Through Honduras’.

The increase of migrants present in the country is evident, and the groups of Hondurans fleeing the country have been joined by Haitians and Africans. The migration situation in Honduras has become more complicated in recent days with the passage of hundreds of migrants from Haiti and numerous African countries, who seek to reach US territory, human rights defenders reported.

The teleSUR correspondent in Honduras, Gilda Silvestrucci, indicated that in the bus terminals the increase of migrants is evident, and the groups of Hondurans fleeing the country have been joined by Haitians and Africans.

In an interview, the migrant Claude Pierre acknowledged that the road to the United States (US) is “dangerous.” “One suffers a lot, goes hungry, but (one migrates) to see if one can find a better life,” he said.

Data show that in the last weeks Honduras has received more than 3,000 Haitians, a number that will increase and complicate the situation in the border areas. The Honduran defender of migrants’ rights, Itsmania Platero, said that these 3,000 Haitians “are part of a first contingent that left from Panama and there could be up to 80,000 migrants entering this country.”

Marcela Cruz, representative of the CLAMOR network, explained that the shelters provide attention to the migrants, as well as to the thousands of Honduran returnees to whom the Government does not provide any assistance.

Analysts have pointed out that violence and poverty are the main reasons why young people, women and men decide to make the exodus to the United States.

Gilda Silvestrucci noted that although the calls for caravans have ceased, many leave in small groups to meet in Guatemala or in Mexico, where an international caravan of migrants is heading to Mexico City, in search of a response to their requests for refuge.

Also on 29^th October 2021, La Prensa Gráfica reported that on the 10^th of that month several bodies of migrants were discovered.

Medardo Tejada Portillo (the father), Jenmy (mother) and son Joshua along with Jenmy’s sister-in-law Francisca Dominguez were the victims. The two assassins are believed to have been ‘coyotes’ who had been hired to take them to the United States. It is believed that the victims had paid almost $10,000 for the journey. They had all been shot.

The victims had planned their journey for three months and the money to pay the ‘coyotes’ had been paid by Jenmy’s mother who lives in the United States.

On 5^th November, Telesur reported that a ‘Central American migrant caravan overwhelmed the Mexican National Guard’.

(Published 5 November 2021 by Telesur)

On Thursday, a Central American migrant caravan traveling on foot overwhelmed the Mexican National Guard trying to contain its advance and resumed its march toward Mexico City.

The migrants and guard members clashed on the highway linking the towns of Pijijiapán and Tonalá in Chiapas state, leaving at least two guard members injured and many people arrested.

Upon reaching the highway, federal agents got out of their vehicles with shields in their hands and created a barrier to prevent migrants from moving forward. The anti-riot groups initially managed to intimidate the asylum seekers, who ran away. A short time later, however, the situation changed.

At the scene, some 50 migrants counter-attacked the National Guard with sticks and stones. This strong reaction occurred amid the memory of the death of a Cuban migrant who was shot to death by the National Guard over the weekend. After about 10 minutes, the officers rushed into their vehicles to get away as quickly as possible from the site. The caravan then continued moving down the road.

After the altercation, the caravan, composed of some 4,000 migrants, mostly from Central America and Haiti, departed from Pijijiapán on its trek north toward Tuxtla Gutiérrez City in the Chiapas state.

The Central American region is seeing an unprecedented exodus this year. Between January and August, Mexico had reported the entry of more than 147,000 undocumented migrants, tripling the number in 2020, according to figures from the Mexican government.

On 19^th November 2021, a new migrant caravan attempted to cross Mexico en route to the Unites States

(By Rubén Morales Iglesias) 

A new 2,000 strong migrant caravan, headed to the United States (US), moved out of Tapachula in southern Mexico on Thursday. Tapachula is a city in the state of Chiapas, which borders with Guatemala.

The migrants, Central Americans and Haitians, are attempting to join the first caravan which left Tapachula on October 23 with about 4,000 migrants. That caravan has since whittled down to 700 to 800 according to different reports.

The caravan set out of Tapachula as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was in Washington meeting with the US and Canadian leaders talking about migration.

While their objective is to reach the US border, the migrants said they intend to pass through Mexico City where they plan on meeting with López Obrador to ask for humanitarian visas and permanent resident cards in Mexico City to move freely in the country while trying to get to the US.

On 21st November 2021, Mexican authorities found more than 400 migrants in trailers.

(By Aaron Humes: Associated Press)

More than 400 migrants transiting Mexico were found in the back of two trailers, not far from where two separate migrant caravans were located heading north toward the United States.

The group, according to the Veracruz state’s Human Rights Commission’s representative Tonatiuh Hernández Sarmiento, were very dirty, covered in mud, in overcrowded, hot and wet conditions, and included children, pregnant women and ill people. The migrants were held by authorities in a fenced yard until federal immigration agents could retrieve them.

In recent meetings the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada discussed immigration, agreeing to increase the paths for legal migration, for example with more visas for temporary workers. They also pledged to expand access to protective status for migrants and to address the causes that lead them to migrate, but did not offer hard numbers or timelines for implementation.

But the clandestine flow of migrants who pay smugglers for direct trips to the US border continues, and those active on the issue say the agreement provides few advances and depends on conditions on the ground, where authorities continue to violate the rights of migrants, deny them access to protection, and allow crimes and human rights abuses to occur with impunity.

The migrant caravan currently in Veracruz is the first to advance so far in the past two years, because since 2019, security forces have stopped and dissolved the caravans. This time, the Mexican government used the offer of humanitarian visas to diminish the caravan’s numbers as it slowly moved north, but some have remained suspicious and continued walking. Some migrants who received the documents have reported being swept up by authorities in the north and returned to Tapachula near the Guatemala border.

At least one migrant told the Associated Press he was prepared to find work in Mexico and enter the US legally when he could – but that he could not risk going back to his home country, in this case Haiti.

Such headlines and reports make it clear that the Central American crisis of violence, economic disadvantage, corruption and population displacement has not disappeared, despite the fact that it now rarely appears in our mainstream media.

On this theme, we recommend our readers to another item in this month’s additions to The Violence of Development website, namely the CounterPunch article by W.T Whitney. In the last few paragraphs Whitney gives some context behind these escalating migration rates.

‘US Intervention and Capitalism Have Created a Monster in Honduras’ by W.T. Whitney in CounterPunch.

By Martin Mowforth

Key words: migration; forced displacement; Central America; Norther Triangle countries; UNHCR data; refugees; asylum seekers.

In early December [2020], data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) relating to refugees in and asylum seekers from Central American countries showed the following:.

• There are around 470,000 refugees and asylum seekers from the north of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) throughout the world.
• There are more than 97,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Mexico from Central America.
• There are over 318,000 internally displaced people in Honduras and El Salvador.
• Over 102,000 Nicaraguans have left their country during 2020.

The UNHCR website explains that:

“Growing numbers of people in Central America are being forced to leave their homes. … Compounded by socio-economic instability and poverty, they are escaping gang violence, threats, extortion, recruitment into gangs or prostitution, as well as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people – collectively known as LGBTI – are also feeling persecution. Many more are displaced more than once within their own countries or have been deported back home, often into dangerous situations.”

“The escalating situation of chronic violence and insecurity, coupled with COVID-19-related restrictions, is exacerbating hardship and persecution for tens of thousands of people in Central America, who now have limited means of finding protection and making ends meet.”

The UNHCR website cites Raúl who fled with his family from El Salvador to neighbouring Guatemala: “We had our own bakery in El Salvador, until gangs arrived, and we could no longer sell bread. We were threatened out of our country.”

Whilst there are similar factors at play in the three Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – as described in the UNHCR quote above – the situation in Nicaragua has rather different recent causes. In the case of Nicaragua, the UNHCR puts the number of refugee and asylum seekers down to political persecution. Whilst this may explain the motives of some of those included in the data, the UNHCR data should be questioned as many of the applications from Nicaraguans for asylum or refugee status or citizenship within Costa Rica come from Nicaraguans who are already resident in Costa Rica or are regular economic migrants who travel seasonally to work on the Costa Rican plantations or who do domestic work there.

Indeed, the UNHCR is accused of manufacturing a ‘refugee crisis’ by John Perry who explains in more detail the misuse of data in his article ‘Nicaraguans in Costa Rica: A Manufactured ‘Refugee’ Crisis’ which is also included as the next item in this month’s additions to The Violence of Development website (December 2020).

There is undoubtedly a refugee and migrant crisis in Central America, one that has fuelled the migrant caravans from the Northern Triangle countries to the United States over the last two years. But the data is not always 100 per cent reliable, as John Perry explains here. We are grateful to John for permission to reproduce his article which first appeared in the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) at: https://www.coha.org/nicaraguans-in-costa-rica-a-manufactured-refugee-crisis/

March 23, 2020  

By John Perry
Masaya, Nicaragua

Key words: Coronavirus, Costa Rica, COVID-19, Nicaragua; refugees; economic migrants.

• The situation has mostly normalized in Nicaragua and yet the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is promoting an imminent refugee crisis narrative.
• 80% of the recent asylum requests came from people who had been living and working in Costa Rica without documents, before Nicaragua’s crisis of April 2018.
• In 2018 Costa Rica approved only six asylum claims; by May 2019 it had approved a total of 24, and by then it had also rejected 1,300 as being “economic migrants,” not genuine asylum seekers.
• In 2018, over 800,000 Nicaraguans were coming and going from Costa Rica: 48% of those were travelling back to Nicaragua. Numbers rose to 830,000 in 2019.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Organisation for World Peace, and some of the mainstream media, are raising the spectre that a crisis is unfolding because of increased refugee emigration from Nicaragua to Costa Rica. Yet neither the empirical data on migration between these two Central American nations nor the return to normalcy in Nicaragua support this argument. The coronavirus pandemic, which has led to tighter border closures between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, is putting a spotlight on this issue. Here we examine the history of the Nicaraguan immigrant presence in Costa Rica and argue that projections of a refugee crisis are not consistent with the evidence.

The coronavirus epidemic is still in its early stages in Central America but it has already put a focus on Costa Rica’s dependency on workers from Nicaragua. At any one time there are around 400,000 Nicaraguans working in the neighbouring country, especially doing building work, domestic work, as security guards or in agriculture. Given that a large proportion are undocumented, the real figure could be much higher, a very significant addition to Costa Rica’s population of under five million people. Yet the Vice-President of Costa Rica, Epsy Campbell, made a call this month to employers to persuade their Nicaraguan workers to stay put over the coming Easter holidays when otherwise they might leave to see their families.^[1] She was clearly worried about the impact on Costa Rica’s economy if workers left the country and were unable to return because of the restrictions at the border resulting from the coronavirus epidemic.

President Alvarado promotes the refugee narrative while peace returns to Nicaragua.

So the current epidemic has brought grudging recognition by Costa Rica of the importance of ‘Nicas’ to its economy. Yet until just a few weeks ago, Costa Rica’s president Carlos Alvarado was making regular calls for help to deal with the numbers pleading asylum in the country since the attempted coup in Nicaragua in April 2018.

Alvarado has cultivated a close relationship with the UN High Commission for Refugees, whose officials have praised Costa Rican institutions during their regular visits. Last year they awarded his government $650 million to meet the “challenge” created by the ongoing ‘crisis’ in Nicaragua, even though by then Costa Rica’s neighbour had long been at peace.^[2]

UNHCR claims of “refugee outflows” from Nicaragua not substantiated by the data

Then on March 10 this year 2020, even as the coronavirus crisis was escalating, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), suddenly decided to dramatize a problem that most people had thought was being steadily resolved. Its spokesperson Shabia Mantoo asserted that 4,000 Nicaraguans “continue to flee their country” every month, principally to Costa Rica.^[3] “With no political resolution in sight”, she tweeted, “refugee outflows [are] expected to continue,” making no reference to the amnesties in Nicaragua for those who left for Costa Rica and the promises of safe return.^[4] Despite the UNHCR giving no source for its claim that 4,000 Nicaraguans continue to flee abroad, its message was accepted as authoritative and quickly picked up by international media. The Guardian, for example, warned that the “exodus [is] expected to continue… amid fears of [a] repeat of state and police repression.”^[5] The Organisation for World Peace went much further, making the absurd claim that Nicaragua threatens to cause the world’s next big refugee crisis.^[6]

A porous border that ensures work for thousands of Nicaraguans

In this situation, especially as both countries face a real crisis produced by the coronavirus pandemic, cool heads are needed. These alarmist stories are not only bereft of real facts, but appear to be written by people ignorant of the historic economic and social ties between these two countries, which are much stronger than, for example, either country’s relationship with its neighbours to the north (Honduras) or the south (Panama). At the end of 2018, almost 350,000 Nicaraguans were officially recognised as residents in Costa Rica, a figure which had grown by only 10,000 during the year of Nicaragua’s crisis.^[7] Many more, possibly even the same number again, are believed to live and work undocumented in Costa Rica. This is made possible by the long and porous land border: there are said to be 20 or more unofficial crossing places, many of them known to authorities on both sides. Nicaraguans can easily cross into Costa Rica, work for perhaps six months harvesting coffee or picking bananas, and return home with their wages, no questions asked. Most Nica families, especially in rural areas, have someone who has done this.

The reality is that huge numbers of Nicaraguans travel in both directions across the border on a daily basis. For example, official figures show that in March 2018, a month before the crisis, 33,000 Nicaraguans headed south while 44,000 returned home. The whole of 2018 saw over 800,000 Nicaraguans coming and going: 48% of those were travelling back to Nicaragua, a country which according to the UNHCR was (and still is) in “political and social crisis”. Numbers rose to 830,000 in 2019, now almost evenly split between those travelling in either direction.^[8] Indeed, extra demand led the long-distance bus companies operating between the two countries to increase their services. And, of course, the large volume of undocumented border crossings must be added to these official figures.

Just a handful of Nicaraguan asylum claims have been granted by Costa Rica

How does this help us understand the “refugee outflow” from Nicaragua? First, we have to ask whether the figures being quoted are plausible. Costa Rican migration figures show a total of just under 55,000 applications for asylum by Nicaraguans in the past two years (23,063 in 2018^[9] and approximately 31,500^[10] in 2019). Assuming these accurately reflect the bureaucratic process, they are significantly below the figure of 77,000 given by the UNHCR.^[11] Even if all of the 55,000 were new arrivals, the numbers are very small as a proportion of Nicaraguans officially crossing into Costa Rica. For example, in 2018 asylum requests came from less than 6% of those officially counted as crossing the border that year, and of course this would be an even smaller proportion if illegal border crossings were taken into account.^[12] Even counting its non-Nicaraguan asylum seekers, Costa Rica has just 0.05% of the global total of nearly 75 million people classified as “of concern” to the UNHCR.^[13] It seems Costa Rica is far from facing “the world’s next big refugee crisis.”

Most “refugees” are actually economic migrants

What is more, the 55,000 claims appear to include many that aren’t genuine. President Alvarado acknowledged in August 2018 that more than 80% of the recent asylum requests came from people who had been living in Costa Rica without documents, before Nicaragua’s crisis of April 2018.^[14] In other words, four out of five asylum seekers were (according to the Costa Rican government itself) judged to be economic migrants, living in the country already and now trying to take advantage of the crisis to regularise their status. This might explain why Costa Rica is approving very few of these applications: in 2018 it approved only six; by May 2019 it had approved a total of 24, and by then it had also rejected 1,300 as being “economic migrants,” not genuine asylum seekers. During 2018, Nicaraguan applicants had one chance in 3,800 of being officially accepted, whereas asylum seekers from El Salvador (for example) had a one in ten chance. Nicaraguans also accounted for 84% of the 1,181 people deported in 2018. In addition, Costa Rica gave over 4,800 Nicaraguan asylum seekers permission to work, instead of recognising them as refugees, officially accepting that they were there to obtain jobs.^[15]

The UNHCR not only exaggerates – probably by a very big margin – the number of genuine asylum seekers in Costa Rica, it goes on to claim that there are 4,000 new asylum seekers per month, expecting “these numbers to grow”.^[16] This amounts to forecasting in excess of 50,000 new cases over the course of 2020, or a near doubling of the total reached at the end of 2019. It seems little more than a figure plucked from the air. Why would more people leave now than at the peak of the crisis in 2018? Is the UNHCR unaware that, by the Costa Rican government’s own admission, more than three-quarters of cases arise from Nicaraguans already living there? If, as the enduring presence of Nicaraguan labour in Costa Rica indicates (and is implied by the Costa Rican government’s decisions on cases) the pressure to emigrate from Nicaragua to Costa Rica is mainly an economic one, why would one expect more people to leave as the Nicaraguan economy recovers from the damage done by the roadblocks and other disruptions in 2018? Of course, both economies are now susceptible to damage as a result of the pandemic, but if anything this will lead to less movement across the border as security measures tighten.

The 2019 report Dismissing the Truth noted that some informal interviews carried out with Nicaraguan asylum seekers in Costa Rica confirmed what President Alvarado had said about many being economic migrants.^[17] Of those who were recent arrivals, some said they were not fleeing persecution but rather had been affected by the intense economic crisis produced in Nicaragua by the blockading of cities by opposition gangs in the period April-July 2018, which meant that businesses closed down and many workers lost their jobs. Some had fled because they had committed crimes when controlling the roadblocks and were well aware they would be held accountable if they stayed. Those in this category included (for example) the criminals responsible for the kidnap, torture and murder of the unarmed police officer Gabriel de Jesús Vado Ruíz in Masaya, Nicaragua, on July 14-15, 2018.

Most of the prominent opposition figures have returned to Nicaragua

Perhaps the biggest paradox is that, as the figures in this article indicate, Nicaraguans have been free to travel in and out their country and many have done so, encouraged by the amnesty granted in 2019. One of the internationally accepted tests of a genuine refugee is that they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. As the Costa Rican government makes clear from its actions, most Nicaraguans in the country do not meet this test. Those returning to Nicaragua have included most of the prominent political critics of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, who have not only moved back but have since been busy travelling to the United States and elsewhere, lobbying against their own government, apparently without facing any problems on their return. It is of course very much part of their message that Nicaragua is still in a “crisis” which can only be resolved if they, rather than elected President Daniel Ortega, were to be in power.

Both UNHCR and the OAS misrepresent the situation

The UNHCR is not the only international body to be complicit in sustaining the argument that Nicaragua’s crisis is unresolved. The same applies, for example, to the Organisation of American States (OAS). Costa Rica’s leaders have been consistent critics of the Sandinista governments, and they have both a political and economic interest in maintaining the fiction that it is they who are suffering from Nicaragua’s continuing “crisis”. It has taken a pandemic to flush out the truth, that Costa Rica is as dependent on Nicaragua economically as Nicaragua is on Costa Rica. And as to the true scale and nature of the refugee problem in Costa Rica, the UNHCR has a duty to explain the actual context, report the facts, and avoid alarmist forecasts that have little basis in reality.

John Perry is a writer based in Nicaragua and writes on Central America for The Nation, London Review of Books, Open Democracy and The Grayzone.

Endnotes

^[1] “Gobierno pide a residentes nicaragüenses no abandonar el país en los próximos días,” https://semanariouniversidad.com/pais/gobierno-pide-a-residentes-nicaraguenses-no-abandonar-el-pais-en-los-proximos-dias/

^[2] “Costa Rica y OEA firman proyecto por $650 mil para atender a migrantes nicaragüenses en suelo tico,” http://cb24.tv/2019/08/12/costa-rica-y-oea-firman-proyecto-por-650-mil-para-atender-a-migrantes-nicaraguenses-en-suelo-tico/

^[3] “Two years of political and social crisis in Nicaragua force more than 100,000 to flee,” https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/briefing/2020/3/5e6759934/years-political-social-crisis-nicaragua-forces-100000-flee.html

^[4] https://twitter.com/Shabia_M/status/1237335001823350786

^[5] “Over 100,000 have fled Nicaragua since brutal 2018 crackdown, says UN,” https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/11/over-100000-have-fled-nicaragua-since-brutal-2018-crackdown-says-un

^[6] “Nicaraguan Dissent Threatens To Cause The Next Big Refugee Crisis,” https://theowp.org/nicaraguan-dissent-threatens-to-cause-the-next-big-refugee-crisis/

^[7] All statistics quoted in the article, unless otherwise referenced, are taken from the monthly and annual reports on the statistics page of the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería, Costa Rica (http://www.migracion.go.cr/Paginas/Centro%20de%20Documentaci%C3%B3n/Estad%C3%ADsticas.aspx#collapseFour) (hereafter cited as Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería).

^[8] Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería.

^[9] Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería.

^[10] “Migración recibe a Kelly Clements, Alta Comisionada Adjunta para los Refugiados de las Naciones Unidas,” http://www.mgp.go.cr/prensa/noticias/336-migracion-recibe-a-kelly-clements-alta-comisionada-adjunta-para-los-refugiados-de-las-naciones-unidas

^[11] “Two years of political and social crisis in Nicaragua force more than 100,000 to flee,” https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/briefing/2020/3/5e6759934/years-political-social-crisis-nicaragua-forces-100000-flee.html

^[12] Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería.

^[13] Statistics available at http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/overview#_ga=2.73827218.1882832936.1584822524-850912820.1584397536

^[14] “Presidente de Costa Rica defiende atención a migración nicaragüense por crisis,” https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/472337-costa-rica-atencion-migracion-nicaraguense-crisis/

^[15] Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería.

^[16] “Two years of political and social crisis in Nicaragua force more than 100,000 to flee,” https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/briefing/2020/3/5e6759934/years-political-social-crisis-nicaragua-forces-100000-flee.html

^[17] Available at https://afgj.org/dismissing-the-truth-why-amnesty-international-is-wrong-about-nicaragua

Freedom United is an organisation dedicated to ending human trafficking and modern slavery. In February this year we received the following report from Freedom United outlining the difficulties faced by (mostly) Central America migrants trying to make their way to the United States. We are grateful to Freedom United for permission to reproduce their short report here.

https://www.freedomunited.org/

Key words: migration; Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF); asylum processing; kidnapping; sexual violence; Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP); human rights.

13 February, 2020

Medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has reported that migrants from Central America are being “treated as if they aren’t really people” as a staggeringly high number are being kidnapped, raped and trafficked in Mexico.

This comes during a U.S. government crackdown to limit the number of migrants entering the country.

President Donald Trump has threatened to put tariffs on its imports into Mexico, pressuring its neighbour to increase its efforts to stop migrants reaching the U.S. border.

Most migrants from Central America fleeing their home countries as a result of violence or poverty hope to reach safety in the United States where they may have support networks.

Instead, their journey may come to an end in Mexico’s Nuevo Laredo city. According to MSF, nearly 80% of migrants treated in Nuevo Laredo in the first nine months of 2019 were victims of kidnapping or other forms of violence.

Mexico coordinator for MSF, Sergio Martín, said that “they’ve suffered violence … and what they find on their journey is more violence.”

The Thomson Reuters Foundation reports:

“In September, 18 of 41 patients in Nuevo Laredo who had been sent back to Mexico to wait for U.S. asylum processing told MSF they had recently been kidnapped.

“We think that as a direct result of many of these policies there are people who are suffering more violence,” said Martín.

“It’s easier for them to fall into human trafficking networks or into extortion networks, and no one look for them.”

MSF found 78% of almost 3,700 patients in Mexico who sought mental health care in 2018 and 2019 showed signs of exposure to violence, including assault, sexual violence and torture.

Some patients said they had been kidnapped in Mexico for long periods for forced labour, sexual exploitation or recruitment to work for criminal groups.

Almost one in four female migrants told MSF they had experienced sexual violence on their journeys.”

Mexico’s National Guard has been deployed to prevent migrants crossing the border into the U.S. whilst also increasing numbers of detentions and deportations.

To date, the U.S. has sent 57,000 non-Mexican migrants to Mexico as they await their U.S. asylum hearings whilst also restricting asylum criteria and reducing the number of claims being received at each U.S. port of entry.

The Migrant Protection Protocol, otherwise known as MPP, is the U.S. programme that aims to keep asylum seekers in Mexico with the support of the Mexican government.

A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that the “MPP is one of the most important and effective tools we have implemented to confront the crisis on the border and we will continue to strengthen and expand.”

While Mexico’s immigration authority and interior ministry did not comment immediately, President Andres Manuel López Obrador expressed his desire for enforcing immigration laws as long as migrants’ human rights are respected.

The following news about the ending of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for many thousands of Central Americans living in the United States is adapted from a notification from the CISPES national office. (CISPES is the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador – http://cispes.org/ )

Key words: temporary protected status (TPS); migration

Friday 4^th May (2018) the Trump Administration announced its devastating but unsurprising decision to cancel Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 57,000 Hondurans following an 18 month grace period.

Demonstration against ending of TPS for Honduras

In the past year, the Department of Homeland Security has ended TPS for nearly every country to which it had previously been granted, bringing the total number of people who will lose their status to close to 400,000, including over 260,000 Salvadorans. Most Central Americans with TPS have lived here for over 20 years and are parents to U.S. citizens.

It should be evident that the ending of TPS could lead to a drastic increase in the number of deportees arriving back in Central American countries, especially El Salvador. The ramifications of such an influx of migrants would be felt in all walks of life including housing, employment and security.

 CISPES National Office
1525 Newton St. NW
Washington DC, 20010
(202) 521-2510

A blog post by the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

 Reproduced by kind permission of CIEL

Originally posted August 7, 2017

 Recently, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was poised to provide US $200 million to Guatemala to strengthen “competitiveness” and “security” by implementing fiscal and migratory controls at border crossings with Mexico.

Family crossing Río Suchiate at Tecun Uman on the Guatemala, Mexico border. The IDB planned to give millions to the Guatemalan military to bulk up security at this and other border crossings. Credit: Kelsey Alford-Jones

This project did not immediately stand out among the dozens of projects collected each week by the Early Warning System (EWS) in the region. Indeed, while the EWS seeks to alert communities of all projects under consideration for Bank finance, we focus on projects that have a high risk of causing adverse impacts or rights violations in nearby communities – typically large-scale infrastructure projects, mining, hydroelectric dams, among others.

Yet harmful impacts are not only caused by the physical footprint of a project or by displacement or contamination associated with the operation of a project. Sometimes the way a project is structured, or the choice of its implementing partner, raises equal concern.

In this case, the scale and impact of the project were hard to determine, but I immediately noted the government agency that would receive the $200 million loan and be responsible for overseeing the proposed fiscal and migratory controls: it was the Guatemalan Defence Ministry.

Supporting an Expanded Role for the Military?

Having worked on Guatemalan human rights issues for eight years, this raised serious red flags. The IDB project involved activities that fall outside the mandate of the Defence Ministry, an issue that would raise concern in any country. Yet in Guatemala, these concerns are exacerbated by the recent legacy of intense state-sponsored violence and the nation’s ongoing struggle to define a clear – and appropriately limited – role for the military. For example, fiscal controls fall explicitly within the mandate of a different agency, and empowering the military by giving it control of the programme budget would expand its duties unnecessarily.

Moreover, the military has been linked to numerous corruption scandals and has been shown to have connections to transnational organised criminal groups even reaching its highest levels. For example, there are documented cases of weapons thefts from Guatemalan military bases, indicating a direct flow of arms from the military to criminal organisations. This is echoed by a report by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) on arms trafficking, which found evidence of “intentional diversion of military or police arsenals to the black market.”

“Better Control of Migrants On their Way to the US”

A mural in Tecun Uman, San Marcos – a busy border crossing with Mexico that would receive funding through the IDB project – depicts the story of many Central American migrants forced to uproot themselves from their communities and journey north to flee violence and to support their families. (Credit: Kelsey-Alford Jones)

The fact that the Defence Ministry is the executing agency isn’t the only red flag. IDB objectives listed in project documents also raised concerns. For example, the project explicitly aimed to impede migration of those seeking to travel to the United States.  This objective has been part of a regional effort – pushed by the US and funded by the IDB and others – to address the unprecedented number of migrants and refugees reaching the US border in recent years, including unaccompanied minors, from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.  In a recent open letter to the IDB, dozens of organisations called on the bank to recognise the complex root causes of migration, which include high rates of generalised violence, as well as targeted violence against women, LGBT people, children, and other vulnerable communities. It is tragic that the response to this regional humanitarian crisis is to block passage of migrants and refugees by bulking up the military’s presence at the border. Importantly, this initiative could also violate international law.

With the project flagged in the EWS, I reached out to partners in Guatemala to share its details and my analysis. I also ensured the information reached border communities who would be impacted by implementation at border crossings. Then, to ensure these concerns were not passing under the radar, I reached out directly to the US government, both in meetings and in a memo that was circulated to US Treasury officials, the US office of the Executive Director of the IDB, and the IDB project team.

Not long after, we were informed that the implementing agency was being reconsidered, and it would no longer be the Defence Ministry. The IDB website also suggests the Bank has halved funding from $200 million to $100 million. Nevertheless, we have yet to see this change reflected on the IDB’s website or receive formal confirmation.

This is a partial win. Guatemalans are more aware of the funding their government is requesting, and the new implementing agency will, hopefully, be the proper one to put new fiscal controls into effect. Yet the overall funding proposal continues to raise concerns, both in the lack of clarity on the specific impacts of the project and in the suggestion that ‘border security’ includes limiting the ability of refugees and asylum seekers to flee their own country.

The EWS team will continue to track the project as it evolves, and having done analysis and outreach while the project is still in the pipeline, we are now well placed to support communities who may be impacted in the future.

By Kelsey Alford-Jones, Senior Campaigner for the People, Land and Resources Program at the Centre for International Environmental Law. This project was initially monitored and analysed as part of the Early Warning System, a joint initiative by the Centre for International Environmental Law and the International Accountability Project.

Since 1989, the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has used the power of law to protect the environment, promote human rights, and ensure a just and sustainable society.

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