By Jesús de la Torre 

In September 2023, US and Mexican officials, joined by business leaders from the Mexican train company Ferromex, met in Ciudad Juárez to agree on new measures to curtail irregular migration. “We are continuing to work closely with our partners in Mexico to increase security and address irregular migration along our shared border,” said Troy A. Miller, a top U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official. Considering still increasing encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. redoubled its pressure on Mexico to deter asylum seekers. In turn, Mexico implemented more aggressive enforcement measures against people seeking safety, work, and family reunification. In a call to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in February 2024, President Biden “expressed his appreciation for Mexico’s operational support and for taking concrete steps to deter irregular migration while expanding lawful pathways.” In the same vein, CBP touted a decrease in encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in early 2024 as a success. Too often, the U.S. and other high-income countries measure migration policy success according to the number of migrants arriving at their borders, including asylum seekers. Fewer encounters at borders are often equated to policy success while increasing encounters prompt narratives of “crisis.” However, this reasoning masquerades the conditions leading people to migrate in the first place, migrants’ experiences during transit, and, most importantly, the influence that the U.S. immigration policies exert over those who haven’t crossed its borders yet. One of the most significant policies impacting people on the move is border externalization: the expansion of one country’s migration policy preferences to other third states through a multi-layered web of public and private actors and agreements to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from arriving and staying in its territory. From agreements with Mexico to host asylum seekers (Migrant Protection Protocols, MPP) to policies that forcibly return or expel nationals to countries others than theirs (Title 42, Safe Third Country Agreements) or force countries to deter asylum seekers, the externalization of borders is becoming the option by default when it comes to migration governance This report problematizes the U.S. externalization of its border toward Northern Central America and Mexico (Mesoamerica from now on) from a global critical perspective, highlighting patterns of policy diffusion and grassroots resistance. For that purpose, it conducts a comparative case study with Spain. The U.S. and Spain have been paradigmatic cases of cross-country comparison to find similarities and differences between a long-term net-receiving country and a “latecomer” to net-receiving migration. It would be expected that these two countries, with significant differences in their migration histories, would have developed diverse strategies to manage migration. Based on 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners accompanying people on the move in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Morocco, Senegal, and Mauritania,5 6 this report will how both countries have developed similar border externalization strategies with similar impacts on people on the move. The reasons lay in similar securitized and racist perspectives of migration and asylum based on sanitized and reified conceptions of who belongs to the “nation.” Ultimately, this report shows that the U.S. border externalization practices cannot and mustn’t be understood in isolation but rather as about a larger web of global practices that respond to similar policy goals and narratives. Therefore, actions to challenge these policies from below demand transnational solidarity and coordination. The subsequent sections are structured as follows. The first section reviews the dynamics and functioning of the U.S. and Spain’s externalization policies in Mesoamerica and Northern Western Africa through the lived experience of practitioners. The second section explores the impacts of such dynamics on local populations and people on the move in these countries. The final section offers advocacy and policy alternatives based on practitioners’ perspectives. Conclusions are finally drawn.       

El Paso.The Hope Border Institute (HOPE), 2024.  28p.