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1. Reverse Migration to Mexico Led to US Undocumented Population Decline: 2010 to 2018

Author:
Robert Warren
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This report presents estimates of the undocumented population residing in the United States in 2018, highlighting demographic changes since 2010. The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) compiled these estimates based primarily on information collected in the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The annual CMS estimates of undocumented residents for 2010 to 2018 include all the detailed characteristics collected in the ACS. [1] A summary of the CMS estimation procedures, as well as a discussion of the plausibility of the estimates, is provided in the Appendix. The total undocumented population in the United States continued to decline in 2018, primarily because large numbers of undocumented residents returned to Mexico. From 2010 to 2018, a total of 2.6 million Mexican nationals left the US undocumented population; [2] about 1.1 million, or 45 percent of them, returned to Mexico voluntarily. The decline in the US undocumented population from Mexico since 2010 contributed to declines in the undocumented population in many states. Major findings include the following: The total US undocumented population was 10.6 million in 2018, a decline of about 80,000 from 2017, and a drop of 1.2 million, or 10 percent, since 2010. Since 2010, about two-thirds of new arrivals have overstayed temporary visas and one-third entered illegally across the border. The undocumented population from Mexico fell from 6.6 million in 2010 to 5.1 million in 2018, a decline of 1.5 million, or 23 percent. Total arrivals in the US undocumented population from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — despite high numbers of Border Patrol apprehensions of these populations in recent years — remained at about the same level in 2018 as in the previous four years. [3] The total undocumented population in California was 2.3 million in 2018, a decline of about 600,000 compared to 2.9 million in 2010. The number from Mexico residing in the state dropped by 605,000 from 2010 to 2018. The undocumented population in New York State fell by 230,000, or 25 percent, from 2010 to 2018. Declines were largest for Jamaica (−51 percent), Trinidad and Tobago (−50 percent), Ecuador (−44 percent), and Mexico (−34 percent). The results shown here reinforce the view that improving social and economic conditions in sending countries would not only reduce pressure at the border but also likely cause a large decline in the undocumented population. Two countries had especially large population changes — in different directions — in the 2010 to 2018 period. The population from Poland dropped steadily, from 93,000 to 39,000, while the population from Venezuela increased from 65,000 to 172,000. Almost all the increase from Venezuela occurred after 2014.
Topic:
Migration, Border Control, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

2. The Real Solution: Regional Response Rather than Border Closures, Mass Incarceration, and Refugee Returns Share

Author:
Eleanor Acer
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Human Rights First
Abstract:
The Trump Administration has purposefully mismanaged the refugee and humanitarian challenges pushing people to flee political repression, human rights abuses, economic deprivation, and climate displacement in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Trump Administration policies have actually made things worse, cutting programs countering displacement, turning a blind eye to human rights abuses, encouraging crossings between official ports of entry, and punishing people seeking U.S. protection through punitive and traumatizing family separations and detention. These harmful policies have aggravated humanitarian challenges—deliberately provoking disorder, chaos, and confusion. Congress must take swift action to push real solutions, and over the longer term the next administration will need to ensure these solutions are enduring. Congress should champion a new initiative to strengthen protection across the region. This initiative must truly tackle the rights abuses and deprivations pushing people to flee, greatly enhance the capacity of Mexico and other countries to provide asylum and host refugees, and set a strong example at home by upholding America’s own refugee protection commitments. Upholding human rights commitments is not only the right thing to do, it is also in the U.S. national interest. These commitments have saved millions of lives and encourage countries around the world—including front-line countries that host the vast majority of the world’s refugees—to continue hosting refugees. The heroic work of many Americans—working and volunteering with faith-based shelters, community groups, legal representation, and other organizations—should be supported. They are, and always have been, an essential part of the solution. The measures outlined below would restore order to the region and the U.S. border while upholding the United States’ legal and humanitarian commitments. Key steps include: 1. Address the actual causes of displacement in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The United States should increase support for effective programs that counter violence, strengthen justice systems, spur economic opportunities, and safeguard communities from climate displacement, so that people do not need to flee in search of safety or survival. In addition, U.S. diplomats must press the leaders of these countries to safeguard rights, support anti-corruption efforts, and address abuses from security forces. 2. Strongly support increased asylum and refugee-hosting capacity in Mexico and other Latin American countries, so that these countries—which are already hosting growing numbers—have the ability to continue accepting refugees. Asylum filings in Mexico, for example, have increased by over 700 percent since 2014. The United States should sharply increase support for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to increase regional capacity, to develop strong asylum and refugee protection systems, and to better integrate refugees in Mexico and the region. U.S. diplomacy, law enforcement cooperation, and rule of law assistance should be leveraged to reduce violence against refugees and migrants in Mexico. In addition, the United States should launch a regional resettlement effort, providing some refugees with routes to safety in the United States as well as other countries, and relaunch the Central American Minors (CAM) program to allow some children with family in the United States to come to our country safely. 3. Combat smuggling in the region while safeguarding access to protection. U.S. agencies must ensure anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking efforts do not block escape from dangerous countries and include measures to safeguard human rights and access to asylum. By strengthening asylum, resettlement, and work visas in the region, more refugees and migrants will have alternate routes to protection. 4. Manage U.S. asylum arrivals effectively through a genuine humanitarian response that upholds U.S. law and provides order, including: Restore timely and orderly asylum processing at ports of entry and ensure humane conditions at all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities; End the Remain in Mexico scheme and “metering” policies that push people to cross between ports of entry and put the lives of asylum seekers at risk as they wait in danger in Mexico; Support and fund NGOs and shelters in the United States—including faith-based groups that have been effectively partnering with DHS in U.S. cities along the border—to address humanitarian needs, a typical and necessary move in managing refugee arrivals; and Launch a community-based case management program that supports appearance, as recommended by ICE’s own advisory group, rather than jailing asylum seekers for even longer. 5. Restore order through measures providing timely, fair, and effective U.S. adjudications, including: Increase, rather than “get rid of,” immigration judges and interpreters. In order to understand what is being said in their courtrooms and ensure due process, judges must be supported by interpreters. And, since a judge set on furthering a politicized agenda is worse than no judge at all, safeguards against politicized court hiring must be immediately restored. Additional measures to support judges include: increased recruitment of interpreters who speak indigenous dialects to assure accurate hearings and prevent continued adjournments, ensuring the time necessary to gather evidence to prove cases, and rejecting absurd schemes that would entrust protection determinations to border agents or rush cases through adjudications; Support a major legal representation initiative to ensure eligible refugees receive protection at the earliest stages of the process and institute universal legal orientation presentations (LOPs)—including for families released from DHS/Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody—to explain appearance obligations, the legal system, and how to secure counsel; Enable more cases to be granted efficiently at the USCIS asylum office by providing initial decision-making authority to the asylum office in all asylum cases, changing policies and practices that have prompted asylum officers to refer, rather than grant, cases that meet the asylum criteria— unnecessarily adding them to the immigration court caseload—and assure the availability of an application process for “cancellation of removal” relief so these cases do not clog the asylum system; Make the immigration courts independent, as the American Bar Association recommends, to secure due process and judicial independence, ensuring that political appointees can no longer attempt to improperly influence the courts’ decisions in asylum and other cases; and Reverse Trump Administration efforts to prevent refugees from receiving asylum in the United States—including former Attorney General Sessions’ ruling attempting to deny protection to women who have fled domestic violence and families escaping from deadly gangs. The measures outlined above would restore order and bring about real and enduring solutions. As the president and top Trump Administration officials are doubling down on punitive policies and political rhetoric that fail to solve these challenges, Congress must demand effective strategies that are consistent with America’s ideals.
Topic:
Human Rights, Prisons/Penal Systems, and Border Control
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

3. Protecting Refugees and Restoring Order: Real Solutions to the Humanitarian Crisis

Author:
Eleanor Acer
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Human Rights First
Abstract:
Families and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—fleeing human rights abuses, deadly violence, climate displacement and economic deprivations—continue to seek refuge in the United States and other countries. This is a regional humanitarian crisis—a manageable one that should be addressed using proven strategies, as are humanitarian challenges around the world. Yet instead of taking the steps necessary to address the crisis, the Trump Administration is making things worse, threatening cuts to effective programs that could reduce the problems forcing people to flee, sending refugees back to danger, canceling rather than expanding case management, and cutting orderly processing at ports of entry, increasing crossings between ports of entry. The Trump Administration’s actions appear designed to generate chaos. The regional crisis requires real solutions in several key areas: tackling the rights abuses and deprivations pushing people to flee, enhancing the capacity of Mexico and other countries to provide asylum and host refugees, and managing U.S. refugee protection requests in fair, effective and orderly ways—ways that uphold America’s refugee laws and treaty commitments. Most immediately, the United States must end the dysfunction at the border by launching a public-private humanitarian initiative and a long overdue case management system, which would keep asylum seekers informed and ensure they appear for their hearings. At the same time, the U.S. government should fix the asylum and immigration court adjudication systems to provide fair, non-politicized, and timely decisions. To effectively manage border and adjudication systems, the United States must upgrade to manage new realities, instead of pushing mass detention and other outdated, inadequate and ineffective responses that are also costly, cruel, and inhumane. As part of this strategy, the United States should launch a major initiative, with other countries, to expand regional protection so that Mexico and others, which are already hosting growing numbers, have the ability to continue accepting refugees. Critically, the United States and other donors should increase support for efforts to build the capacity of these countries to provide asylum, host, protect, and integrate refugees. In addition, the United States should work with other resettlement countries to launch a robust regional initiative that provides orderly routes to protection in the United States and other third countries. The United States must also advance a targeted strategy—leveraging both diplomacy and aid - to address the actual root causes of migration and displacement in the Northern Triangle. This should focus on programs that reduce violence, combat corruption, strengthen rule of law, decrease femicide and other gender-based harms, address gang violence, protect vulnerable populations, and promote sustainable economic development. By helping to build real protections for women, children, LGBTQ, indigenous, and other at-risk people in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, while expanding protection of refugees in Mexico and other countries, this strategy will ultimately reduce the numbers fleeing to the United States. The measures outlined below would restore order to the region and the U.S. border while upholding U.S. legal and humanitarian commitments. Congress—and over the longer term, the next administration—must push real solutions.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Prisons/Penal Systems, Border Control, and Refugees
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

4. Paradoxes of Protection: Compassionate Repression at the Mexico–Guatemala Border

Author:
Rebecca Galemba, Katie Dingeman, Kaelyn DeVries, and Yvette Servin
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and constricting avenues for asylum in the United States, amid continuing high rates of poverty, environmental crisis, and violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have led many migrants from these countries to remain in Mexico. Yet despite opportunities for humanitarian relief in Mexico, since the early 2000s the Mexican government, under growing pressure from the United States, has pursued enforcement-first initiatives to stem northward migration from Central America. In July 2014, Mexico introduced the Southern Border Program (SBP) with support from the United States. The SBP dramatically expanded Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts, especially in its southern border states, leading to rising deportations. Far from reducing migration or migrant smuggling, these policies have trapped migrants for longer in Mexico, made them increasingly susceptible to crimes by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, and exacerbated risk along the entire migrant trail. In recognition of rising crimes against migrants and heeding calls from civil society to protect migrant rights, Mexico’s 2011 revision to its Migration Law expanded legal avenues for granting humanitarian protection to migrants who are victims of crimes in Mexico, including the provision of a one-year humanitarian visa so that migrants can collaborate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation of crimes committed against them. The new humanitarian visa laws were a significant achievement and represent a victory by civil society keen on protecting migrants as they travel through Mexico. The wider atmosphere of impunity, however, alongside the Mexican government’s prioritization of detaining and deporting migrants, facilitates abuses, obscures transparent accounting of crimes, and limits access to justice. In practice, the laws are not achieving their intended outcomes. They also fail to recognize how Mexico’s securitized migration policies subject migrants to risk throughout their journeys, including at border checkpoints between Guatemala and Honduras, along critical transit corridors in Guatemala, and on the Guatemalan side of Mexico’s southern border. In this article, we examine a novel set of data from migrant shelters — 16 qualitative interviews with migrants and nine with staff and advocates in the Mexico–Guatemala border region, as well as 118 complaints of abuses committed along migrants’ journeys — informally filed by migrants at a shelter on the Guatemalan side of the border, and an additional eight complaints filed at a shelter on the Mexican side of the border. We document and analyze the nature, location, and perpetrators of these alleged abuses, using a framework of “compassionate repression” (Fassin 2012) to examine the obstacles that migrants encounter in denouncing abuses and seeking protection. We contend that while humanitarian visas can provide necessary protection for abuses committed in Mexico, they are limited by their temporary nature, by being nested within a migration system that prioritizes migrant removal, and because they recognize only crimes that occur in Mexico. The paradox between humanitarian concerns and repressive migration governance in a context of high impunity shapes institutional and practical obstacles to reporting crimes, receiving visas, and accessing justice. In this context, a variety of actors recognize that they can exploit and profit from migrants’ lack of mobility, legal vulnerability, and uncertain access to protection, leading to a commodification of access to humanitarian protection along the route.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, Violence, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

5. Fleeing Violence in Central America: Time to Implement Canada’s Resettlement Policies

Author:
Rachel Kiddell-Monroe and Celine de Richoufftz
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University
Abstract:
Canada should take proactive and concrete actions to protect Northern Central American refugees fleeing violence including: Implementing its policy to offer resettlement to Central American refugees caught in legal limbo in Mexico. Ensuring it welcomes asylum seekers who are at risk under the US immigration system. Supporting Northern Central American states in their efforts to build fairer and more efficient immigration systems. Advocating for safe passages, legal pathways and for an end to the criminalization of clandestine immigration.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Refugees, Violence, and Asylum
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

6. A Short-Term Plan to Address the Central American Refugee Situation

Author:
Philip E. Wolgin
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
Over the past half-decade, rising violence and structural poverty in the Northern Triangle region of Central America—which encompasses El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—have pushed thousands of children and families to flee for safety. These three countries are some of the most dangerous on the planet, with high rates of homicide and specifically femicide—the killing of women and girls. Violence, corruption, and extortion play a big part in everyday life. Since 2014, more than 120,000 children and another 120,000 people in family units from this region have arrived in the United States seeking protection. The flow of these asylum seekers peaked in fiscal year 2014 before dipping, perhaps temporarily, in FY 2015. This drop occurred not because conditions improved in the region but because of a sustained effort by the U.S. government—with the help of Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries—to stop people from making the dangerous journey or to intercept them on the way to the United States. This year, in FY 2016, the numbers of children and families arriving in the United States have begun to rise again as conditions in the region continue to deteriorate. This report lays out short-term recommendations for ensuring that all asylum seekers who reach the United States receive a full and fair shot at protection. The recommendations are structured to follow the process that children and families go through when seeking protection: arrival in the United States, custody determinations and detention, and proceedings in the immigration courts.
Topic:
Migration, Border Control, Refugee Crisis, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and United States of America