Newton’s Third Law is categorical: For every action there will be a reaction with the same and proportionally opposite force. And it happens in all human phenomena, including politics. For every action an equal reaction is expected. Today, the problem is that there are hegemonic instances that, unable to execute actions that favor their particular interests, because they are unpopular, anti-democratic or contrary to the law, consequently design “actions” that will justify eventual “reactions”, which will then be socially accepted as necessary, expected and urgent.

The same thing is happening in the world of geopolitics and international relations. In recent years, States dominated by neoliberal and nationalist governments have sought to respond forcefully to situations that were precisely discursively constructed, both by themselves and by their strategic allies, in the media and other spaces of political interaction, such as international forums and multilateral organizations. One of these “created” situations, whose hidden purpose is to justify radical policies and measures, is the consideration of mass migration as a threat to the national security of the receiving countries. And the solution proposed by the States is the socalled securitization of migration.

The social representation of migrants as a threat to national security is a direct result of the criminalization process to which they are subjected. It is a discursive construction promoted by those States that seek to restrict the entry of migrants from other countries and justify the enormous amount of financial resources allocated annually to design and implement policies that, in the eyes of national and world public opinion, are necessary to protect those nations from the danger posed by migration.

In the book Pensar las migraciones contemporáneas (To think the contemporary migrations), coordinated by researchers Cecilia Jiménez Zunino and Verónica Trpin (Teseo, 2021), in the article Securitization of migrations, signed by Andrés Pereira and Eduardo Domeche, it establishes that the term securitization of migrations is a category produced “within the framework of the process of political production of migration as a security issue at the international level and in a context of tightening of migration and border controls in the North Atlantic area, both in the United States and Canada and in the European Union”.

The authors warn that, in Latin America, the application of the securitization of migration varies according to the nature of migration policies and the forms that inequality and violence against migrants have taken in each country or region. “In general terms, in Mexico and Central America, it has been used to account for the externalization of U.S. border control policies and the experiences of disappearance, kidnapping and death of migrants on their way north.

Pereira and Domenech emphasize that, with some exceptions, the use of the category is associated with changes in national migration policies, especially since the so-called “shift to the right” in the region, with which a generic use of the term prevails to denote migration regulation schemes associated with “national security” and linked to processes and practices of criminalization of migration.

This underscores the imposed logic of action-reaction to justify ever harsher border security and surveillance policies. In other words, migrants are criminalized (in some cases also the solidarity groups that assist them), thus becoming a threat to national security and, consequently, justifying the measures.

These measures range from the promotion of legislation that serves as a legal framework for the design and execution of public policies on migration issues, to the allocation of financial resources to make possible the expenses involved in the creation of public and private institutions, the acquisition of surveillance equipment, the hiring of personnel and the execution of practices or operations such as the detection, capture and deportation of migrants. The latter are the most criticized because, in most of the cases recorded, they limit or violate the human rights of migrants.

As has been pointed out, the most notorious case and the one that serves as the most tangible example of what is understood by the securitization of migration is what happens at the southern border of the United States, the point of entry of the intense and permanent migratory flows that, from all parts of the world, try to enter the North American nation.

An emblematic date that marked a milestone is September 11, 2001. Researcher Javier Treviño Rangel, in his academic article “What are we talking about when we talk about the securitization of international migration in Mexico? A Critique, indicates that despite the fact that such practice already existed, 9/11 (as Americans identify the event) justified before public opinion the authorities’ power “to detain migrants who cannot accredit their legal stay in the country or to promote centers where migrants are deprived of their freedom.”

For the authors, this event also initiated, like no other, the belief that undocumented international migration is a threat to national security and served to make not only the US but also other states -Canada, for example- radically harden their policies towards international migration.

 In fact, as a result of 9/11, institutions were created in the U.S. that today are the main executors of the harshest immigration policies on the southern border and where the greatest amount of financial resources are concentrated.

An exponential budget According to a report by the EFE news agency, in 2003 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created, which currently controls and administers a budget of US$381 billion, through border surveillance and immigration management agencies.

A report released in 2020 by the American Immigration Council indicates that immigration enforcement is carried out by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the “dreaded” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), both agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and whose primary function is the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.

According to the report reported by EFE, ICE and CBP currently employ more than 84,000 officers, of which more than 50,000 (55.5%) perform specific law enforcement duties.

The budgets of both agencies have experienced exponential growth since their creation. For example, since 1993, according to the report, “when the current border enforcement strategy was initiated along the U.S.-Mexico border, the annual budget of the Border Patrol, which is now part of CBP, increased more than 10-fold, from $363 million to nearly $4.9 billion”.

Also, planned spending for ICE between 2003 and 2020 increased from $3.3 billion annually to $8.4 billion. According to the American Immigration Council, the funds were earmarked primarily to “increase the agency’s capacity to confine detained immigrants at sites across the country.

The importance of the securitization of migration in the U.S. is reflected not only in the funds allocated to the erection of fences and fences, surveillance technology, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and the construction of buildings for detainees, but also in the increase of Border Patrol agents, which went from 4,139 to 19,648 in the 2019 fiscal period, “still below the authorization of Congress for the hiring of 23,645 agents,” notes EFE.

Policy continuity?

Security and investment It is possible that with the departure of Republican Donald Trump from the U.S. presidency it was naively believed that migration policies would be relaxed, but this was not the case. Although on his first day in the White House, Democrat Joe Biden revoked the executive order issued by his predecessor on January 25, 2017, which, among other issues, criminalized the undocumented stay of migrants as a threat to public and national security, he nevertheless reiterated that his administration’s policy would focus on protecting national and border security.

According to an analysis made by the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag), entitled The Biden Doctrine in Central America, migration policies are a clear example of the permanent U.S. policy of securitization of migration to justify not only national security policies but also, and above all, economic investment.

“It is assumed that Biden will go for a comprehensive immigration policy, but that it will not necessarily be less securitized. The Comprehensive Strategy for Central America has a projected budget of four billion dollars, obtained through Security funds and private sector investment, as well as greater participation of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in the development of infrastructure and FDI in the region,” reads the Celag analysis.

It is important to clarify that FDI is the acronym for Foreign Direct Investment, that is, the economic intervention made by the U.S. in other countries and in which it holds not only the power to choose the companies (almost always associated with the government of the day) but also to maintain operational and financial control of such investments. In other words, the securitization of migration has as its background an economic interest, which is what Democrats and Republicans always agree on.

For such reason, Celag warns in its analysis how on February 2, 2020, Biden ratified, through three executive orders: 1) the migration measures linked to family reunification, 2) the creation of a comprehensive regional framework to address the causes and improve the management of migration flows from North and Central America, and 3) the possibility of providing safe and orderly processing of asylum seekers of those migrating across the US southern border, but that same day they clarified that these actions did not mean “that the borders are open” but were “one more step in the strategy that aims to stop forced migration through cooperation in the fight against corruption and impunity.” We see here how migration continues to be associated with crime, in this case institutional or governmental.

Throughout the electoral campaign, Biden presented himself as opposed to Trump’s management of migration issues. However, it was Obama who proposed the so-called Alliance for the Prosperity of the Northern Triangle of Central America as a solution to the humanitarian crisis resulting from the increase in migration and Biden as its main articulator, meeting intensively with leaders and officials of the Northern Triangle countries to draft and implement the guidelines of the Alliance, policies that were announced as part of a regional security plan but that also meant a significant financial investment in countries of the Mesoamerican region.

In other words, the securitization of migration in the Central American region will continue to be presented as an urgent and necessary reaction to the threat to national security posed by the massive exodus of migrants, but which in essence justifies a significant economic investment, both abroad and in U.S. territory, which translates into benefits for those in power in the nation of the American dream.

For this reason, the discourse of criminalization of migrants will surely be maintained in order to continue legitimizing a reaction “with the same force and proportionally opposed” in terms of security, albeit with very high financial and economic implications for the U.S. government of the day.

To the multiple and diverse threats that permanently hover over the thousands of migrants who try to cross the dangerous border between Mexico and the United States on a daily basis, for a little over a year now, one more has been added, which also encourages or favors both the abuses of the US government and the reprehensible actions of organized crime that revolve around the phenomenon of human mobility in the region. This is the application of the little-known health provision known as “Title 42”, which was strategically invoked in March 2020 by the Republican administration of Donald Trump and which, erroneously, it was thought would be annulled with the arrival of the Democratic administration of Joe Biden. Sadly, that has not happened.

According to the US migrant relief organization American Immigration Council[1], despite the existence of the historic right to seek asylum for people arriving at the southern border from Mexico, this fundamental right was abruptly suspended as of 20 March 2020.

In a document released[2] on the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the much-criticized measure and in the absence of rectification by the Biden administration, the American Immigration Council explained that migrants attempting to enter the United States, as well as those seeking asylum, have been systematically rejected and expelled back to Mexico or their countries of origin under an ancient and little-known provision of the 1944 Health Care Act, Section 265 of Title 42, which Trump invoked to achieve his long-desired goal: closing the border.

“With this provision, hundreds of thousands of people have been expelled since the beginning of the pandemic, even though ports of entry remain open with nearly nine million people crossing the southern border in December 2020 and thousands of people flying into the US every day,” the organization denounces in the document.

This situation, which threatens the flow and lives of migrants attempting to enter the US, began on 20 March 2020 when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the guise of a global COVID-19 emergency, issued an emergency regulation to regulate the flow of migrants. This situation, which threatens the flow and lives of migrants attempting to enter the US, began on 20 March 2020 when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the guise of the global emergency over COVID-19, issued an emergency regulation[1] to activate a specific aspect of the US Health Act. According to the legislation invoked, section 265 of Title 42 authorizes the directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prevent the entry into the United States of persons when it suspects “a serious danger of introduction of a communicable disease into the United States”.

The provision allows any border official, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and Border Patrol agents, to enforce the order given to the CDC, i.e. to act in their discretion and prevent entry into the US on suspicion of being a COVID-19 carrier, of persons from any country who are attempting to enter via Canada or Mexico and who would normally “be introduced in a congregate environment” at a port of entry or port of entry or border patrol agent. This affects persons from any country attempting to enter the US via Canada or Mexico who would normally “be brought into a congregate environment” at a port of entry or Border Patrol station on suspicion of carrying COVID-19. This affects persons who are regularly detained after arriving at the border, including asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and persons attempting to enter the country without inspection.

According to statistics from the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection[2], between October 2020 and April 2021, more than half a million people, specifically 536,793 migrants, have been removed under Title 42 at the southern border alone. Between October 2020 and April 2021, more than half a million people, specifically 536,793 migrants, have been removed under Title 42 at the southern border alone.

From the very moment of the activation of Title 42 of the US Health Care Act, the measure was labelled as a political action and not a health measure. The measure was described as a political action rather than a health measure. Despite the claim that the order was necessary to “protect the United States from a public health problem”, a year after its implementation, the American Immigration Council denounced that public statements, denunciations, press reports and scientific reports showed that the origin of this measure came from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the White House.

Nevertheless, the measure was upheld. In March 2020, then-Republican Vice President Mike Pence ordered the Agency for Disease Control to “use its emergency powers to effectively seal the borders of the United States”, in order to override the publicly expressed opinion of some scientists at the agency who said there was no evidence that the action would stop the coronavirus, according to an AP report[1] released in October last year that revealed the Trump administration’s moves to maintain the measure despite scientific criticism.

What is difficult to understand, both for Americans and the international community, is that despite the criticisms made by the Democratic Party in 2020, the election promises made before the November 2020 elections and the first statements upon taking office in January 2021, the Democratic administration of Joe Biden has shown no change to the policy imposed by Trump.

Although in May 2021 the Biden-Harris administration announced a radical increase in the annual quota for granting refugee status to 62,500 people, which was kept by Trump at 15,000, for the independent news organization Truthout[1], such a move “does not change the other massive structural ways in which the Biden-Harris administration continues to perpetuate the crisis at the border”.

In an article[2] by US academic MarjorieCohn[3], spokespersons describe what is happening at the border as a genuine humanitarian and human rights crisis. “There is no crisis at the border caused by migrants. There is a humanitarian and human rights crisis because the US government has effectively closed the border to asylum seekers and has not allowed them to apply for asylum since March 2020,” said Nicole Phillips, legal director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance[4], an NGO that provides assistance to Haitian immigrants in California.

According to Truthout, the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued implementation of the Title 42 measure continues to cause family separations and threaten the lives of children, adolescents and adults, as documented in an April 2021 report published by migration NGOs Human Rights First, Haitian Bridge Alliance and Al Otro Lado. According to the document, the measure drives families to send their children across the border to protect them from kidnapping, sexual assault and other forms of violence.

It is clear that this measure makes migrants “easy targets” for kidnappers and others when they are returned to Mexico. This was denounced by the Los Angeles Times in an article published[1] last April based on testimonies.

For its part, HumanRightsFirst[2], citing Truthout, identified at least 492 reports of violent attacks since 21 January 2021, including kidnappings, rapes and assaults on people stranded at the border or expelled into Mexico.

In addition to the obvious dangers caused by organized crime surrounding migration south of the US border, which has intensified with the implementation of Title 42, there has also been an increase in the mistreatment of migrants by the US authorities. In addition to violent arrests, arbitrary detentions and deportations without the right to apply for asylum, there is poor humanitarian care.

According to the Human Rights First report cited by Truthout, people who are not sent to Mexico and who are detained by the Border Patrol suffer multiple abuses, are denied emergency medical care, have their belongings stolen, and their deportations are carried out at night to dangerous border cities.

In conclusion, non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies and the international community at large expect an immediate rectification by the Biden administration on US southern immigration policy and specifically on the application of Title 42, which experts say violates the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the Refugee Convention, which grant non-citizens the right to asylum if they can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It also violates the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which contains a non-refoulement provision.

Finally, it contravenes the provision of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which has repeatedly stated that, during the pandemic, asylum seekers and refugees should not be expelled in border areas without an individualized analysis of their protection needs, as this violates international law.

In the United States of America (USA), hate crimes due to racial and ethnic discrimination are on the rise. The Latino population has been the most affected. The anti-immigrant discourse of former President Donald Trump was the driving force and co-responsible for the growing xenophobia towards the migrant population in general and towards migrants of Latino origin in particular. However, the anti-Latino discourse in the U.S. is of long standing and is related to the founding racialized policies of the U.S. nation, which paradoxically is formed in its origin by migrants.

Early U.S. immigration laws gave priority to migrants from northern Europe. In 1790, the Naturalization Act granted U.S. citizenship exclusively to “free white persons,” a situation ratified by the U.S. Congress for almost a century. Since then, migration policies have been based on a segregationist perspective, which established “acceptable” migration quotas (from Northern Europe), to the detriment of other populations. In addition, there was a deep racism towards Afro-descendant and indigenous populations, which was influenced by colonialism and its sequels of slavery and genocide.

In the 20th century, migration to the U.S. from Latin America was encouraged by programs to attract cheap labor, such as the Bracero Program, which involved the hiring of thousands of Mexican agricultural and railroad workers, mostly from the poorest rural regions of the region. This program was later denounced as a violation of the human rights of the migrant workers, who were exploited and overcrowded in deplorable conditions.

Approximately 12 million Mexicans currently live in the United States. A large part of this population is dedicated, in most cases, to various service jobs such as cleaning, caring for children, the elderly and the sick, food preparation, security and construction. Trump’s anti-immigrant discourse attacked the Mexican population with particular viciousness, going so far as to state that from Mexico “they send rapists” or people with “the lowest IQ”, making it necessary to “protect our families from those who seek to harm us”, thus justifying the construction of the multi-billion dollar wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and the tightening of immigration policies on the southern border.

Trump’s extremist nationalism fueled the already installed xenophobia against Mexicans and Latin Americans in general, including anyone who speaks Spanish. Anti-immigrant hate groups with supremacist affiliations and advocating the use of violence began to appear more strongly in border cities.

In August 2019, in the city of El Paso (Texas), a white man murdered 22 people in a Walmart supermarket, most of them were Latin Americans. The killer published a statement online where he claimed his intention to fight the “Hispanic invasion in Texas”. This type of slogans are frequently issued by philo-Nazi hate groups whose main driver is ethnic cleansing. In the states bordering the Aztec nation alone, where the largest population of Latino origin is concentrated, more than 150 hate groups have been identified: California (72 groups), Florida (68 groups) and Texas (54 groups)¹. In the rest of the country, anti-immigrant hate groups also exist in the states of Arizona, Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Washington, Mississippi and Colorado².

The xenophobia in the U.S. towards Latinos is only comparable to that suffered also by Muslim populations, victims of the “crusade against terrorism”, installed since the events of September 11 and encouraged by the then President George W. Bush. Violence due to xenophobia and discrimination has become a regrettable characteristic of recent times in the USA, both by the security forces, which have been systematically committing police abuses such as the one that led to the murder of the African-American citizen George Floyd and the consequent protests and mass mobilizations throughout the country, and by civilians and hate groups that are strangely allowed without major restrictions.

The proliferation of guns in the national territory is part of this social scourge that has become commonplace. The free bearing of arms has been in force in the U.S. since 1791, according to the second amendment of the Constitution: “A well ordered militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

For their part, governments do not seem to understand the magnitude of the problem. In December 2020, the United Nations met to discuss the approval of a resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, to which only the United States and Ukraine were against it³.

The recently elected Biden-Harris administration has expressed intentions to improve the situation of migrants, at least this has been expressed publicly, but the fear among migrants remains latent since under the Democratic Party administrations the problem has continued. An example of this happened during the Obama administration, when more than three million undocumented migrants were deported, to the point that several leaders of the Latino community referred to Obama as the “Deporter in Chief”. The largest number of people deported at that time were from Mexico, followed by the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The Covid-19 pandemic has deepened situations of xenophobia against the migrant population. From expressions such as “the yellow virus” against Asians in general, to the tightening of border security measures with the excuse of not “letting in” the virus from the south (despite the fact that the U.S. is the country with the most cases of infection and deaths). In this regard, in December 2020, Dana Graber Ladek, Head of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Mexico, emphasized the need not to use the Covid-19 pandemic to stir up xenophobia and the importance of ensuring compliance with commitments made in this regard and protecting the human rights of migrants⁴.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is clear on the importance of race/ethnicity as a positive value to leverage the development of countries of origin, transit and destination of migrants and strongly urges respect for the human rights of migrants – whatever their migration status – refugees and displaced persons.

References

1 Available at: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

2 Available at: https://www.celag.org/cambio-de-gobierno-y-ascenso-de-la-ultraderecha-en-ee-uu/

3 Available at: https://www.axency.com/se-niegan-a-combatir-nazismo-discriminacion-y-xenofobia-espana-estados-unidos-y-la-mancomunidad-britanica/17/12/2020/

4 Available at: https://www.onu.org.mx/respetar-y-garantizar-los-derechos-de-las-personas-migrantes-en-tiempos-de-covid-19/

According to the World Migration Report published in 2020 by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Mexico constitutes “the main country-to-country migration corridor in the world”.¹ Mexican territory has become the main transit area for migrants from Central American countries -among others-, especially from the so-called Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Likewise, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Central America and Mexico constitute the largest migratory corridor on the planet: “fifteen million people have followed this path, stimulated by the enormous productivity and salary gaps existing between the countries”².

Undocumented migrants suffer all kinds of human rights violations both in transit to a better destination – if they manage to get there – or on the return journey for deportation. The situation of “clandestinity” makes them prey to police abuses ranging from harassment, persecution and violence, to the separation of family members (even children from their families) and deprivation of liberty in immigration detention centers at the border of the United States of America (USA): the so-called “hieleras (freezers)”, cells with very low temperatures, or the “perreras (doghouses)”, overcrowded cages. In 2019, there was a 456 % increase in the number of families detained at the southern border of the United States³.

In recent years, the phenomenon of migration from Central America to the North has been characterized by the modality of mass mobilization through “caravans” of migrants that occur by land in large groups and are usually convened through social networks. In January 2021, more than 7500 people mobilized in a caravan, mostly from Honduras, who were repressed by Guatemalan police forces. The violent dispersal of the caravan resulted in the return of more than 3,000 migrants, mainly to Honduras, while another group of migrants arrived in the border area between Guatemala and Mexico. The caravan included children, 80% of whom, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), were unaccompanied⁴.

The construction of a negative image of the migrant is part of the process of securitization of both internal and external US policies, which have deployed an engineering of control over the borders by means of a narrative that legitimizes the use of greater police force, the construction of walls, the installation of cameras, deportation, etc. This perspective on migration was not brought to the fore by Donald Trump; it has been part of a systematic policy of militarization and consensus-building by the various White House administrations, which place issues such as organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking and migration on the same level, in an exercise of criminalization of migrants.

The U.S. government’s pressure on the countries of the sub-region has materialized in treaties, pacts and agreements that oblige the countries to reinforce security and repression mechanisms without bilaterally addressing the structural problems that generate forced migration. By stating the agreements as part of the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, the U.S. has created security financing programs with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, which have resulted in more deaths, detentions and fiscal spending that could have been invested in other areas such as education or health. Such is the case of the Merida Initiative and the Central American Initiative for Regional Security.

The Southern Border Plan, implemented by the Mexican government in 2014 at the behest of the U.S. administration (presided by Barack Obama), and as a continuation of the Merida Initiative, meant the militarization of the Mexican border as far as Guatemala, in addition to the criminalization of undocumented migration. The Plan contemplated the hiring of private security teams, surveillance by drones and cameras installed in trains and geolocation systems. Under this system, migrants suffered increased persecution, detention and deportation. Between 2014 and 2015, deportations increased from 47.36 % to 96.61 %.

After the Trump administration’s strident pressure mode and the intensification of anti-immigrant measures, newly elected President Joe Biden inaugurated his administration with a clear move to distance himself from his predecessor, declaring the suspension of some of Trump’s most extreme measures, such as the Asylum Cooperation Agreements (“ACAs”), which allowed the deportation of those requesting asylum from the Northern Triangle, or the construction of a cinematic wall between Mexico and the U.S. Biden is familiar with the issue, as during the Obama administration he was in charge of the Plan Alliance for Prosperity initiative, whose objective was to organize, together with the governments of the Northern Triangle, a response to the immigration crisis in 2014, with a strong increase in security and defense mechanisms, without achieving major goals despite a multi-million dollar investment through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)⁵.

The migration of Central Americans responds to a set of historical conditions marked by colonization and domination, which has generated a permanent situation of asymmetries that cross the entire social and economic system of the sub-region. The absence of public policies that could offer development and stability conditions to families has been the breeding ground for migration, together with the idea of the “American dream” and the hope of achieving better living conditions in the face of a panorama of inequalities, unemployment and generalized precariousness.

Violence has become one of the most pressing problems, as the proliferation of weapons and gangs has not stopped, but rather has been growing in the context of the pandemic. The health emergency has in turn led to a deepening of poverty and precariousness, confinement has hindered informal work in countries where most of the labor force works in this way, along with the decline in the receipt of remittances and their consequent impact on the economy of these countries. Another cause of migration in Central America is climate change. At the end of 2020, hundreds of families lost their homes, land and crops as a result of hurricanes Eta and Iota.

In short, lack of economic prospects, food and health insecurity, systemic violence and natural disasters are the main motivations for those who are forced to migrate to the North. The treaties, pacts and programs historically promoted by the U.S. have mostly benefited the elites of the sub-region, without leveraging structural transformations in the social sphere, which deepens poverty and the lack of alternatives for the majorities.

The great challenge remains in overcoming the logic of securitization that prevails over development and solidarity strategies. The tendency to respond to migratory crises with more restrictive and repressive measures should be reoriented to a structural understanding of the causes of forced migration, as well as to the assumption of migration in general as a human right that also brings cultural and social wealth to the destination countries.

References

1 Available at: https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf

2 Available at: https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/44649-desarrollo-migracion-desafios-oportunidades-paises-norte-centroamerica

3 Available at: https://nuso.org/articulo/las-politicas-migratorias-de-donald-trump

4 Available at: https://news.un.org/es/story/2021/01/1486952

5 Available at: http://rdd.undav.edu.ar/pdfs/pr74/pr74.pdf

For many women in Central America migrating has become more of a duty than an option. Violence (within families and on the streets), inequality in jobs opportunities and economic inequality in general, and natural disasters affect day-to-day life to the point of becoming unbearable, and are exacerbated today by the Covid-19 pandemic and its sanitary consequences. 

According to the last report by the United Nations (UN),¹ for 2019, out of 272 million migrants worldwide, 48% were women; a number equivalent to the total populations of Italy and the UK combined.

The United States of America (USA) is the main principal destination of Latin American migrants; Central American communities in the USA are growing in number, and one of the reasons for migration is family reunification. Migrant caravans reflect the daily situation of countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador (the Northern Triangle) and some regions of Mexico where violence has become systemic: crossfire between gangs, death threats, forced recruitment of minors to join criminal structures,² coupled with unequal economic opportunities.

The burden of managing and caring for the households and children of men who migrate falls on women, which implies the duplication of domestic and care work, already subject to gender discrimination and invisibility within the care and remuneration policies of both the State and the private sector, in addition to the paid work shifts that women must also perform in order to subsist. This has led to an increasing number of women migrating together with their children, including young women and minors.

In the countries of origin, especially in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America, many women emigrate to flee organized crime. Young people and children from low-income sectors are at risk of being kidnapped and recruited by gangs that, in turn, harass and threaten mothers, sisters and other women in the family.

At each stage of the migration cycle, the risks for women multiply. In the country of origin, as well as in the countries of transit, destination and return, the first burden that women carry is gender discrimination and sexual vulnerability, as they are subjected to rape, kidnapping for the purpose of human trafficking, extortion and even murder.

Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), affirmed the need to consider the conditions of vulnerability of women throughout the migration route: “In the study of migration, the role of women must be analyzed in its own right, since they are subject to various vulnerabilities, not only in their communities of origin, but also in the migration process itself”.³

In addition to the panorama of extreme poverty, there is also domestic violence, with a total of 1,555 women murdered in these four countries in 2019.⁴ Honduras is the nation with the highest rate of femicides (6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants) in Latin America, with 983 fatal cases, is the second -after Brazil- in the continent.

Travel between the countries of origin and destination presents constant uncertainty for migrants. In addition to long days of walking exposed to the sun and with little or very little hydration, without sleep or sleeping outdoors, there are the cold fronts that have hit northern Mexico in recent weeks. Once at the border, immigration procedures entail a long wait, in addition to the possibility of being separated from family members (even children from their mothers) due to the security protocols imposed by the immigration policies of the Trump administration, which the new Biden administration, although it has announced reforms, has not completely repealed, as is the case of the detention centers for migrant children that are still operating, for example.

Likewise, violence in the border areas between Mexico and the U.S. is manifested both by the persecution and repression of migrants by the border guards of both countries, as well as by the more than 165 white supremacist paramilitary groups, who defend nationalism and call themselves “migrant hunters”, and who, as this moniker indicates, are dedicated to “hunting” migrants, kidnapping them and handing them over to the authorities or murdering them in cold blood and burying them in the desert. One way to evade these groups and the border guards is to hire the so-called “coyotes,” another mafia that operates on the border offering to be “guides” after charging considerable sums of money for facilitating this transit, which can sometimes mean crossing the river by boat or on foot, crossing wooded areas or long deserts. Coyotes often hold – literally – the lives of many migrants in their hands and in many cases, they end up leading migrants – especially women – to human trafficking mafias.

Once at their destination, the United States, most undocumented migrant women work as domestic workers, maintaining homes and buildings, preparing food, cleaning, caring for children, sick patients and the elderly. In this regard, it is important to consider the decisive role of women in the economy and social reproduction, since it is women who make the greatest contribution to their countries of origin through remittances:

Every year, some 100 million women migrants send remittances home. And while the gender wage gap persists, they tend to send a greater share of their wages than men, and do so more regularly. These contributions help sustain the economies of many countries and provide livelihoods for families and communities, which is especially important during times of crisis.⁵

The growing migration of women, as well as of unaccompanied children and adolescents, sets off alarms about the need to pay particular attention to this doubly vulnerable population, considering the gender discrimination that is deep-rooted and widespread in all the countries along the migrant corridor, and in the countries of origin and destination.

References

1 ONU – Organización Internacional para las Migraciones. Informe sobre las migraciones en el mundo 2020. Ginebra 2019, p. 12.

2 Available at: https://www.acnur.org/noticias/historia/2021/1/5ff51e7e4/familia-huye-de-su-hogar-para-salvar-su-vida-en-centroamerica.html

3 Available at: https://www.cepal.org/es/discursos/evento-mujeres-territorio-migracion-paises-norte-centroamerica

4 Available at: https://oig.cepal.org/es/indicadores/feminicidio

5 Declaración de ONU Mujeres: Día Internacional del Migrante 2020. Los derechos humanos y la igualdad de género como elementos centrales de los programas y las políticas de migración. 17 de diciembre de 2020.

Migration to the United States is caused primarily by unequal opportunities and lack of economic prospects in the migrants’ countries of origin. Every year, thousands of people depart from Mexico and Central America fleeing economic conditions, systemic violence, as well as climate change and its devastating effects. Since March 2020, the health crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic has been added to the already difficult situations that cause migration in the sub-region.

Migrants already move in precarious, vulnerable and uncertain conditions, and travel for long periods of time in the open, without the minimum conditions of food and shelter, in addition to being exposed to extremely high levels of stress due to the insecurity of the journey. The bodies of those who migrate suffer from exhaustion, wear and tear and disease, in addition to the high exposure to Covid-19.

The pandemic deepened the common scourges for people in situations of forced migration. Xenophobia, discrimination and criminalization have worsened towards migrants, who are often seen as “carriers of the virus”, which has triggered situations of physical and symbolic violence in both transit and destination countries.

Paradoxically, the most critical focus of Covid-19 in the world is currently in the United States of America (USA), since it is the country with the highest number of cases of infection and deaths. Large communities of Central Americans live in the most densely populated cities in the United States, and in recent decades they have formed multi-generational families and consolidated their roots. Many of the migrants from the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) and Mexico migrate with the conviction of reuniting with family members, so the Covid-19 pandemic has not been a deterrent.

For its part, the Trump administration’s extreme anti-immigrant policies led Mexico to become a border-nation, with most undocumented migrants stranded on Aztec soil. Between 2014 and 2019, the U.S. detained 2,960,500 migrants at the southern border, while in 2019 the U.S. held 977,509 people and Mexico held 298,211. ¹. Duuring the month of October 2020, 11,336 refugee applications were received in Mexico from Hondurans and 3,103 from El Salvador, equivalent to 46% of the total.

In the context of the pandemic, the migrant population in transit remains largely exposed because not only is it not attended in the already overcrowded health centers of the countries of the migratory corridor, but it is not included in the national vaccination plans. While some countries are opening their borders to vaccinated tourists, even more doors are closed to migrants. Both in Mexico and in Central American countries, migrants without documents are simply not contemplated to access vaccination plans, as they do not have documents in order. This situation not only deepens the vulnerability of the migrant population, but also accentuates the discrimination to which they may be subjected for supposedly being constant transmitters of the virus. ² In Mexico, the vaccination plan is restricted to those who obtain the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP), a code that can only be obtained by Mexican citizens, permanent and temporary residents.

Although the borders remain closed, the need to migrate is a growing reality, which has generated an increase in organized crime that offers clandestine routes and means of transportation to move migrants without following any type of sanitary protocol, exposing them to all kinds of dangers. Likewise, scams have become increasingly frequent for migrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers who are extorted or deceived through supposed bail payment plans.

For those who have been detained, the situation is aggravated by the legal uncertainty in which they find themselves because, although the Biden Administration announced reforms in immigration policies, these have not yet materialized. The review of asylum requests can take months, during which time the people awaiting the process are returned to Mexican territory where they are exposed to situations of vulnerability and discrimination. The expulsions of migrants from the border continue to occur despite the pandemic, even in cases of people sick with Covid-19 who are expelled without making the corresponding official notifications or following the appropriate protocols. ³

Likewise, the U.S. southern border remains closed and, in fact, the current U.S. administration reopened one of the detention centers for minors at the Texas border. The U.S. government claims that this will be a temporary measure due to the more than 6,000 unaccompanied minors who have arrived at the border so far this year.⁴ In a recent interview⁵, Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to President Joe Biden and coordinator for the border with Mexico, stated that in order to take adequate precautions against the pandemic “it is very important that people who do not have an appointment stay where they are and do not try to cross the border until they get the call”, He also asserted that even if the immigration policies of the previous administration are relaxed, especially the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Stay in Mexico” program, most asylum seekers “are not going to qualify” for legal entry.

On February 22, the website of the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Mexico published a communiqué from the Security Attaché, Edgar Ramirez, where the official is explicit about the protocol for people with open cases of the Stay in Mexico Program, saying: “Let it be clear: do not come to the border right now”, and urges migrants to wait for a call to make an appointment. ⁶

All indications are that Mexico will continue to be the border nation or “wall” for migration from the Northern Triangle and other South American countries, and even transcontinental (especially from Africa), which use the migration corridor as access to the US. After the repression and dispersal of the migrant caravan in Guatemala, the so-called “ant migration” has proliferated, small groups of migrants seeking to circumvent surveillance and repression by police forces, which does not exempt them from dealing with organized crime around human trafficking, extortion and swindling, as well as exposure and lack of attention in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

References

1 Available at: https://www.anahuac.mx/mexico/noticias/Migracion-y-COVID-19

2 Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2021/02/mexico-registro-vacunacion-excluye-importantes-sectores-poblacion/

3 Available at: https://sinfronteras.org.mx/osc-presentan-informe-sobre-las-graves-afectaciones-del-covid-19-en-poblacion-migrante-y-refugiada-en-mexico/

4 Available at: https://www.voanoticias.com/estadosunidos/eeuu-abre-centro-menores-no-acompanados-llegan-frontera

5 Available at: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-56093388

6 Available at: https://mx.usembassy.gov/es/si-eres-migrante-y-tienes-caso-pendiente-bajo-el-protocolo-mpp-no-vengas-ahora-a-la-frontera/