By Abby Córdova, Jonathan Hiskey, Mary Malone and Diana Orcés

U.S. efforts to control unauthorized crossings of its southwest border have long rested on the idea of deterrence — if migrants know that a border is dangerous to cross and the likelihood of deportation is high, they will be dissuaded from trying in the first place. Despite the seemingly intuitive logic of this strategy, and the billions of dollars invested in it, deterrence efforts largely have failed, with the number of border crossings in recent years exceeding those of 30 years ago. To understand why this decades-old, bipartisan deterrence strategy has proven ineffective, we focus on individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who have previous migration experience, with a vast majority of them seeking entry into the U.S. These individuals have direct knowledge of the difficulties and dangers a border crossing poses, yet many report plans to try to cross the border again. To understand why they persist, we rely on survey data specifically collected to better understand the root causes of international migration. We find that citizens with previous migration experience are significantly more likely to report plans to emigrate, in particular women, younger cohorts, and those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In contrast, family reunification does not appear to play a significant role in driving the migration intentions of those with a prior migration experience. Further, deportation does not deter migrants from trying again, as individuals who have been deported are just as likely to report plans to emigrate again as those who returned to their home countries voluntarily and those who never reached their destination. Most importantly, our research indicates that human insecurity is at the core of why Central Americans who have migrated in the past are more likely to report migration plans for the future. Both the threat of violence and food insecurity are central drivers of their persistent predisposition to embark on the journey again. Individuals remain undeterred in their efforts to escape their country because upon returning to that country, they confront the same conditions that led them to attempt to flee in the first place. We draw two main policy implications from our research. First, the U.S. government should continue its prioritization of investments in tackling the root causes of forced migration through the empowerment of civil society organizations and the channeling of foreign aid to marginalized communities affected by human insecurity, such as those suffering food insecurity or fearing violence. The main objective of these investments should be to improve the living conditions of individuals, giving them a viable option of remaining in their country. Second, the U.S. must invest greater resources in its immigration system to reduce the current backlog of asylum cases, and expand H2-a and -b visa programs to provide a more expansive legal path to migration. Facilitating a legal pathway to immigrants who face heightened human insecurity, like the potential repeat migrants in our study, would prevent further deaths that lay at the hands of a border policy focused on deterrence.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 160-181

By Donald Kerwin and Daniel E. Martínez

The International Organization of Migration has characterized the US-Mexico border as the world’s deadliest land migration route. By August 2024, a minimum of 5,405 persons had died or gone missing along this border since 2014, with record high numbers since 2021. Migrant deaths occur despite decades of: US Border Patrol search and rescue initiatives; public education campaigns targeting potential migrants on the dangers of irregular migration; dozens of academic publications and reports highlighting the root causes of these deaths; efforts by consular officials, local communities, and humanitarian agencies to locate, identify, and repatriate human remains; and desperate attempts by families to learn the fate of their missing loved ones. This paper introduces a special edition of the Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS), which draws on original research and the expertise of medical examiners, forensic anthropologists, social scientists, and humanitarian organizations to examine this persistent human tragedy. Many of the authors investigate migrant deaths in their professional capacities. They identify the dead, return remains to family members, and champion reforms to prevent deaths and better account for the dead and missing. This JMHS special edition represents a collaboration between the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMSNY), and the Working Group on Mapping Migrant Deaths along the US Southwest Border. The Working Group includes scholars and practitioners from California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and New York who have met monthly since October of 2021. The special edition examines in granular detail the causes of migrant deaths, US border enforcement strategies and tactics, migrant death statistics, and the resource and capacity challenges faced by US counties along and leading from the US-Mexico border in investigating these deaths. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and many public officials attribute the deaths to the predations of human smugglers, the victims’ ignorance or assumption of risk, and the harsh “natural” conditions to which migrants finally succumb. This special issue also documents the underlying non-natural causes of this enduring tragedy, and offers both overarching and more targeted solutions to preventing and minimizing migrant deaths. The issue builds upon and extends seminal research on migrant deaths first featured in CMSNY publications more than two decades ago.Section I introduces the issue of migrant deaths by posing the question: Why should we care? Section II describes the genesis of “prevention through deterrence”—a border enforcement theory and strategy—and its evolution through subsequent Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Border Patrol strategic plans. It describes the immense enforcement infrastructure built around this idea by successive administrations and Congresses, and it explains why it has failed to stem irregular migration and how it has contributed to migrant deaths. Section III reviews the main causes of migrant deaths—forced migration, the combined effects of prevention through deterrence and border enforcement tactics, the denial of access to asylum, the border wall, the “naturalization” of migrant deaths, and the dominant vision of the border as a site of danger and exclusion. Section IV reviews the legislative standards for identifying, investigating, and reporting on migrant decedents. It also details the deficiencies of Border Patrol and county-level sources of data on deaths, and it outlines ways to strengthen data collection. Section V discusses the burdens placed on communities along and leading from the border in investigating deaths and their need for greater resources and capacity to address this problem. Section VI outlines the anomalies and challenges related to the Border Patrol’s migrant rescue program. Section VII describes international legal standards to guide the investigation of migrant deaths and two model programs. Section VIII sets forth policy recommendations to prevent migrant deaths and to honor and account for the dead.Journal on 

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 12, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 127-159

By Nicole Hallett

The border has never played a larger role in the American psyche than it does today, and yet it has never been less legally significant. Today, a noncitizen’s place of residence tells you less about what rights and privileges they enjoy than it ever has in the past. The border has migrated inward, affecting many aspects of non-citizens’ lives in the United States. The divergence between the physical and legal border is no accident. Instead, it is a policy response to the perceived loss of control over the physical border. But the physical border remains porous despite these legal changes. People keep migrating even as we continue to draw boundaries within communities, homes, and workplaces far away from the border. This paper explores how U.S. law has evolved to render the border superfluous, even as its symbolic importance has grown, and how it might further evolve in the future.

University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2023, Article 6.

By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Borders do not exist. They are made and remade. At every step, the law creates, moves, reforms, reproduces, and reinforces the border. Focusing on the boundary that México and the United States share, this essay critiques the U.S. Supreme Court’s privileging of the sovereign prerogative to control access to the nation’s territory. In their efforts to control movement across and near the border, legal doctrine permits Executive officials to deviate from ordinary legal constraints on the use of violence. This creates a modern version of the sovereign that Carl Schmitt described a century ago: extra-constitutional in origin and subject to law only on its own terms. Urging an end to the law of border exceptionalism, the essay argues that the Schmittian sovereignty that exists in the borderlands is neither justified by the facts on the ground nor required by the very legal principles that the Supreme Court points to.

Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 820

University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2023, Article 5

By Matthew Lisiecki and Gerard Apruzzese

In 2017, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) analyzed the effects of a mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants proposed by then-President Donald Trump (Warren & Kerwin 2017). With now-candidate Trump reintroducing a similar proposal as a key element of his platform, CMS has conducted a new analysis using the most recent available data: the 2022 American Community Survey microdata, released by the US Census Bureau (Ruggles et al. 2024). In this report, we highlight the devastation of mass deportation on both undocumented residents and their US citizen and legal noncitizen families and communities. We discuss individual, household, and family characteristics of the 10.9 million undocumented residents living in the US, and 4.7 million households with both undocumented residents and residents with permanent legal status (referred to henceforth as “mixed status” households). We investigate the economic effect of the deportation on US citizens and undocumented residents, as well as the negative fiscal impact on the broader economy should mass deportation be carried out.

Key findings of the updated analysis include:

• 5.8 million US households are home to at least one undocumented resident. Of those, 4.7 million households are home to undocumented residents and US citizens or others with legal status. Therefore, mass deportation threatens to break up nearly 5 million American families.

• Over half of the US undocumented population is woven into American life, having been in the country for at least 10 years; their deportation would damage long-standing communities.

• Mass deportation would push nearly 10 million US citizens into economic hardship. Median household income for mixed-status households would drop from $75,500 to $39,000 (a drop of over 48 percent).

• 5.5 million US-born children live in households with at least one undocumented resident, including 1.8 million living in households with two undocumented parents.

• The monetary cost of paying to complete the upbringing of these US-born children in the event of mass deportation is estimated to be at least $116.5 billion.

• Undocumented workers contribute an estimated $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes; their removal from the workforce would have a substantial impact on local economies.

This report is one of several CMS publications outlining the negative impacts of a mass deportation policy for undocumented immigrants. In 2017, we analyzed the social and economic impacts of mass deportation using Census Bureau data from 2014 (Warren & Kerwin 2017). Earlier in 2024, we explored other immediate and downstream impacts of the Trump campaign’s proposed mass deportation policy, including the moral, legal, and public safety crisis caused by implementing a mass search-and-seizure operation across the nation.

New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2024. 7p.

By Carl Davis, Marco Guzman, & Emma Sifre

Key Findings

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments. Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022. At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion). Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion). In a large majority of states (40), undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders. Income tax payments by undocumented immigrants are affected by laws that require them to pay more than otherwise similarly situated U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants are often barred from receiving meaningful tax credits and sometimes do not claim refunds they are owed due to lack of awareness, concern about their immigration status, or insufficient access to tax preparation assistance. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase. Under a scenario where work authorization is provided to all current undocumented immigrants, their tax contributions would rise by $40.2 billion per year to $136.9 billion. Most of the new revenue raised in this scenario ($33.1 billion) would flow to the federal government while the remainder ($7.1 billion) would flow to states and localities.

Washington, DC:  Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2024. 42p.

By Julia Litzkow 

This study examines factors of resilience and vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking of people who fled Ukraine to Berlin, Bern and Warsaw after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Conducted in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) it is based on desk research, quantitative data from 1,602 surveys collected with displaced Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians in 2023 and qualitative data from 57 key informant interviews (KII) conducted between 2023 and 2024. It also includes 8 illustrative case studies. In the research conducted across three cities, instances of potential forced labour and labour trafficking were reported at relatively low levels by survey respondents.1 Specifically, 6% of respondents (104/1,602) noted experiencing some form of workplace abuse, while 2% of respondents (35 out of 1,602) either experienced or observed others who fled Ukraine facing workplace conditions that could suggest potential trafficking for forced labour. The majority of these accounts were based on observations rather than personal experience. Common issues reported included unpaid or underpaid wages, misleading information about the nature of the job, excessively long working hours, unsafe working environments, and deception about their employer’s identity. While key informants corroborated the low occurrence of potential forced labour and trafficking, they also emphasized widespread violations of labour laws. A smaller proportion of survey respondents (2.5%) reported witnessing or learning about displaced Ukrainians engaged in prostitution or sex work. Of these, seven individuals believed the prostitution was forced, reflecting a 0.4% prevalence of forced prostitution, potentially signalling trafficking for sexual exploitation. None of the 1,602 respondents indicated experiencing sexual exploitation in prostitution themselves. The relatively low incidence of potential forced labour, labour trafficking and sexual exploitation reported by survey respondents and key informants among people who fled the war in Ukraine may be attributed to the visa-free travel, temporary protection status, and robust anti-trafficking measures implemented in destination countries. However, it may also be due to cases that have yet to be identified. It is important to recognize that despite the presence of temporary protection, visa-free travel and the anti-trafficking response implemented, there are specific situations where personal, situational, and contextual factors intersect to create potential increased risk of exploitation and trafficking for individuals fleeing Ukraine. The following is a summary of key findings on factors of resilience and vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking in the cities examined under this study, which aim to contribute to a better understanding of the experiences of people who fled the war in Ukraine and offer insights for designing interventions by United Nations (UN) organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and national authorities. Factors of vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking • Financial pressure: Economic hardships and the need to support oneself and family members can increase the urgency for people displaced from Ukraine to find work quickly and can lead them to accept precarious working conditions. When asked whether their financial situation meets their household needs, 44% of respondents in Berlin, 44% of respondents in Bern and 43% of respondents in Warsaw said they were only partially covered. • Limited access to decent work: Barriers like language skills, non-recognition of qualifications, and financial hardships can push refugees into low-skilled, often exploitative jobs. Lack of skills in the local language was mentioned as the top barrier to accessing a decent job, cited by 86% of respondents in Berlin, 80% of respondents in Bern and 67% of respondents in Warsaw. • Difficulties accessing information about the law and their rights: Lack of knowledge about local labour laws and rights, exacerbated by lack of knowledge of the local language can increase vulnerability and make it difficult for people who fled the war in Ukraine to protect themselves from exploitative situations. • Insecure housing: Dependence on employer-provided accommodation, dependence on and limited monitoring of private accommodation providers and in collective centres can increase exploitation risks. • Challenges accessing temporary protection status: Bureaucratic hurdles and legal status challenges particularly affect non-Ukrainian Third Country Nationals (TCNs) and Ukrainian citizens of Roma ethnicity, making them potentially more vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking in informal work arrangements. • Decreasing solidarity: Growing negative perceptions of Ukrainians within host communities can lead to increased risks of exploitation as refugees feel less supported and more isolated. Factors of resilience to exploitation and trafficking • Visa-free travel and temporary protection status2: Rapid access to legal status, combined with access to social security, significantly protects against exploitation and trafficking. The EU’s visa-free travel approach for Ukrainian citizens and temporary protection status enable refugees to travel legally and rapidly access work and social benefits, reducing their dependence on potentially exploitative coping mechanisms. • Social support networks: Social networks within the Ukrainian community can serve as a crucial factor of resilience. These networks provide familiarity and support, helping refugees navigate employment and housing options. • Political will and solidarity: Initial strong political commitment and societal support for Ukrainian refugees enhanced their resilience. Quick legislative and administrative responses and comprehensive support systems have positively impacted the integration and protection of refugees who fled the war in Ukraine. However, political will and the level of support can vary based on the perceived nationality or ethnicity of people who fled the war in Ukraine. • Anti-trafficking responses: Large-scale anti-trafficking measures, particularly efforts to raise awareness, were adopted by national and local authorities, as well as civil society organizations, likely building resilience against exploitation. 

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre,  2024. 46p.

By Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto

For the just-ended 2024 fiscal year, the Biden administration turned the tide at the U.S.-Mexico border after two years of record levels of irregular crossings, by deepening its carrot-and-stick approach alongside increased immigration enforcement throughout the Western Hemisphere, especially from Mexico. For the full fiscal year that ended September 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 2.1 million encounters at and between ports of entry along the Southwest border—a 14 percent decrease from the nearly 2.5 million encounters recorded in FY 2023. The month of September represented the lowest monthly encounters of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization seen during this administration—with 54,000 encounters a steep drop from the all-time monthly high of 250,000 encounters recorded in December 2023. The September tally also represents the lowest level of irregular arrivals since September 2020, at the tail end of the Trump administration. An additional 199,000 encounters were recorded at the U.S.-Canada border during FY 2024, for a total at all borders of 2.3 million. The Biden playbook rests on narrowing asylum eligibility for migrants who cross the border illegally, expanding the use of lawful migration pathways, and encouraging Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and other regional partners to increase their migration controls and enforcement. Unauthorized crossings of the U.S. Southern border began to fall steadily in January as Mexico further stepped up its enforcement. Irregular crossings dropped even more sharply following the administration’s June implementation of the Secure the Border rule. This rule suspends asylum eligibility at the border when crossings reach a seven-day average of 2,500; the bar remains in place until encounters drop below 1,500 for 28 consecutive days. At the same time, options for lawful migration pathways—such as the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole program; use of the CBP One app to schedule an appointment to be screened for entry at a port; and Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) that allow migrants to be considered for protection or other pathways far earlier in their journeys—have led to more migrants arriving at ports of entry to be paroled into the country and as refugees.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2024.

Edited by Lara Momesso, Polina Ivanova

This edited volume fills a gap in current research on asylum seekers and refugees. By focusing on two East Asian countries, Japan and Taiwan, this volume offers material for comparison and reflection on an area of the world in which this theme is still relatively underdeveloped. By approaching the theme through the different perspectives of human rights, social construction through media representation and public opinion, and lived experiences, the book offers a multifaceted and sophisticated analysis of the phenomenon. The main aim of this collection is to expand current scholarship on refugee studies and offer policy recommendations on the timely topic of refugees and asylum seekers in East Asia.

Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 

Edited by: Stephan Conermann , Youval Rotman , Ehud R. Toledano and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz

 Over the last two decades, social scientists, legal scholars, human rights activists, and historians, have sought common conceptual grounds in the study of enslavement, thus forging a new perspective that comprises historical and contemporary forms of slavery. This has also intensified awareness of enslavement as a global phenomenon. In this volume, the authors give tentative answers to the question on what global enslavement means.

Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023. 223p.

By Felix Lösing

The British and American Congo Reform Movement (ca. 1890-1913) has been praised extensively for its ›heroic‹ confrontation of colonial atrocities in the Congo Free State. Its commitment to white supremacy and colonial domination, however, continues to be overlooked, denied, or trivialized. This historical-sociological study argues that racism was the ideological cornerstone and formed the main agenda of this first major human rights campaign of the 20th century. Through a thorough analysis of contemporary sources, Felix Lösing unmasks the colonial and racist formation of the modern human rights discourse and investigates the historical work of racism at a crossroads between imperial power and the white crisis.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2020. 396p.

By Catherine Wihtol de Wenden

This open-access short reader investigates how migration has become an increasingly important issue in international relations since the turn of the 21st century. It investigates specific aspects of this migration diplomacy such as double citizenship or bilateral agreements on border controls which can become important tools for bargain or pressure. This short reader also discusses the intersections between migration and international relations concerning issues of global governance such as conflicts and refugees, development and mobility, or environmental migration. The book thereby shows the extent of bargaining involved in migration and international relations, the so-called “soft diplomacy of migrations” as seen in the EU/Turkish agreement on borders in 2016, or the EU negotiations with Maghreb or Sub-Saharan countries on readmissions against development programs and visas. As such this reader provides a must-read to students, academics, researchers policy makers, and everyone who wants to learn more about the international relations aspects of migration governance.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. 98p.

By Jose Miguel Pinto dos Santos

Homicide : forced and violent opening of a vacancy that cannot be filled—we are all irreplaceable, even Mr. Costa; the act of a man killing another man; includes suicide, regicide, presidentialicide, politicide, parricide, ministicide, matricide, infanticide (which includes feticide or induced abortion), fratricide and euthanasia; in the past, in white heteropatriarchal societies where gender discrimination was practiced, the act of a man killing another woman was distinguished from feminicide; although fratricide is generally considered a category within homicide, there are those who defend the opposite opinion, such as Father Mário Centavo, in his Opera Omnia , vol. 49, p. 444, “all homicide is fratricide”; Like everything that is irreversible, homicide is a sunk cost and all the bureaucracy that follows it, established in the Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes, is for the exclusive benefit, income and employment of the legal professions; homicide was formerly considered a crime and severely punished in white heteropatriarchal societies, but it has gradually, and in phases (the famous ramp ), been liberalized and deregulated in our country within the scope of the profound structural reforms underway carried out by the government party in an effort to make our society more just, advanced, compassionate and humane under the progressive & galvanizing motto “liberalize crime, criminalize weapons”; a recent leak of information, which went unnoticed in the national press, revealed that a reform of the Penal Code is being planned in which, within the scope of the ongoing deregulation, a new classification of homicide into three categories is proposed: criminal, justifiable and commendable; Generally well-informed sources added that it is expected that, in the near future, homicide will only be punishable when committed against members of the PSD, and that anything committed by them will always be commendable. A proposal to transfer homicide from the scope of criminal law to civil law has been shelved for now.

Observador - Jun 10, 2022

By Chris Jones , Romain Lanneau , Yasha Maccanico u.a.

For at least three decades, the EU and its Member States have engaged in a process of “externalization” – a policy agenda by which the EU seeks to prevent migrants and refugees from setting foot on EU territory by externalizing (that is, outsourcing) border controls to non-EU states. The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, published in September 2020, proposed a raft of measures seeking to step up operational cooperation and collaboration to further this agenda. This report aims to contribute to public and political debate on the transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of the externalization agenda. It contains a series of case studies on three key target states for the EU – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, and Niger – based on information received in response to access to documents and freedom of information requests submitted to institutions within those countries, as well as within the EU itself.

Brüssel:  Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union, December 2022. 48p.

By Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington,

In recent years, local and state governments in Washington have taken important legislative and executive action to protect vulnerable residents from rights abuses. Many of these actions, such as the so-called “sanctuary” laws of Keep Washington Working (2019) and Courts Open to All (2020) Acts, seek to protect the rights of migrants by limiting the degree to which local authorities can collaborate with civil immigration enforcement by ICE or CBP. More recently, the language of “sanctuary” has also been used in the context of the right to reproductive health care at both the state and local levels. On June 30, 2022, Governor Jay Inslee issued a directive prohibiting the Washington State Patrol from “providing any cooperation or assistance whatsoever” with efforts to investigate or prosecute those seeking access to reproductive health care in our state. And some local jurisdictions have followed suit. On July 5, 2022, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an order banning the King County Sheriff and other county agencies from providing any information or assistance with efforts to “obstruct, restrict, diminish or discourage” access to reproductive health care. On July 26, 2022, the Seattle City Council voted to bar local police from assisting in investigations or executing warrants issued by other jurisdictions that criminalize seeking or assisting in abortions. These strongly worded directives are important statements of Washington state values. Yet research conducted in Washington and elsewhere shows that data gathered by state and local law enforcement remains accessible to both law enforcement from other states, and federal immigration enforcement agencies, through interoperable databases. ICE documents show that federal immigration agents have deliberately increased their use of digital tools in recent years in direct response to the limitations created by local policies designed to limit collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. Although it remains to be seen whether out-of-state attempts to prosecute people for seeking or providing, access to abortions in Washington will pass legal muster, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) data documenting presence at abortion clinics in our state could be deployed as a powerful tool to flaunt Washington policies. For Washington to live up to its promises to provide “sanctuary” for those exercising their lawful rights in Washington, our state and local governments must take steps to close the gaps in existing systems of digital surveillance. Towards this end, the UW Center for Human Rights has launched an effort to understand the practices of digital surveillance in our state and their potential to undermine access to the very rights protections our government has pledged to uphold. This report focuses on just one dimension of this multidimensional threat: the dangers posed by the misuse of automated license plate recognition technology by law enforcement agencies. Future reports will examine other digital tools.

Seattle: University of Washington,  CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS,  HENRY M. JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 2022. 23p.

By Mitch Morrissey  and DJ Summers

Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, has made local and national headlines recently for criminal activity in apartment buildings allegedly related to members of a Venezuelan gang. City officials, media commentators, and the public have debated at length the reputed presence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the extent of the gang’s criminal activity across the Metro Denver area. Although crime in Aurora and Denver is still above its pre-pandemic baseline, neither has experienced city-wide elevated crime levels in the last 12 months. However, several areas throughout the cities with documented elevated migrant populations have seen dramatic upticks in crime in 2023 and 2024. Importantly, these trends are not uniform across all centers of migrant populations. The isolated crime that is being committed in the areas in question at apartments on Dallas Street, Nome Street, and 13th Avenue is borne by the surrounding areas, most of which are neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status. There are economic costs associated with this rise in crime.

Key Findings:

Aurora’s violent crime is not rising as a whole. Violent crime in both Aurora and Denver has decreased since a 2022 peak, though in 2023 annual crime remained elevated from crime in 2019.

Identifying crime trends is difficult among noncitizens, as reporting is lower. Cities are estimated to have a 6% decrease in violent crime reporting and 1% decrease in property crime reporting for every 1% increase in noncitizen residents. The recent migrant surge has resulted in a 12% increase in the number of noncitizens in the Denver metro area.

Publicly available geolocated crime maps do not show a consistent trend of rising crime in the Denver or Aurora locations known to house high numbers of migrants. However, they do show a localized spike in police-reported crime at three Aurora complexes.

The apartments at 1218 Dallas Street in Aurora have seen crimes and citations more than double since 2022, from 31 to 80.

The apartments at 1568 Nome Street in Aurora have seen crimes and citations more than double since 2022, from 33 to 76.

The apartments at 15483 E 13th Avenue Aurora have seen crimes and citations nearly double since 2022, from 29 to 44.

Elevated crime has higher costs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The major crimes in 2024 at just the Dallas Street apartments alone have led to $700,000 in tangible and intangible costs. These do not include crimes not reported to police.

Greenwood Village, CO:Common Sense Institute, 2024. 10p.

By Trey Walk, and Maria Burnett,

  Since 2021, political leaders in the US state of Florida have reshaped K-12 schools through laws and policies that censor, distort, and discriminate. Such efforts include passing laws restricting classroom instruction about race in US history, sexual orientation and gender identity, banning books available to students, and setting inaccurate and misleading civics and history standards. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” documents the impacts on students of Florida’s denial of access to accurate information about Black history, systemic racism, and about their health, when related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Florida leads the United States in the number of books banned from classrooms and school libraries, primarily literature written by or about LGBTQ people and people of color. Students and teachers report that new legal and curriculum changes have created an environment more conducive to harassment and discrimination in the classroom on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Parents and teachers describe the difficulty of providing children with an education free from discrimination in the increasingly hostile environment. Human Rights Watch, Florida Rising, and Stanford Law School Rule of Law Impact Lab call on Florida to rescind its discriminatory policies and promote a curriculum that counters discrimination and prepares students to live healthy lives in a diverse society. They also call for a bold federal response to address this civil and human rights crisis in US public schools.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 107p.

By Andreas Harsono  

  A violent attack by security forces and an ultranationalist mob on a West Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya, East Java, on August 17, 2019, prompted street protests in at least 33 cities across Indonesia. Bolstering the protests was a social media campaign called #PapuanLivesMatter, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States seeking racial justice. The Indonesian authorities arrested hundreds for joining the anti-racism protests, and 109 people were convicted for “treason.” “If It’s Not Racism, What Is It?” finds that the protests renewed discussions on racial discrimination in Indonesia against Indigenous Papuans because of their ethnic origin, and sparked fresh demands for sovereignty for West Papua. It profiles cases of Papuan activists prosecuted after the Papuan Lives Matter protests and describes ongoing human rights violations rooted in racial discrimination, in particular, the right to education and the highest attainable standard of health. It also documents recent abuses by security forces and Papuan militants during the ongoing armed conflict in West Papua. Over the past six decades, Indonesian authorities, in countering the pro-independence movement and insurgency in West Papua, have often promoted divisiveness by describing Papuans as unruly and violent. The report calls on the Indonesian government to review regulations and practices that marginalize the community, to allow foreign journalists and international rights monitors to visit the territory, and to conduct public education to end racism against people of Papuan ethnic origin.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 86p.

By Jane Buchanan, Giorgi Gogia, and Arzu Geybulla.  

The 74-page report, “‘We Try to Stay Invisible’: Azerbaijan's Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society,” documents the government’s concerted efforts to decimate civil society and silence its critics. The authorities have arrested dozens of people on politically motivated, bogus criminal charges. They have also arbitrarily enforced repressive laws that push independent groups and media to the margins of the law, heightening their vulnerability to retaliatory criminal prosecution. The groups documented 33 prominent cases of criminal prosecution, detention, and harassment. They found that Azerbaijani authorities have deliberately misused laws regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to deny certain groups registration and funding, exposing people affiliated with them to criminal charges. Azerbaijani authorities continue their assault on critics and dissenting voices. They use politically motivated criminal charges to prosecute and imprison human rights defenders, journalists, and civic and political activists, and arbitrarily enforce highly restrictive laws regulating non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The crackdown has intensified in the lead-up to the November 2024 UN Climate Conference (COP29) in Baku. Among those being prosecuted are veteran human rights defender Anar Mammadli, who co-founded a climate justice NGO, prominent anti-corruption activist and academic Gubad Ibadoghlu, and media professionals with the independent outlets Abzas Media and Toplum TV. Many independent groups have had to close, and activists have had to go into exile or continue their legitimate work on the margins of the law, at great personal risk. “We Try to Stay Invisible” is based on over 40 interviews with NGO leaders, lawyers, journalists, youth activists, and others, as well as in-depth analysis of laws and regulations used to target or constrain NGOs. The report documents the government’s concerted efforts to silence critical voices in the country. Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now call on the Azerbaijani government to immediately and unconditionally release those held on politically motivated charges, end the crackdown against civil society and independent media, and ensure that civil society groups and independent media can operate without undue hindrance before, during and after COP29. They should also amend repressive laws regulating NGOs. It calls on Azerbaijan’s international partners to set clear expectations for human rights improvements and impose concrete policy consequences should those requirements not be met.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 80p.

By Heather Rolfe, Sunder Katwala and Steve Ballinger

The Ipsos MORI immigration attitudes tracker offers one of the most authoritative and rigorous sources on what the public thinks about immigration, conducted in 12 waves to date across the last seven years. This latest wave of the tracker was a nationally representative survey of 4,000 adults across Great Britain aged 18+, conducted online between 18 June and 10 July 2021. It examines public attitudes across a range of issues, with some questions having been asked in each wave of research since 2015 to enable comparison. Immigration attitudes have softened significantly over the last seven years, with public sentiment becoming more positive after the 2016 EU referendum and sustaining at that level ever since. The public is now more likely to see the contribution of immigration as positive (46%) than negative (28%) overall, in a reversal of the pattern when this tracker series began in 2015. There is an opportunity for more light and less heat in the immigration debate, though different political challenges remain for both sides of the political spectrum. Anyone seeking to affect change will need to engage with the politics and attitudes of immigration as they are now in 2021, in this new context, and this tracker report offers useful insight. A changing debate The latest Ipsos MORI Issues Index, which measures the issues of greatest concern to the UK public, found that immigration had slid to eighth position as of August 2021. Only 12% of people now regard it as a key issue of concern, but salience has been falling steadily over the last four years. Around four in ten people (42%), however, still feel that we don’t talk about immigration enough. A quarter (25%) feel that it’s discussed the right amount, and 17% say we talk about it too much. Since the immigration attitudes tracker began in 2015, it has asked respondents to give a 0-10 score to indicate whether they feel immigration has had a positive or negative impact on Britain. The scores in this latest wave continue a trend of positive sentiment, with 47% giving a positive score of 6-10, compared to the 28% who give a negative score of 0-4. The survey taken at the time of the May 2015 general election, by comparison, found only 35% were positive and 42% were negative. Respondents to each wave of the survey have also been asked if they would prefer immigration to the UK to be increased, decreased or to remain the same. Reflecting these gradually warming attitudes, this latest survey found the lowest ever support for reducing immigration and the highest ever support for immigration to be increased. While 45% would still prefer reductions in immigration, some 29% would prefer it to stay at the current levels and 17% would like it to increase  Public satisfaction with the current Government’s performance on immigration remains very low, with only 1 in 8 (12%) saying they are satisfied with how the Government is dealing with immigration – the same proportion as in November 2020 (and a similar level of satisfaction to that of the two previous governments). More than half the public (55%) say they are dissatisfied. The immigration debate over the last few parliaments was focused on numbers, with repeated failures to meet the government’s net migration target. With that target now dropped there is an opportunity to move the debate on. Our survey asked whether people would prefer an immigration system that prioritises control, regardless of whether numbers go up or down; or whether they would prefer an approach that focuses on reducing immigration numbers. It found that people were almost twice as likely to prioritise control (44%) over reducing numbers (24%). Survey respondents were also asked about the EU Settled Status scheme, which was put in place allow European citizens, who arrived before December 31st 2020, to continue to live and work in the UK post-Brexit. The deadline for applications for Settled Status lapsed at the end of July this year. Almost half (48%) of respondents say that eligible EU citizens should be allowed to make a late application, while just under a third (32%) would not support late applications being accepted.  

Lonson: British Future, 2021. 47p.