Far fewer people applying for asylum in #Mexico this year are from #Haiti, compared to last year. #Honduras is back in the number-1 position, followed by #Cuba.
April saw #Mexico's migration authorities apprehend their 5th-largest monthly number of migrants: 30,980 people.
US deportations of Mexicans into #Mexico are up. April deportations to the dangerous state of Tamaulipas (3,804) hit their highest level since November 2020.
During Donald Trump’s term, 90+% of migrants were from Mexico and Central America (blue, green, brown, yellow). If you were a migrant from those countries, your probability of being released into the US after apprehension didn’t change much after Biden’s inauguration. 2/15
(An exception is unaccompanied children from Central America: Biden stopped Trump’s practice of expelling them, alone, back into their countries regardless of protection needs. The moral argument for doing that is self-evident, and it didn’t move the needle much overall.) 3/15
Tim Walz, not a foreign policy guy, didn't have a deep record on Latin America as a member of Congress. But he voted against the #Colombia and #Peru free trade agreements, and co-sponsored a 2009 resolution condemning the coup in #Honduras.
It's so perplexing that people are convinced that Title 42 slowed migration, and that its lifting will be a major change.
Here's what happened to single-adult migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border after Title 42 went into effect.
Title 42 did not similarly increase child and family migration over what came before. But it didn't reduce it, either.
The 4 countries whose citizens could be expelled across the land border into Mexico? Title 42 slowed growth in their migration, though it remained high. But citizens of all other countries surpassed them since last summer.
The General posted this charming tweet, a video of slithering snakes, the day after #Colombia’s transitional justice tribunal concluded that the military killed 6,402 civilians between 2002-2008. Those denouncing “false positives,” you see, were reptiles.
So next time you hear @lopezobrador_ go on about #Mexico's sovereignty and US imperialism, recall that his government has invited US agents into Mexico's international airports to screen passengers.
This part 1/2:
"The curious thing is that, alongside the INM agents was another official, of US origin, dressed in civilian clothes, who also reviewed documents, asked questions, and checked travelers' cell phones: their WhatsApp, their Facebook profiles, their photo albums."
Calling Rodolfo Hernández the “Trump of #Colombia” seems off to me. Here, I see more parallels with all-over-the-map populists like AMLO or Bukele. And if Hernández wins, US-Colombian relations could resemble current relations with Mexico or El Salvador…
…by which I mean: the Biden administration distances itself from the president and civilian leadership, even as it pursues the closest possible military-to-military relationship. Which isn't great.
(Of course, the "military-to-military relationship being stronger than the civilian relationship" thing is even more likely if Petro wins.)