By Christian Ambrosius and David Leblang

What causes the demand for entry into the United States? We demonstrate the existence of a vicious cycle of deportation policies and migration between the United States and countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. Our argument is simple: deportation of convicts from the United States leads to violence in the deportee’s home country which, in turn, increases the demand for that country’s natives to seek entry in the United States. We test this argument utilizing a nested research design based on both cross-country data as well as subnational data from the case of El Salvador. For both samples of data, we first estimate the effect of deportations on home country violence. In the second step, we show that the predicted level of home country violence helps explain the demand for entry into the United States.

Unpublished report, 2019. 40p.

By Christian Gunadi

The implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 grants undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children a temporary reprieve from deportation and authorization to work legally, potentially increasing their opportunity costs of committing crimes. In this article, I examine the impact of DACA on crime. The analysis yields a few main results. First, at the individual level, comparing the difference in the likelihood of being incarcerated between DACA-eligible population with its counterpart before and after the implementation of DACA, I fail to find evidence that DACA statistically significantly affected the incarceration rate of undocumented youth. This result is robust to controlling for the differences in characteristics associated with DACA eligibility, such as age and age at arrival. Second, using the variation in the number of DACA applications approved across the U.S. states, the evidence suggests that DACA is associated with a reduction in property crime rates. An increase of one DACA application approved per 1,000 population is associated with a 1.6% decline in overall property crime rate. Further analysis shows that this reduction is driven by the decline in burglary and larceny rates. This finding suggests that policies that expand the employment opportunities of immigrants may reduce crimes committed for financial gains that often do not lead to incarceration.

Unpublished paper, 2020. 61p,

By The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The detention of immigrants has skyrocketed in the United States. On a given day in August 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held over 55,000 people in detention – a massive increase from five years ago when ICE held fewer than 30,000 people. Unsurprisingly, the United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. What’s more, the federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than for all principal federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. As of April 2019, Florida had the sixth-largest population of people detained by ICE in the United States, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On a daily basis, ICE currently detains more than 2,000 noncitizens in the state, mostly in South Florida, which is home to four immigration prisons: Krome Service Processing Center (Krome), owned by ICE; Broward Transitional Center (Broward), operated by GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based for-profit prison corporation; and two county jails, Glades County Detention Center (Glades) and Monroe County Detention Center (Monroe). Despite the fact that immigrants are detained on civil violations, their detention is indistinguishable from the conditions found in jails or prisons where people are serving criminal sentences. The nation’s immigration detention centers are little more than immigrant prisons, where detained people endure harsh – even dangerous – conditions. And reports of recent deaths have only heightened concerns.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 104p.

By Tess Hellgren, Rebecca Cassler, Gracie Willis, Jordan Cunnings, Stephen Manning, Melissa Crow, and Lindsay Jonasson

Since its creation, the contemporary immigration court system has been perpetually afflicted by dysfunction. Today, under the Trump administration, the immigration court system—a system whose important work is vital for our nation's collective prosperity—has effectively collapsed. This report explains how the collapse came to be and why the immigration court system cannot be salvaged in its current form. Decades of experience incontrovertibly demonstrate that the immigration courts have never worked and will never work to, as Chief Justice John Roberts says, “do equal right” to those who appear before them. The immigration courts will never work because the structure of the immigration system is fundamentally flawed. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the attorney general of the United States is required to craft a functioning immigration court system: a system that provides genuine case-by-case adjudications by impartial judges who apply existing law to the evidence on the record following a full and fair hearing. Yet every attorney general has failed to do so. Despite the life-or-death stakes of many immigration cases, the immigration court system that persists today is plagued by decades of neglect and official acquiescence to bias. These trends have created a system where case outcomes have less to do with the rule of law than with the luck of the draw. And under the Trump administration, the attorneys general have gone even further by seeking to actively weaponize the immigration court system against asylum seekers and immigrants of color.

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  Overwhelming evidence shows that the Office of the Attorney General has long allowed immigration judges to violate noncitizens’ rights in a systemic Was the Central American Migrant Caravan created in the United States? , pervasive manner that undermines the integrity of the court system. In speaking with immigration practitioners across the country, the authors of this report have heard first-hand accounts of how the attorney general’s unitary power shapes adjudication practices that are biased, inconsistent, and driven by politics: Judges fail to apply binding legal standards, make decisions based on illegally invented rules, engage in abusive treatment of noncitizens and their counsel, and even decide cases before holding hearings

Portland, OR: Innovation Law Lab; Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 40p.

By Ashley N. Muchow

Toward the end of the 20th century, the U.S. witnessed a wave of immigration made up of both legal residents and a large undocumented population that have since settled, started families, and developed strong community ties. Modern immigration policy has concentrated heavily on enforcement in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, and a growing body of research suggests these escalations may carry unintended social consequences.

This dissertation consists of three interrelated studies that seek to disentangle the structural factors that affect levels of economic and social integration of minority and immigrant populations. Using data from Los Angeles, this dissertation focuses on two aspects of public life critical to productive and healthy living: the labor market and public safety. The first chapter considers how undocumented immigrants fare in the labor market. The second examines whether recent escalations in immigration enforcement influenced the willingness of Latino immigrants to engage with the police. Finally, the third chapter evaluates the effectiveness of community policing in reducing crime and increasing police engagement in predominately-Latino neighborhoods.

Overall, this dissertation suggests that enforcement-focused immigration policy intensifies barriers to integration and may jeopardize public safety, but there are tools localities can use to improve conditions in affected communities. I find both real and perceived exclusions limit immigrants' access to the formal labor market and law enforcement, and conclude with evidence of a promising approach to improve public safety in minority communities. These findings stress the need for federal immigration policies that balance enforcement with maintaining resident confidence in public institutions and encouraging the well-being and advancement of vulnerable populations.

Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 2019. 122p.

By Jane Kilpatrick, Chris Jones

The EU's proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act aims to address the risks of certain uses of AI and to establish a legal framework for its trustworthy deployment, thus stimulating a market for the production, sale and export of various AI tools and technologies. However, certain technologies or uses of technology are insufficiently covered by or even excluded altogether from the scope of the AI Act, placing migrants and refugees - people often in an already-vulnerable position - at even greater risk of having their rights violated

London: Statewatch, 2022. 46p.

By The University of Nottingham Rights Lab

This report presents the findings and recommendations arising from an 18-month research project, conducted between February 2021 and July 2022, which used feminist, participatory, action research methods to investigate the vulnerability to modern slavery of paid, migrant, live-in care workers in London. Live-in care represents a specific segment of the adult social care sector in England. Live-in care workers stay in their client’s home and provide around-the-clock presence and personal assistance as required with activities of daily living (for example, getting around, dressing and washing) to enable people with care and support needs to live independently in the community or remain at home with intensive and often specialised support (as opposed to moving to a care home for example). Our research sought to understand better the risks and drivers of vulnerability to modern slavery and severe forms of labour exploitation. There have been long-standing concerns about severe forms of exploitation in the UK in the care sector. The Director of Labour Market Enforcement has identified adult social care as a sector where the danger of labour exploitation is high, with live-in and agency care workers believed to be at particular risk. A specialised form of domestic work, live-in carers delivering personalised care in the home are considered vulnerable. A total of 14 semi-structured peer interviews and two peer-led focus groups were conducted with live-in migrant care workers from Hungary, Poland, South Africa and Zimbabwe. An additional three practice interviews were carried out by peer researchers with each other, which informed the research but were not used in the analysis.

London: Trust for London, 2022. 43p.

By Global Detention Project

Australia has a severe and punitive immigration detention system. It’s: policy of mandatory, indefinite detention does not distinguish between adults or children, visa violators or asylum seekers. Dozens have languished in detention for more than a decade. Private contractors, paid billions to operate centres, have been continually criticized for abusing detainees and failing to provide services. Observers have repeatedly denounced the detention regime, including its offshore operations, as violating human rights and international law. The price tag for maintaining the system is astronomical: It costs nearly $400,000 per detainee/year compared to less than $50,000 for community housing. But the physical and mental costs are even higher: Experts have documented the devastating impact of prolonged detention on the health of detainees, which has led to high levels of self-harm, long-term illnesses, and severe psychological disorders like schizophrenia.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Detention Project, 2022. 58p.

By Sonja Wolf

The countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America –El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras– have long struggled with social exclusion and authoritarian governments. Periodic protests were violently crushed, and the inability to achieve change by peaceful means resulted in political violence and civil wars. The Peace Accords signed in the early and mid-1990s and the transitions to electoral democracy allowed for some limited reforms, but the structural transformations that Central American societies needed remained elusive. The three countries have acquired a more urban and modern face. Citizens enjoy greater protection of human rights than in the past and can freely choose their rulers in ordinary elections, except for Honduras, which saw a democratic collapse with the 2009 coup d'état and fraudulent presidential elections in 2017. There, post-electoral violence, together with the increasing concentration of the executive power over legislative and judicial institutions, has eroded citizen confidence in public and political institutions. The progress that has occurred should not detract from the deep flaws that continue to characterize the nations of the Northern Triangle. State structures are weak and underfunded due to limited tax collection and widespread corruption. With an underdeveloped civil service, appointments and hiring decisions often based on personal and partisan connections regardless of merit, leave public institutions with little ability to build public policy. Corruption damages democratic institutions and prevents governments from allocating the maximum of available resources for the enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic and social rights. Economic power continues to be concentrated in a few hands. Deep-seated poverty, exclusion, and racism also persist and affect especially indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples as well as rural populations. Rural poverty reaches 49 percent in El Salvador, 77 percent in Guatemala, and 82 percent in Honduras. Overall poverty rates have decreased somewhat over the years, but more as a result of remittances than consistent social and economic policies. These transfers are an important contribution both to family economies and to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and in 2016 they constituted 10.4 percent of GDP in Guatemala, 17.1 percent in El Salvador, and 20.2 percent in Honduras.

Mexico City, Mexico: Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), 2020. 101p,

By Open Society Foundations

On September 26, 2014, dozens of student activists from a teachers’ college were detained and loaded into police vehicles by armed men in the town of Iguala, in Mexico’s Guerrero state. None of the students—43 in all—have been seen since. The disappearances of the 43, blamed on corrupt collusion between local politicians, drug gangs, and police, galvanized protests across Mexico, fueled by frustration over the lack of justice. The atrocity became a symbol of Mexico’s wider failure to protect its citizens from killings and disappearances, and to hold accountable those responsible. Broken Justice in Mexico’s Guerrero State examines the elements of that failure, and offers recommendations for change. The result of over two years of research and analysis by Mexican and international experts, and coproduced with Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan and the Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, this report provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the structural deficiencies of Guerrero’s justice system—flaws that have enabled perpetrators of violence to operate with almost absolute impunity.

Broken Justice in Mexico’s Guerrero State exposes the profound lack of political will to address abuses, including the failure to prosecute state actors implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances. It also sets out an agenda for reform—the first steps needed to rebuild trust in justice and the rule of law in Guerrero.

New York: Open Society Foundations, 2015. 89p.

By María Fernanda Bozmoski, María Eugenia Brizuela de Avila, and Domingo Sadurní

Citizens across Latin America and the Caribbean are rising up in protest. Political frustration and economic stagnation are fueling social discontent exacerbated by the continued COVID-19 pandemic and the slow health response. In Central America, restrictions on civil liberties, high rates of gender-based violence and extortion, and worsening climate change are compounding the lack of economic opportunities and pervasive corruption seen in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In the year of its bicentennial, can northern Central America chart a new path, in partnership with the United States, to tackle the sources of social instability that are forcing migrants to seek a better life?

In July 2021, the Joseph Biden administration released the US Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America report. Three of its five pillars call for the United States and northern Central American countries to work together to respect human rights and a free press, counter violence at the hands of criminal organizations, and combat sexual and gender-based violence.1 To ensure a sustained and effective implementation of this strategy, especially on these three pillars, the United States will need to find new ways to work closely with northern Central American governments, domestic and international private sectors, and organized civil-society groups. Following consultations with the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center’s Northern Triangle Advisory Group (NTAG), this brief highlights the importance of implementing a holistic, multisector approach to mitigate gender-based violence, protect civil liberties and human rights, and build climate resilience. This brief is the third in a three-part series by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center and DT Institute that provides policy recommendations for the United States and its northern Central American partners to address the root causes of migration.

Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, 2021.

By The Institute for Economics and Peace

This is the ninth edition of the Mexico Peace Index (MPI), produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP).

It provides a comprehensive measure of peacefulness in Mexico, including trends, analysis and estimates of the economic impact of violence in the country. The MPI is based on the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness, produced by IEP every year since 2007. The MPI consists of 12 sub-indicators aggregated into five broader indicators.

Mexico’s peacefulness improved by 0.2 percent in 2021. This was the second year in a row of improvement following four consecutive years of deteriorations. Twenty-three states improved, while nine deteriorated. Although a minority of states deteriorated, the deterioration in these states was large enough to almost counter the improvements in other states. This relationship occurs globally where countries deteriorate in peacefulness much faster than they improve.

In 2021, three of the five indicators in the MPI improved. Notably, both firearms crime and homicide improved, with the rates falling by 6.2 and 4.3 percent, respectively, and both reaching around 26 per 100,000 people. This marks the second year in a row of improvement for both indicators following steep increases between 2015 and 2018....

Sydney: Institute for Economics and Peace, 2022. 102p.

By Aysegul Kayaoglu

The impact of immigration on crime continues to stir heated debates in public policy circles around the world whilst surveys indicate that host societies favor mitigating measures because they are concerned of what they perceive as an impingement on their security with each new wave of migration inflow. Whether there is any truth to such perceptions, however, remains a mystery for the case of developing countries since causal evidence is extremely limited. That those countries host the overwhelming majority of the global refugee population makes it paramount for researchers to supply the missing scientific link. Propelled by the magnitude of this need, this paper analyzes the impact of refugees on crime rates using the case of Turkey that hosts the world’s largest refugee population within any national borders. In doing so, it uses instrumental variables, Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Staggered DiD methods to explain if the war-fleeing Syrian refugees pushed Turkey’s crime rates higher both in the short and the long-run. Controlling for various time-varying characteristics of provinces and presenting a battery of robustness checks against various identification threats, its findings show either null or negative effects of refugees on the incidence of criminal activity in the country.

Dokki, Giza Egypt: The Economic Research Forum, 2021. 44p.

By Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel, Naci H. Mocan, Semih Tumen & Belgi Turan

We analyze the impact on crime of 3.7 million refugees who entered and stayed in Turkey as a result of the civil war in Syria. Using a novel administrative data source on the flow of offense records to prosecutors’ offices in 81 provinces of the country each year, and utilizing the staggered movement of refugees across provinces over time, we estimate instrumental variables models that address potential endogeneity of the number of refugees and their location, and find that an increase in the number of refugees leads to more crime. We estimate that the influx of refugees between 2012 and 2016 generated additional 75,000 to 150,000 crimes per year, although it is not possible to identify the distribution of these crimes between refugees and natives. Additional analyses reveal that low-educated native population has a separate, but smaller, effect on crime. We also highlight the pitfalls of employing incorrect empirical procedures and using poor proxies of criminal activity which produce the wrong inference about the refugee-crime relationship. Our results underline the need to quickly strengthen the social safety systems, to take actions to dampen the impact on the labor market, and to provide support to the criminal justice system in order to mitigate the repercussions of massive influx of individuals into a country, and to counter the social and political backlash that typically emerges in the wake of such large-scale population movements.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2022. 94p.

By Nicolas Ajzenman, Patricio Dominguex, and Raimundo Undurrage

This paper studies the effects of immigration on crime and crime perceptions in Chile, where the foreign-born population more than doubled in the last decade. By using individual-level victimization data, we document null effects of immigration on crime but positive and significant effects on crime-related concerns, which in turn triggered preventive behavioral responses, such as investing in home-security. Our results are robust across a two-way fixed effects model and an IV strategy based on a shift-share instrument that exploits immigration inflows towards destination countries other than Chile. On mechanisms, we examine data on crime-related news on TV and in newspapers, and find a disproportionate coverage of immigrant-perpetrated homicides as well as a larger effect of immigration on crime perceptions in municipalities with a stronger media presence. These effects might explain the widening gap between actual crime trends and public perceptions of crime.

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2021. 57p.

By Appleseed for Justice

There are few things a lawyer can do more profound than helping an immigrant avoid deportation. From saving a refugee from persecution to keeping a long-time U.S. resident from exile, the professional and personal rewards are tremendous. Yet there are a great number of challenges in immigration court, a venue unfamiliar to many litigators and other pro bono lawyers. This guide is intended to supplement the basic rules and procedures of immigration court with tips from experienced practitioners on how to deal with some of the peculiarities of these courts, including interpretation, videoconferencing, and a confounding document discovery process. The fifty-seven immigration courts are staffed by approximately 250 judges,2 sitting from New York to Honolulu. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Reform (“EOIR”) governs each of these courts, and each applies the same federal substantive and procedural law, but the practices differ formally and informally— sometimes even from judge to judge. Appleseed gathered information from practitioners in a variety of courts in diverse geographies, and the guidance in this book is the result of their willingness to share their experiences and tips.

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  Of course, the practical application of this guidance will depend greatly on the context in which the practitioner finds herself: the court, the judge, the opposing Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) attorney, and, of course, the client’s circumstances. And a pro bono lawyer taking his first case in immigration court will undoubtedly view these tips with a different perspective than a long-time immigration practitioner. But we hope that any lawyer can find here a framework for decision-making when encountering the peculiarities of litigating in immigration court—the near-absence of formal discovery, the challenges of a hearing interpreted into and from a foreign language, the minimal out-of=court contact between opposing counsel, and the obstacles presented by a videoconference system that keeps counsel miles away from the client. The guide is intended to inform your strategic choices as counsel in immigration court, but by no means to mandate a particular course of action. Above all else, a lawyer in immigration court needs to act in the client’s interest, even if that means deciding not to push aggressively against a videoconference hearing, to stop a sloppy interpretation, or to file a complaint against a misbehaving DHS attorney

Washington, DC: Appleseed Fund for Justice, 2016. 126p.

By Appleseed Fund for Justice

Every year, millions of people arrive at America’s borders fortified by the hope of a better life. Some come to escape persecution or torture; others, to improve their economic situation; still others, to seek education or training. Some of these newcomers enter lawfully; others, illegally; still others enter lawfully but overstay their welcome and remain here in violation of our immigration laws. Whatever brings them here, virtually all are inspired by the American promise of opportunity in a free society and our traditions of fair play and equal justice under the law. But many, particularly those who enter or remain illegally or who are simply unable to document their right to remain, get swept up in Immigration Courts that do not faithfully carry out these ideals. It is well documented that the single best predictor of an immigrant’s success or failure in Immigration Court is the identity of the judge who hears the case. Moreover, countless immigrants are subjected to harassing or denigrating treatment in Immigration Court, cannot understand what they are being asked or told, or have no assistance in navigating the byzantine court process. Far too many immigrants are held in detention for so long, while their cases grind on at a glacial pace, that they ultimately decide to go back home, even if they are entitled to be here. Many immigrants face a courtroom experience that does not uphold America’s commitment to the fair and dispassionate administration of the laws.

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  The sharp increase in the number of cases in Immigration Courts over the past decade, without a corresponding increase in resources, lies at the root of many of these problems. Immigration Judges, their clerks and the DHS Trial Attorneys who represent the government are overwhelmed, yet the stakes to the immigrants involved could not be higher: the outcome of these cases often determines whether a person will lose his livelihood, be torn from his family or even sent back to persecution. As one Immigration Judge, commenting on the crushing burden, said to us, “These are death penalty cases being handled with the resources of traffic court.” In response to this crisis of justice, the national nonprofit organization Appleseed decided in 2008 to investigate the Immigration Court system by gathering the opinions of those who face the challenges of that system on a daily basis. Appleseed sought practical, achievable steps to bring the system closer to our American ideals and prepared this report to highlight its findings and propose workable recommendations. This report takes no position on who should be entitled under the nation’s immigration laws to stay, leave or become a U.S. citizen. Nor does it address every problem facing immigrants or the government that deals with them. (For example, we heard from many of our interviewees about— but do not address—problems in the private immigration bar.) Instead, our recommendations have been narrowly tailored to bring the reality— and the perception—of fair play and equal justice to the Immigration Court system.

Washington, DC: Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, 2009. 44p,

By The Legal Assistance Foundation Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice of Metropolitan Chicago and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice ; Julie Dona, Geoffrey Heeren, Lisa Palumbo, Diana White, Amanda J. Grant, Mollie G. Hertel, Malcolm C. Rich

In 2002, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) moved televisions into one of the Chicago immigration courtrooms and began conducting hearings for detained immigrants in removal proceedings by videoconferencing. In Chicago’s videoconference hearings, the judges are located in the downtown court, and the detainees appear from a small detention facility in a Chicago suburb. EOIR believes that videoconferencing enhances efficiency but has not to date undertaken a study of its efficacy or fairness. Since the consequences of removal from the United States are so severe for immigrants and their families, we believed that these videoconference hearings deserved further examination. During the summer and fall of 2004, we observed 110 videoconference hearings and recorded our findings. The hearings we observed were “Master Calendar” hearings, where the Immigration Judge determines whether the removal proceeding was properly commenced, examines the charges against the immigrant, schedules future hearings, and, in some cases, orders the immigrant’s removal. Findings We found that videoconferencing is a poor substitute for in-person hearings. Among other problems, we observed deficiencies related to access to counsel, presentation of evidence, and interpretation. Latino immigrants appeared to fare especially poorly in videoconference hearings.

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  Compounding these errors, the immigrants whom we observed had little chance to speak or ask questions, were unable to communicate easily with their attorneys (if they were represented), and typically were informed of what had happened only at the conclusion of the hearing. There was little interpretation given for the benefit of non-English speakers. We were impeded from conducting our study by a general lack of transparency in the removal process for detained immigrants. There was no public access to the remote courtroom, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) refused to allow us to interview immigrants who had gone through videoconference hearings. There is virtually no regulation or written policy, moreover, governing videoconferencing in the immigration court

Washington, DC: Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, 2005. 106p.

By Bail for Immigration Detainees (‘BID); Medical Justice ; Public Law Project

Human rights groups the Public Law Project, Bail for Immigration Detainees and Medical Justice Monday released a joint report calling upon the UK government to immediately end GPS electronic monitoring of immigration bailees. GPS monitors currently track approximately 2000 people for 24 hours a day. The tracking devices do not have an expiry date and can only be removed by court decision. The report “focused on the anticipated impact of electronic monitoring on physical or psychological well-being.” The groups found that the use of the tracking devices has serious impacts on the physical and mental health of bailees. According to the report, “clinicians raised concerns about the potential for electronic monitoring to exacerbate mental illness by triggering reminders of their trauma, for example where clients had a history of being restrained, or where they feared return to a situation where they may be at risk of further harm, or had experiences of powerlessness.” There is also serious concern that the trackers are restrictive socially and physically due to charging requirements. Physical impacts include skin conditions and musculoskeletal issues. Although the report calls for the immediate end of GPS electronic monitoring, the groups also provide recommendations for better regulation of the tracking devices if they are to continue. Recommendations include a strict limit on the time a tracking device shall be worn and call for GPS monitoring to be removed as a mandatory term of immigrant bail.

London: Public Law Project, 2022. 49p.

By Stephanie Brewer, Lesly Tejada, and Maureen Meyer

Seeking asylum is never an easy process. Families, children, and adults forced to flee their homes experience the trauma of violence or other life-threatening circumstances at their place of origin, the rupture of leaving their past lives behind, and the uncertainty of where and how to find refuge. But in recent years, this already difficult path has become increasingly fraught with obstacles for the rising population of protection-seeking people arriving at Mexico’s southern border, the majority of whom make their asylum claims in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas.

The new WOLA report, Struggling to Survive: the Situation of Asylum Seekers in Tapachula, Mexico, follows the route of asylum seekers arriving in Tapachula. It draws on a March 2022 visit during which we conducted field documentation and interviews with asylum seekers, government officials, UN agencies, and civil society organizations providing services to migrants. The report highlights abuses, arbitrary treatment, and steep obstacles faced by asylum seekers at each step of their process.

Washington, DC; Washington Office on Latin America, 2022. 39p.