By Al. Ujazdowskie

Armed forces are an integral part of a democratic state and society. By fulilling their defence and national-security functions, the armed forces play a key role in enabling a security environment that allows us to enjoy the inalienable rights and freedoms to which we are all entitled as human beings. As representatives of the state structure, armed forces personnel are bound to respect human rights and international humanitarian law in the exercise of their duties. But only when their rights are guaranteed within their own institu- tion will armed forces personnel be likely to uphold these in the discharge of their tasks — both when in the barracks and during operations.

OSCE Oice for Democratic Institutions and

Human Rights (ODIHR), 256p.

By Stevie Glaberson, Emerald Tse & Emily Tucker, 

In every cell in your body, there resides a complete copy of your genetic code. As you moveabout the world, you shed cells without even realizing it, leaving your DNA, like a geneticcalling card, wherever you go. You probably don’t think about the trail you’re leaving. Itwouldn’t really matter if you did, because you can’t stop shedding cells, and you can’t leave your DNA at home.

But what if the government had access to a copy of your DNA and could track you based on thisinvoluntary, unstoppable trail without your consent? How would it change your behavior toknow that the government had a drop of your blood — or saliva — containing your “entiregenetic code, which will be kept indefinitely in a government-controlled refrigerator in awarehouse in Northern Virginia”?1 Would you feel free to seek out the medical or reproductivecare you needed? To attend protests and voice dissent? To gather together with the people ofyour choosing?This dystopia is fast becoming reality for millions of people, many of them already vulnerablebecause of over-policing, excessive surveillance, or economic insecurity. The federal governmentis amassing a huge trove of DNA, starting with a racialized, often traumatized, and politicallypowerless group: noncitizens. And it is using the federal agency that operates with the fewestpractical constraints and least oversight — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — todo it. That’s what this report is about.In the waning days of the Trump administration, riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment andwith the resources of the immigrant rights movement depleted by four years of emergencyresponses, the Department of Justice made what it billed as a technical, boring rule change: Iteliminated an exemption in the government’s existing DNA-collection rule that previously hadallowed DHS to refrain from building out a labor-intensive and expensive DNA-collectionprogram.In so doing, it effectively set off a bomb that had lain dormant in federal law since2005.3 The 2005 DNA Fingerprint Act — which passed with little public scrutiny as anamendment to the reauthorization bill for the popular Violence Against Women Act — for thefirst time extended compulsory DNA collection to people outside of the criminal legal context:detained noncitizens.4 But because of the exceptions in the implementing regulations, andbecause previous administrations thought it was a good idea to use those exceptions to avoidescalating DNA collection from noncitizens, DHS never mounted a large-scale DNA collectionprogram. That is, until 2020.This report, which is based on publicly available records, as well as interviews with people whohave had their DNA taken by immigration authorities and legal service providers working withthem, is the first attempt to examine in-depth what happened after the 2020 rule change, and toexplain the legal and political implications of these developments.

Washington, DC, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law (2024)., 108p.

By Matt Herbert

On 7 May 2025, reports emerged that the US was preparing to deport irregular migrants to Libya. While no deportations had occurred as of mid-May, and the US government has neither confirmed nor denied such plans, the potential for expulsions has raised urgent concerns among international observers, particularly regarding Libya’s fragility, human rights conditions, and entrenched criminal economies.

This publication explores the multifaceted risks associated with these possible transfers. Authored by Dr. Matt Herbert, the report presents a detailed analysis of how migrant expulsions could exacerbate instability in Libya and fuel smuggling and extortion networks.

The brief underscores that deportations would risk reinforcing cycles of violence and impunity, placing vulnerable individuals in harm’s way and undermining regional stability. Rather than viewing deportations through short-term political calculus, the US should assess the long-term risks to its broader interests in Libya and the region that such a policy would entail.

Geneva: Global Initiative AGainst Transnational Organized Crime, 2025. 17p.

By Nina Wang, Allison McDonald, Daniel Bateyko and Emily Tucker

When you think about government surveillance in the United States, you likely think of the National Security Agency or the FBI. You might even think of a powerful police agency, such as the New York Police Department. But unless you or someone you love has been targeted for deportation, you probably don’t immediately think of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This report argues that you should. Our twoyear investigation, including hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests and a comprehensive review of ICE’s contracting and procurement records, reveals that ICE now operates as a domestic surveillance agency. Since its founding in 2003, ICE has not only been building its own capacity to use surveillance to carry out deportations but has also played a key role in the federal government’s larger push to amass as much information as possible about all of our lives. By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has—without any judicial, legislative or public oversight—reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S., whose records can end up in the hands of immigration enforcement simply because they apply for driver’s licenses; drive on the roads; or sign up with their local utilities to get access to heat, water and electricity. ICE has built its dragnet surveillance system by crossing legal and ethical lines, leveraging the trust that people place in state agencies and essential service providers, and exploiting the vulnerability of people who volunteer their information to reunite with their families. Despite the incredible scope and evident civil rights implications of ICE’s surveillance practices, the agency has managed to shroud those practices in near-total secrecy, evading enforcement of even the handful of laws and policies that could be invoked to impose limitations. Federal and state lawmakers, for the most part, have yet to confront this reality. This report synthesizes what is already known about ICE surveillance with new information from thousands of previously unseen and unanalyzed records, illustrating the on-theground impact of ICE surveillance through three case studies—ICE access to driver data, utility customer data and data collected about the families of unaccompanied children.

Washington, DC: Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law , 2025. 114p.

By Cecilia Schenetti, Valentina Mazzucato, Sally Wyatt, Djamila Schans

European states employ migration information campaigns (MICs) to discourage irregular migration to Europe by people from the Global South. Campaigns are justified by their initiators in various ways. On the one hand, campaigns are said to protect ‘potential migrants’ by helping them to make informed decisions (‘care’). On the other hand, campaigns respond to Europe's security objective of restricting migration flows (‘control’). Researchers have looked at various intermediaries involved in these campaigns. Yet, little attention has been given to individual European policy actors who decide on the funding and design of campaigns and how they navigate between campaigns' contradictory intentions to care for ‘potential migrants’ and to control borders. How do European campaign initiators justify the need for MICs? And what does this tell us about the migration imaginaries of those who develop migration governance measures? Based on interviews with European policymakers and campaign designers in the Netherlands and Senegal, this article examines their discursive acts of legitimation. It shows that in justifying their everyday work, they imagine themselves as humanitarian actors, and ‘potential migrants’ as depoliticized subjects in need of care. While initiators do sometimes examine campaigns critically, they build a worldview in which care is instrumental to border enforcement and in which compassion becomes a form of repressive ‘soft’ bordering.

International Migration, Volume63, Issue3 June 2025, 14p.

By Tadgh McMahon, Sukhmani Khorana, Ingrid Culos, Liam Magee, Emilie Baganz

COVID-19 resulted in global restrictions on migration, with pronounced consequences in Australia, where the resettlement of refugees was significantly curtailed from March 2020. This research, comprising a third phase in an ongoing study on refugee settlement and integration, seeks to understand the broader implications of these restrictions on family separation and reunion among resettled refugees in Australia. Employing a mixed-method approach of surveys and family interviews conducted in late 2021, we explored various themes that emerged from the pandemic's effects on family reunion, such as concerns about living difficulties, maintaining contact with family overseas, financial hardship, and reunion challenges specific to the pandemic. The findings reveal the negative impact of COVID-19 on refugees' ability to reunite with families, with evidence pointing to differences between gender, visa category, and language group/ethnicity. The research underscores the need for innovative approaches in resettlement to address the negative impacts of family separation and for governments to expedite family reunion pathways to alleviate isolation and uncertainty among resettled refugees.

International Migration, Volume63, Issue3, June 2025, 20p.

By Bridget Collrin, Harald Bauder

The concept of migration governance has captured scholarly attention in recent decades. In this paper, we present the results of a bibliometric analysis and a scoping review of this concept and explore how it is defined by authors across the social sciences. Based on our sample of literature, we find that a majority of definitions assume a state-sovereignty perspective of migration governance, leading to discussions that can fail to account for the role of migrant rights and autonomy. Our review reflects upon this result and discusses other findings on the conflation of migration governance with migration management and on the significance of externalized, multi-level and transnational migration governance in the literature. We conclude that migration governance is a complex concept that must pay closer attention to migrant rights and autonomy.

International Migration, Volume63, Issue3, June 2025, 17p.

By Matthew Lisiecki, Kevin Velasco, and Tara Watson

The Trump administration has begun to carry out activities connected to its campaign promise of a nationwide mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. What will this mean for the estimated 5.62 million U.S. citizen children with an undocumented household member, and for the state and local child welfare systems charged with protecting their safety and well-being?

Changes in immigration enforcement policy

In fiscal years 2021 through 2024, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested around 125,000 immigrants in the nation’s interior each year and deported an average of 38,000. These numbers were lower than during the first Trump administration, which in turn were lower than during Obama’s first term.

Under Biden, immigrants most often came to the attention of ICE through the criminal justice system because they were already in custody of local law enforcement. Fewer than half were “at large” arrests in the community, meaning enforcement activity was mainly focused on those in contact with local jails and prisons. In addition to a more aggressive border stance, the Trump administration has signaled its intention to ramp up and broaden interior enforcement.

In his first term, Trump slightly increased enforcement, but the bigger change was making it more chaotic and unpredictable. This pattern appears to be resuming in 2025. The administration has revoked the sensitive locations guidance that previously prevented enforcement activity in hospitals, schools, and churches, with legal challenges underway. It has expanded expedited removal for migrants who recently crossed the border—which bypasses the usual legal process for undocumented residents—to include anyone arriving in the last two years encountered anywhere in the United States. The recently passed Laken Riley bill requires the detention of any undocumented person charged with certain crimes, even if not convicted, including crimes as trivial as shoplifting. The administration has also amplified efforts to involve state and local law enforcement through the 287(g) program, and has shifted priorities across federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) away from their usual work toward immigration enforcement. And in mid-March Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which is contested in court but would allow deportations of Venezuelans without the usual due process protections.

It is too early to know how much the numbers of arrests and deportations will increase. Certainly, the administration may fall short of its stated goal of deporting all undocumented immigrants, but between enforcement activities already underway and immigrants faced with no good options electing to leave the country—so-called “self-deportation”—the level of enforcement will be significant from an economic and humanitarian perspective. There will also be chilling effects on activities including free speech, appearing in public, seeking medical care, and going to work as immigrant communities struggle to make sense of the new policy environment.

Washington, DC: Brookings, 2025. 16p.

By Immigration Equality, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), and Human Rights First

Asylum in the United States is a lifesaving necessity for LGBTQ and HIV-positive people. For decades, many have fled to the United States to seek refuge from persecution and torture. However, the United States subjects hundreds of thousands of people yearly, including LGBTQ and HIV-positive people, to its massive network of jails and prisons. These jails, run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are infamous for their inhumane and abusive conditions. For LGBTQ and HIV-positive people, these conditions routinely include high rates of physical and sexual violence, improper and prolonged solitary confinement, and inadequate medical care among other forms of systemic abuse and neglect. For this report, Immigration Equality, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), and Human Rights First (HRF) surveyed 41 LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants who were detained by CBP and ICE. This survey revealed: • Approximately one third of survey participants (18 out of 41) reported sexual abuse, physical assaults or sexual harassment in immigration detention due to their LGBTQ identity; • Nearly all of the participants (35 out of 41), reported being targets of homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist, or other verbal and nonverbal abuse in ICE and CBP jails that included threats of violence and assault; • A majority of participants (28 out of 41) reported receiving inadequate medical care or asking for medical care and not receiving it while in ICE or CBP detention. • Nearly half of participants (20 out of 41) interviewed reported new or increased mental health symptoms while in detention, including hives, panic attacks, mental health crises, flashbacks, and self-harm; • Roughly half of participants (20 of 41) were subject to solitary confinement; • Nearly half of participants (18 of 41) reported having their sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV status or other confidential medical information disclosed in custody without their consent; • More than a quarter of survey participants (12 out of 41) reported that ICE or CBP separated them from their loved ones, whether a partner, spouse, or sibling; • Survey participants routinely struggled to access their attorneys or find one, while in ICE or CBP detention; • The majority of survey participants living with HIV (13 out of 17 participants) reported medical neglect or denial of medical HIV treatment. The executive branch and Congress can take steps to end this unnecessary suffering and protect the rights of LGBTQ/H individuals. These include steps to apply parole authority, issue guidance on vulnerable populations, support legislative action and phase out immigration detention.

Brooklyn, NY: Immigration Equality, 2024. 53p.

By ASEAN–Australia Counter Trafficking (ASEAN-ACT) with the support of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Migrant Forum in Asia

This study examines the linkages between wage theft and forced labour in labour migration within ASEAN, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on this phenomenon. The report seeks to provide an evidence base for policymakers on wage theft, and relatedly counter human trafficking and forced labour measures. The study was carried out in five countries in ASEAN- Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Philippines and Indonesia- to capture experiences in both countries of destination and origin. Interviews were conducted with 451 migrant workers and further in-depth key informant interviews and focus group discussions with 140 respondents. The study also assesses the impact of the policies and practices of the government and non-government stakeholders in ASEAN during the COVID-19 pandemic on the indicators of forced labour and incidence of wage theft. The findings of the research indicate a strong correlation between wage theft and migrant workers’ experience of forced labour during the pandemic. 31% of respondents reported experiencing wage theft, among whom 46% were found to also have likely been in conditions of forced labour. The high incidence of wage theft worsened their working and living conditions during employment and upon return to their home countries. Vulnerability to wage theft and forced labour also appears to be influenced by factors such as irregularity in the migration process, a lack of effective protection or support mechanisms, lack of information provided to migrants, poor access to services, violation or absence of contracts, and lack of prioritisation of policies for migrant workers. The policy interventions during the pandemic were largely not designed to protect migrant workers from forced labour and wage theft. While basic services such as access to health care and other emergency relief were provided, migrant workers lacked access to social protection, access to justice mechanisms and assistance to retrieve unpaid wages both in the countries of destination and origin. The report contains recommendations for the consideration of policymakers at national and regional levels, that may help to address the incidence of wage theft and forced labour, and therefore the wellbeing of migrant workers in ASEAN. In brief, the recommendations are: 1. Develop or improve complaints mechanisms for migrant workers to seek justice, without fear of immigration enforcement, retaliation, detention, or deportation. 2. Increase access to information for migrant workers’ rights protection, services provided by governments and others, including digital platforms. 3. Develop an ASEAN model standard labour contract to reduce the incidence of forced labour and related violations. 4. Support national and regional advocacy spaces to raise the linkage of wage theft and forced labour. 5. Implement a framework similar to the ILO's Fair Recruitment Guidelines to support improving recruitment practices by agents, brokers and those responsible for migrant worker policies1 . 6. Strengthen or establish platforms of cooperation for government and non-government stakeholders to coordinate in grievance redressal and ensuring retrieval of unpaid wages and other benefits. 7. Establish a forced labour referral mechanism in ASEAN, which includes missions, representatives of the destination country, NGOs and regional observers, to report, refer, and monitor forced labour activities. 8. Strengthen monitoring and reporting systems within diplomatic missions of countries of origin to document whether migrant workers are paid their due wages and benefits. 9. Establish a permanent transitional justice mechanism at regional ASEAN level to respond to cases of wage theft2 . 10. Establish or strengthen compensation funds for workers to receive unpaid wages and benefits, and related legal services, by both diplomatic missions of countries of origin and countries of destination.

ASEAN–Australia Counter Trafficking (ASEAN-ACT), 2024. 46p.

By Meghan Benton, Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan and Kate Hooper

Populist claims that immigration is chaotic, unlawful, and unfair are increasingly resonating even within societies whose members generally believe some level of immigration is needed to maintain economic competitiveness. This shift, which has pushed governments of all stripes toward greater restrictions and reduced the appetite for experimentation, comes at a particularly fraught time.

Advanced economies with aging populations are increasingly reliant on immigrants to sustain their workforces, but concerns about how population growth could affect the soaring cost of living and public infrastructure have caused support for even legal immigration to wane. Meanwhile, a perception of a loss of control over borders and immigrant admissions has prompted quick fixes, at the expense of longer-term, sustainable solutions.

This Transatlantic Council on Migration issue brief explores the factors behind this breakdown in immigration governance and lays out strategies for reform, drawing lessons from a range of countries. In particular, it makes the case that regular, long-term planning—while a tall order when governments are grappling with short-term pressures—will be essential if countries are to successfully navigate emerging demographic and economic challenges

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2025. 17p.

By ARIEL G. RUIZ SOTO, DORIS MEISSNER, AND ANDREW SELEE

A new reality has set in across the Western Hemisphere since 2020 as migrant families, unaccompanied children, and adults from an increasingly diverse array of origin countries have embarked on journeys through the region. The United States, in particular, has faced significant challenges in managing its borders, but transit countries along migration routes and other existing and emerging destination countries have similarly faced new migration challenges and a need to fundamentally transform their policy responses. Many governments have responded to this new reality by building a sense of shared responsibility and deepening their collaboration on migration management, albeit at different levels given their uneven institutional capacities and resources. Whether and how the policies and hemispheric cooperation that have emerged will continue are now in the hands of the new administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has been rewriting the U.S. relationship with Mexico, as well as with other partners across the Americas. The Biden administration’s focus on collaboration, which privileged a mixture of jointly negotiated migration controls, legal pathways, and selected returns, has been supplanted by a strategy based on large-scale deportations and tariff threats to compel Mexico to take even greater steps to stop unauthorized migration and drug trafficking. But despite the changed priorities and style, the basic truth remains that both governments fundamentally need each other to accomplish their policy objectives, whether termed border control and migration management or national security. No country has been more critical to U.S. border enforcement efforts than Mexico, which has recorded more migrant encounters in its territory than the U.S. Border Patrol has at the southwest border every month since May 2024. Mexican policies have been central catalysts for sustained reductions in unauthorized migration at the U.S.-Mexico border that began in 2024 and have continued under the countries’ new administrations. Understanding the complexity of shifting migration patterns, institutional capacity in both countries, and other shared challenges is there fore crucial in the longer term to bilateral, and likely hemispheric, negotiations and goals. Drawing on interviews and two roundtables with U.S. and Mexican policy stakeholders, researchers, and leaders of international and civil-society organizations in 2024, this policy brief rounds out prior Migration Policy Institute work on U.S. border enforcement by providing an account of recent shifts in unauthorized migration and humanitarian protection trends, and the role the U.S.-Mexico relationship has played—and will continue to play—in responding to these new migration realities. To overcome future challenges in migration management, it contends that Mexico and the United States need to work together to: 1) establish a transparent infrastructure for border security and protection screening at the Mexico-Guatemala border; 2) break the grip of cross-national migrant smuggling organizations; and 3) strengthen labor pathways between Mexico and the United States. Given their geographic proximity and shared policy interests, the United States and Mexico are inseparable. Long-term management of migration requires working in good faith across both sides of the border and recognizing the successes of bilateral collaboration in recent years, which have illustrated how indispensable Mexican migration enforcement and protection operations are to U.S. policy aims and how vital unwavering U.S. support is for those operations. As the new administrations in Mexico City and Washington, DC set their courses for the period ahead, they would do well to advance their respective national interests by incorporating strategies that address the deeper complexities of irregular movement, consider the lessons from prior hemispheric collaboration and leadership models, and promote migration through channels that are legal, safe, and orderly

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2025. 18p.

By Lucrezia Canzutti

The digitisation of borders has permeated academic and political debates, the image of ‘digital fortress Europe’ becoming normalised and taken for granted. This ‘taken for grantedness’, however, clashes with the reality on the ground and has important implications for migrants' rights and credibility. This paper seeks to supplement accounts that foreground the assumed omnipresence of digital technologies with an analysis of their concomitant absence. Drawing on fieldwork in Italy, it demonstrates how the discourse around digital borders sustains states' ‘epistemic borderwork’ and erases migrants' knowledge and rights claims. Overall, the paper reflects on which technologies are made absent and present at the EU borders, and how both absence and presence are imbricated in power relations that enable new forms of violence and reactivate legacies of subordination and domination.

International Migration, Volume 63, Issue 4, August 2025, 10p.

By Robert Warren

In 2023, the US undocumented population reached 12.2 million, exceeding the previous high of 12.0 million in 2008. This report provides estimates of the undocumented population in 2023 based on data collected in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The report focuses on trends in annual population growth from 2013 to 2023 for the total population and for 17 countries or areas of origin. It also describes trends in the undocumented population in the six states with the largest undocumented population in 2023.

The CMS estimates of undocumented residents include immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs, and the estimates include most of the people that have entered asylum backlogs or received humanitarian parole status since 2021. The estimates were derived using previous CMS estimation procedures except that higher undercount rates were used to estimate the number of undocumented residents that arrived after 2020.

Adjustment for undercount was increased for post-2020 arrivals to account for the unusually large flow across the US/Mexico border in recent years and because relatively more migrants resided in group quarters1 where enumeration can be difficult. The CMS methodology is summarized after the following section, and information about undercount rates for recent arrivals is shown in the Appendix.

Journal on Migration and Human Security, May 2025, 8p.

By Evin Millet and Jacquelyn Pavilo

Hispanic immigrants make up the largest undocumented immigrant population in the United States. Despite having relatively low levels of education, Hispanic undocumented immigrants have high labor force participation and employment rates, especially in essential occupations. Nevertheless, lack of legal status still serves as a barrier for many, who face wage gaps and are excluded from social safety nets despite their economic contribution. The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimates that approximately 21,036,500 immigrants of Hispanic origin live in the United States, of which 7,410,000 are undocumented, based on one-year 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) data (Ruggles et al. 2021). Figure 1 shows the Hispanic undocumented immigrant population compared to the total undocumented immigrant population from 2010 to 2019. The share of the undocumented population that is Hispanic has remained relatively stable over the last decade, ranging between 72-76 percent.

New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2022. 12p.

By Jill M. Williams https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9957-9520JMWilliams@acaiajustice.org and Honor Brooke Gosch

This study presents the first effort to assess unaccompanied migrant children’s access to free and low-cost attorneys in the United States at the national, state, and county levels. Since 2021, over 544,000 unaccompanied children have entered the United States and been apprehended along the southwest border. The vast majority of these children are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and released to sponsors across the country while their immigration cases are processed. While unaccompanied children are not guaranteed the right to government appointed counsel, a broad body of research indicates that having legal representation greatly increases the likelihood that a child will identify a form of legal relief and will have a legal outcome that allows them to remain in the country. Access to legal representation additionally connects children with trusted adults and increases opportunities to identify and address instances where children are being abused or exploited. However, a large percentage of unaccompanied children still lack legal representation. To date, little research has explored the factors that support or inhibit unaccompanied children’s access to representation. This study draws on research that shows that geographic proximity to attorneys is one key factor affecting the likelihood that immigrants will obtain counsel and research that demonstrates dramatic unevenness in legal counsel nationally to assess the prevalence of free and low-cost immigration attorneys in relation to where unaccompanied children are released to sponsors. Our findings demonstrate an overall lack of free and low-cost immigration attorneys in relation to the number of unaccompanied children in need of legal representation, with only one attorney for every 137 children nationally. Moreover, in assessing attorney to child ratios at the state-scale, we demonstrate that in 43 states (86 percent of the states in the country) the number of children to attorneys exceeds reasonable caseloads. Importantly, these estimates do not account for the fact that not all free and low-cost immigration attorneys take on children’s cases nor for the overall demand for immigration legal services among the more than three million individuals facing deportation in the United States. In turn, while sobering, our estimates likely significantly over-estimate children’s actual access to representation across the United States. Based on these findings, we offer the following policy recommendations:

•

Federal, state, local, and philanthropic organizations should strategically invest in workforce development to grow the number of free and low-cost immigration attorneys in general and specifically in areas where the lack is particularly high.

Workforce development programs should both engage new law school graduates and individuals working in private practice who may be looking to enter the public interest sector.

Policy makers, funders, and organizational leaders should invest in and support holistic representation models in order to reduce the burdens experienced by attorneys and foster retention in the field.

Governmental and philanthropic organizations should invest in additional research and program evaluation in order to more fully understand the need for representation among unaccompanied children and barriers to and facilitators of accessing representation. These efforts should go hand-in-hand with improvements in data quality and sharing among governmental and non-governmental stakeholders.

The federal government should immediately reinstate all contracts and programs related to providing legal orientation and representation to unaccompanied migrant children in line with Congressionally appropriated funds allocated for these purposes to both ensure children’s rights under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) are realized and that the existing (already insufficient) workforce of trained and experienced attorneys equipped to represent unaccompanied children is not eroded.

Journal on Migration and Human Security, Online May 2025, 20p.

By Didier Bigo

This article argues that there is no single form of security that reduces insecurity but rather forms of (in)security that are contradictory and mutually destructive. This is the case between traditional liberal security, based on evidence, the individual and the penal order, and contemporary predictive preventive security, based on ‘reasonable’ suspicion. The digitisation of data has accelerated this trend towards preventive security, which is created through the creation of specific data-organising categories according to algorithms, the sorting out of profiles of ‘persons of concern’ ranked according to their level of danger, and the so-called ability of artificial intelligence to predict the future behaviour of individuals in order to place some of them under surveillance. This applies not only to terrorists or criminals, but also to many international travellers, making their use banal. The databases of the European agency EU-LISA will help to show the functioning of this new ‘dispositif’ of suspicion, which endangers democratic politics.

International Migration, Volume63, Issue4, August 2025, 13p.

By Martina Prpic

Trafficking in human beings is a serious crime and a violation of human rights. When it happens to children, it disrupts their childhood and exposes them to horrific exploitation and abuse, and a precarious future. Even though the true number of victims of human trafficking is not known, recent data reveal that the number of child victims has been on the increase. Awareness of children as victims of human trafficking has increased as well. Just like adult victims, child victims can be trafficked for sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced criminality or organ removal. Recently, the EU has officially recognised new forms of exploitation, including surrogacy, forced marriage and illegal adoption. There are geographical differences in the recruitment of victims, with the vast majority of child victims originating from northern, southern and western Europe being girls (82.9 %) and 55.1 % of child victims from Africa and 77.6 % of child victims from southern Asia being boys. Female child victims are more likely to report sexual exploitation, while male child victims are more likely to be exploited through child labour. Forced criminality in the EU, although comparatively lower as a share of the total number of victims, is steadily increasing, with boys of migration background being the main targets. The EU's anti-trafficking legislation was amended last year, resulting in legislation that identifies children as especially vulnerable to trafficking. The amendments also expanded the list of forms of exploitation to include those that particularly affect children and emphasised the importance of a victim-centred approach and prevention. Member States are therefore asked, inter alia, to promote and provide regular and specialised training for professionals who are likely to come into contact with such children. Another relevant directive, on victims' rights, is currently being revised to provide even more rights to victims, including child victims. The existing directive already prioritises the best interests of children when applying its provisions

Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service , 2025. 8p.

By Ximena Canal Laiton

This report explores the migration experiences of Latin American and Caribbean children and adolescents on the move through South America. The study is based on 4Mi1 surveys and interviews with caregivers of children on the move, conducted in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay between September and December 2024. Responding to the information gap that exists about this population in the region, the report presents findings on the risks that migrant children face en route and at destination, the protection mechanisms implemented by caregivers, the impacts of migration on children’s lives and well-being, and migrant children’s humanitarian needs. This document provides empirical evidence to inform decision makers and humanitarian actors

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2025. 30p.

By MARIA R. MONTALVO

Explores the relationship between the production of enslaved property and the production of the past in the antebellum United States.It is extraordinarily difficult for historians to reconstruct the lives of individual enslaved people. Records—where they exist—are often fragmentary, biased, or untrue. In Enslaved Archives, Maria R. Montalvo investigates the legal records, including contracts and court records, that American antebellum enslavers produced and preserved to illuminate enslavers' capitalistic motivations for shaping the histories of enslaved people. The documentary archive was not simply a by-product of the business of slavery, but also a necessary tool that enslavers used to exploit the people they enslaved. Building on Montalvo's analysis of more than 18,000 sets of court records, Enslaved Archives is a close study of what we can and cannot learn about enslaved individuals from the written record. By examining five lawsuits in Louisiana, Montalvo deconstructs enslavers' cases—the legal arguments and rhetorical strategies they used to produce information and shape perceptions of enslaved people. Commodifying enslaved people was not simply a matter of effectively exploiting their labor. Enslavers also needed to control information about those people. Enslavers' narratives—carefully manipulated, prone to omissions, and sometimes false—often survive as the only account of an enslaved individual's life. In working to historicize the people at the center of enslavers' manipulations, Montalvo outlines the possibilities and limits of the archive, providing a glimpse of the historical and contemporary consequences of commodification. Enslaved Archives makes a significant intervention in the history of enslaved people, legal history, and the history of slavery and capitalism by adding a qualitative dimension to the analysis of how enslavers created and maintained power.

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press , 2024. 178p.