By Werner L. HeiderJanuary 16, 2026

In early 2026, Venezuela remains a hybrid threat to the Western Hemisphere. The recent US capture of its strongman Nicolás Maduro Moros has not changed that basic reality. Authoritarian rule, criminal markets, migration pressures, and external influences undermine maritime security, finances, and regional stability. International reports document systematic repression, selective prosecution, and a largely hollowed-out separation of powers.[1] Electoral processes remain controversial, the opposition and media are under intense pressure, and constitutional guarantees are limited.[2] At the same time, Venezuela serves as a transit corridor for transnational organized crime. Reports and situation assessments show a shift in routes along the Mid-Atlantic corridor towards Europe, where semi-submersible platforms and other low-signature vessels bypass traditional bottlenecks.[3] Despite the guidelines issued by the International Court of Justice, the territorial dispute with Guyana over Essequibo continues to pose the risk of escalation in a region of growing energy policy importance.[4] The regime’s security services, political machinery, and protection rackets remain intact, and interim arrangements in Caracas have not resolved the underlying crisis. This creates a phase of ambiguity. Washington has removed the president but not the system that sustained him.

For the United States, this creates a situation in which internal security, energy supplies, supply chains, and the defense of a rules-based order in the Inter-American region are simultaneously under pressure. An effective response requires an evidence-based approach that integrates maritime operations, port integrity, financial pressure, human rights-compliant sanctions, and de-escalation mechanisms in the Essequibo region from the outset. Hybrid threats of this kind can only be contained if legal resilience and public communication are part of the planning from the outset. The first 72 hours after major events are crucial. Recent unilateral steps and hard-edged “oil or else” rhetoric make this even more important, because pressure without a visible evidentiary backbone risks eroding trust at home and among partners.

The recent presidential elections were overshadowed by arrests of opposition members, disqualifications, restrictions on civil society, and a lack of transparency in the counting and publication of votes. The Carter Center criticizes the process and questions the integrity of the announced results.[5] Amnesty International documented that the elections were followed by numerous arrests, recorded killings of protesters, and broad prosecutions marked by due process violations, obstruction of the defense, and digital repression.[6] Persistent shortages of basic goods and underfunded humanitarian programs are driving migration and straining host countries.[7]

In the overall assessment of political rights and civil liberties, Venezuela is classified as “not free.” Freedom House’s 2025 rating is 13 out of 100 points.[8] The rationale refers to systematic oppression, abuse of institutions, and a lack of transparency in government actions.[9] Security agencies, intelligence services, and pro-government groups take coordinated action against political opponents. The tactics include arbitrary arrests, harsh charges, solitary confinement, procedural obstacles for defense attorneys, and targeted stigmatization in the media. After the elections, protests were met with considerable violence. Reports document killings, torture, and abuse in detention.[10] Digital tools are used to suppress criticism, with apps and social media platforms being used as whistleblowing and surveillance tools. Taken together, these patterns explain why Venezuela is classified as “not free” and show how little the separation between government and judiciary matters in everyday life.[11]

In foreign and security policy, the government seeks support from Russia, Iran, Cuba, and China. This includes political support, technical cooperation, and elements of security assistance.[12] The US Intelligence Community’s annual threat assessment places these interdependencies in the context of broader regional developments and describes a situation in which authoritarian regimes collaborate with transnational networks and disinformation tools, thereby hindering sustainable cooperation with Western partners.[13] The dispute over Essequibo remains a source of ongoing conflict. In 2023, the International Court of Justice issued orders to stabilize the situation, calling on both states to refrain from exacerbating the situation and to avoid actions that could undermine the legal position of the other party. These orders create legal cover against escalation to open violence, even if the political environment remains unstable.

By: Ilke Adam, Jean Beaman, Mariska Jung
This open access book provides a way to understand the current manifestations of anti-racism in Europe, including changes that became particularly visible with the Black Lives Matter related protests beginning in May 2020. The so-called ‘new' anti-racism is often described as being led by racialized minorities themselves, foregrounding structural racism, and drawing connections between contemporary racism and the colonial past. But are these features truly new? And can we speak of a new 'wave' of anti-racism, and what does wave-thinking clarify or obscure? The chapters in this volume explore anti-racist struggles and practices across a range of European contexts, tracing both change and continuity over time. They illuminate how several features of antiracism, now considered distinctive -  including the leadership by racialized minorities, have deep roots, though they were pushed to the margins, unrecorded or silenced by the mainstream. Today, these voices are beginning to rise, echoing -sometimes modestly - in the centre.  By providing a solid empirical portrait of current and past anti-racist movements in different parts of Europe, this book is a vital resource for students and scholars of race, anti-racism and migration in Europe, as well as for activists and policy-makers navigating the evolving terrain of anti-racist thought and action.

By: Su Wai Mon

SYNOPSIS

This commentary examines how emerging threats across physical, cyber, undersea, and space domains are creating unprecedented risks to critical maritime infrastructure. It argues that proactive and coordinated action by industry, regulators, and governments, supported by coherent legal and regulatory frameworks, is essential to strengthening resilience. While the analysis global relevance, the piece highlights Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific as a strategic case study, demonstrating the urgent need for integrated, multi-domain, and regional cooperation to tackle evolving maritime security challenges.

COMMENTARY

Good maritime security governance requires an integrated multi-domain approach, given that emerging threats increasingly target critical infrastructure across interconnected terrestrial, digital, maritime and even space domains.

Historically, maritime security threats, whether traditional or non-traditional, were largely confined to the physical maritime domain. Today, however, the maritime threat landscape is rapidly evolving alongside advances in technology, digitalisation, and the automation of maritime infrastructure.

Ships, ports, and offshore infrastructure, such as oil and gas installations and offshore wind farms, form part of increasingly interconnected systems and are all regarded as critical maritime infrastructure. In addition, the communication systems that provide connectivity between them have become essential and therefore warrant stronger protection as critical infrastructure.

For example, space infrastructure, particularly satellites, plays a critical role in maritime operations such as navigation, communication, and surveillance, and its importance will only grow as the shipping industry becomes more reliant on higher-bandwidth connectivity to support advanced technologies, including autonomous ships, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchains, and big-data analytics.

In addition, protecting critical underwater infrastructure (CUI), subsea cables, and pipelines is increasingly crucial given their dual physical and digital vulnerabilities and their central role in global connectivity and energy security. As a result, maritime security challenges have increasingly extended beyond the physical maritime domain into the cyber and digital realms.

By Ysa Marie Cayabyab

AI-generated sexual content and platform-driven amplification are intensifying online exploitation, disproportionately harming women and children across Southeast Asia. Existing moderation approaches remain largely reactive, leaving systemic risks unresolved. Stronger governance frameworks, platform accountability, and safety-by-design measures can help prevent harm. Through regional cooperation, ASEAN is well-positioned to strengthen coordinated safeguards, protect vulnerable users, and establish shared standards for the responsible and ethical use of AI across the region.

By Jordan Grasso, Nathan Cisneros, & Ilan H. Meyer

This study uses publicly available administrative data reported by California law enforcement agencies to the California Department of Justice to examine trends in reported hate crimes in the state, with a particular focus on gender identity hate crimes. 

By Costica Dumbrava

 Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly used in the areas of migration and asylum. These technologies promise to increase efficiency, reduce uncertainty and improve decision-making. In the asylum context, AI applications are meant to reduce pressure on national asylum systems and contribute to fairer and more consistent asylum decisions. Despite potential benefits, these technologies come with significant risks. Inaccurate or biased AI applications may jeopardise the right to asylum, increase or reinforce discrimination, and diminish procedural safeguards built into the asylum process. These risks depend on the type and complexity of applications used, their role in asylum procedures, and the way in which decision-makers interact with technologies. Although the deployment of AI applications in EU asylum systems is still in the early stages, the debate about the legal, social and ethical challenges posed by these new technologies is well under way. For instance, several Member States have started using AI technologies for dialect recognition to verify information, or obtain further information, on asylum applicants' country or region of origin. There are also examples of Member States using AI applications for name transliteration, automatic transcription of speeches and case matching. The introduction of AI technologies in EU asylum systems raises several major risks, relating to: (i) inaccuracies, bias and discrimination; (ii) undermining fairness and due process; and (iii) unlawful interference with privacy and data protection.

Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service , 2025. 12p.

By  Cachia, R., Villar Onrubia, D., Barreda Angeles,et al.

The European Commission is strongly committed to creating a safer digital environment for all citizens, specifically minors and youth. In the European Union Member States and Norway, 26 out of 28 countries have legislation addressing bullying and cyberbullying, with 13 providing specific definitions. While cyberbullying continues to increase, there is no consensus yet on a singular definition. An agreed definition would enable better measurement and monitoring cyberbullying and the effectiveness of related interventions. The widespread adoption of new technologies, like generative artificial intelligence introduce new factors that should be considered when defining cyberbullying.

HIGHLIGHTS ➔ The European Commission is committed to creating a safer digital environment for all citizens, especially minors and youth. ➔ While the prevalence of cyberbullying continues to grow, there is no consensus yet on a standardised definition. ➔ An agreed definition would i) support and inform policy making for a more effective response to cyberbullying by facilitating coordination and a globally cohesive approach, and ii) enable more accurate data collection and analysis, helping researchers and policymakers to track trends, assess the effectiveness of interventions, and make informed decisions. ➔ Almost all European Union Member States have legislation addressing bullying or cyberbullying, with 13 providing specific definitions. ➔ The rapid evolution and uptake of digital technologies (e.g., generative AI) is giving rise to new kinds of behaviours that pose challenges for defining, identifying and addressing cyberbullying. Doing so effectively requires consulting with a broad range of stakeholders, including minors, young people and vulnerable groups. 

By Rebecca Ward

This systematic review explores everyday sadism, a subclinical form of cruelty expressed through socially acceptable behaviours such as trolling, workplace bullying, and schadenfreude. Distinct from criminal and consensual sexual sadism, it is examined within the Dark Tetrad framework, complementing narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Synthesising over 85 studies using PRISMA guidelines, the review evaluates evolutionary, cognitive-behavioural, and reinforcement models, psychometric measures, and experimental paradigms. Findings highlight its prevalence across relationships, workplaces, and online spaces, and outline ethical challenges, interventions, and directions for cross-cultural and longitudinal research.

By The World Health Organization (WHO), Social Determinants of Health (SDH)

This technical report describes the prevalence, risk factors for, and consequences of child corporal punishment, which it defines as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light”. Globally, an estimated 1.2 billion children aged 0-18 years are subjected to corporal punishment at home each year, and between a quarter and half of children experience corporal punishment in schools. The consequences of child corporal punishment can last a lifetime and undermine physical and mental health, education, and social and occupational functioning. The report describes underlying risk factors at the individual, family, community and societal levels. It concludes that there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that child corporal punishment carries multiple risks of harm and has no benefits for children, parents, or societies. Efforts to enact and enforce laws banning corporal punishment are necessary but not sufficient, and should be complemented by efforts to support parents and teachers in the use of positive, non-violent approaches to discipline.

By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

The border that the United States shares with México is extraordinary and illusive. It meanders through political conversations and moves from place to place, leaving courts to wonder where it is and what it means to the lives of the ordinary people who occupy this extraordinary space. Courts imagine the border as a site of exceptional danger to which they have responded by creating a law of border exceptionalism. This essay describes the normative and empirical justifications and legal doctrine of border exceptionalism before challenging its foundations. Unmoored from its justifications, there is nothing to stop the law of border exceptionalism to spread far from the borderlands.

By Ivan Flores Martinez

Illegal fuel pipeline tapping in Mexico poses significant security and environmental challenges with substantial public health implications. Using data from the Mexican Life and Family Survey, this study identifies both the immediate and long-term regional impacts of hydrocarbon theft on respiratory health. Our findings show that municipalities with tapping incidents have a 7.8% increase in allergy prevalence, especially within 1,500 meters of pipelines, predominantly affecting men. Asthma shows a complex pattern, with minors under 18 in affected areas having a 1.6% higher probability of reporting symptoms. This study provides the first causal evidence linking illegal fuel extraction to adverse respiratory health outcomes, suggesting anti-theft enforcement strategies should include targeted health interventions like enhanced air quality monitoring and respiratory health screening. These insights are crucial for public health responses in similar contexts globally.

By Samantha J. Prince

Domestic violence is sadly and shockingly all too prevalent in the United States. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than one in four women and one in seven men in this country are subject to domestic abuse “affecting an estimated 10 million people every year.”  Finances and financial abuse play a significant role in 99% of domestic abuse cases. “[L]acking financial knowledge or resources is the number one indicator of whether a domestic violence victim will stay, leave, or return to an abusive relationship.”When abusers have control over financial assets, victims are monetarily paralyzed and have little ability to escape their situation. Additionally, abusers can engage in financial sabotage maliciously and intentionally ruining the victim’s credit scores, taking their earnings, or “harassing them at their workplace until they lose their job and their own source of income.”Some circumstances can make escaping one’s abuser even more financially challenging. When children are involved, escaping is even more critical but financially difficult for a victim to escape and stay free. Further, during high inflationary or economically volatile periods when expenses are higher and investment balances uncertain, it can be more financially challenging to break and stay free from one’s abuser. Such immediate financial constraints may influence the victim’s choice to stay in abusive situations, since victims may additionally consider the long-term economic impact that leaving these relationships may have.Giving domestic abuse victims financial empowerment so that they can both escape their abuser and be positioned to stay free is crucial First, this essay focuses on the statutory requirements of the newly permissible 401(k) domestic abuse victim distributions. It then proffers how employers can help employees who are in abusive situations through employee benefits like their 401(k) plans. Specifically, it addresses how employers can shift to a more compassionate position by supporting and assisting their victim employees through their retirement plans.

By Max Schanzenbach and Kimberly Yuracko

The war between Hamas and Israel has caused havoc in higher education. Amid student unrest, alumni pressure, congressional hearings, civil rights investigations, and student lawsuits, universities stand at a crossroads. The current situation, in which most private universities unevenly regulate student speech under ambiguous student codes, is not sustainable politically or legally. A tsunami of litigation and regulatory actions has already begun. One increasingly favored response is for private universities to more vigorously enforce existing codes or expand their scope. An alternative is for private universities to deregulate student expression and commit by contract to the First Amendment. This paper argues for the latter approach largely on pragmatic grounds. In essence, our argument is grounded in the realities of university organizational behavior which make it difficult for universities to enforce speech codes in a manner that complies with their regulatory and contractual obligations. Ambiguous codes, informal process, and political homogeneity among decision-makers inevitably results in inconsistent regulation of speech. These problems can be mitigated by committing to the First Amendment, which would both clarify and constrain university speech regulations by incorporating a large body of caselaw, some of which bears directly on higher education. Such clarity would limit the scope of university action, provide a basis for legally required consistency, and be more readily amenable to external review by courts and federal regulators. Experience with the First Amendment in public universities suggests that such a commitment will not have deleterious consequences for campus life.

By Carolina Valdivia 

This article centers on the experiences of an understudied segment of the undocumented population: individuals who reenter the United States post-deportation without authorization and their family members. The state classifies unauthorized reentry after deportation as a criminal offense rather than a civil violation, thereby designating these individuals as felons. On the basis of 113 in-depth interviews with undocumented returnees and their relatives, I find that this criminal labeling leads families to internalize a sense of criminality, experience intensified fear and anxiety, and adopt more extreme strategies to evade detection. Their experiences are a prime example of what I term hyper-illegality—an enduring condition of legal precarity or liminal status whereby individuals are permanently marked by conditional inclusion and heightened vulnerability to state surveillance and punishment.

By Ángel A. Escamilla García, Adriana M. Cerón

Research on post-deportation experiences has shown that family separation, especially separation from children and partners, shapes deported migrants’ intentions to return to the US. Yet little is known about how these intentions intersect with other aspects of the remigration experience. In this article, we examine deported Central American adults’ intentions to reenter the US undetected and the transit experiences of those attempting to return while traversing Mexico. Drawing on survey data from the Encuesta Sobre Migración en la Frontera Sur de México (EMIF Sur), combined with ethnographic and interview data from recently deported Central Americans traveling through Mexico, we find that deported migrants who have left behind minor children in the US are more likely to intend to return to the US—particularly those who are separated from a partner or are a single parent. In turn, the eagerness and urgency to return to their families in the US shape the way deported migrants approach their journeys through Mexico. These results underscore the central role of family in shaping remigration and highlight the broader consequences of US border externalization policies operating within Mexico.

By Erin R. Hamilton, Claudia Masferrer, Angelita Repetto, Nicole Denier 

De facto deportation is emigration to accompany a deported person, typically a nuclear family member. We study the recent de facto deportation of children, spouses, and parents of people deported from the United States to Mexico. We identify, quantify, and describe the characteristics of de facto deported people and compare them to those who migrated for other reasons using 2020 Mexican Census data. We also analyze data from interviews with returned migrants in Mexico City to describe experiences of de facto deportation. We estimate there were more than eleven thousand people de facto deported from the US to Mexico between 2015 and 2020. Our analysis shows the predominance of women among de facto deported adults, suggesting a strong gendering of family migration after deportation. Interviews reveal the importance of in-person caretaking in decisions about de facto deportation.

By: Youngjin Stephanie Hong, Marci Ybarra, Angela S. García. 

Studies link intensified immigration enforcement to reduced safety net participation among mixed-status families, but less is known about how this varies by settlement duration. Bridging research on immigrant settlement and system avoidance, we theorize that the impacts are strongest among immigrants with shorter US residency. To test this, we analyze whether exposure to deportation threat, measured as removals under Secure Communities per one thousand noncitizens, is associated with safety net use among citizen children of likely undocumented Latinas in California, using a two-way fixed effects regression. We find that increased removal rates are negatively related to the child’s participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; Medicaid; and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families among mothers with less than five years of residency, but not among those with longer durations, relative to US-born mothers. These findings suggest that deportation threat may be especially burdensome for recent arrivals.

By J. Jacob Kirksey, Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj

This study investigates the impact of the 2018 immigration raid at Load Trail LLC, a trailer manufacturing company in Sumner, Texas. It analyzes the raid’s severe and enduring effects on the postsecondary pathways of students in the surrounding areas. Situated within the broader discourse on legal vulnerability, this research highlights how exposure to immigration enforcement operations and pervasive anti-immigrant sentiments contributes to diminished educational opportunities. Using robust longitudinal data from Texas, the findings indicate pronounced declines in four-year college enrollment and shifts toward employment during high school, particularly among Latinx and English-learner students. These results delineate the extensive collateral consequences of immigration enforcement on community members not directly targeted by the raid. By documenting the raid’s deleterious effects on both immediate educational engagement and longer-term career prospects, this article calls for targeted policy measures designed to buffer the negative impacts and support the resilience and upward mobility of affected student populations.

By Cora Bennett, Virginia Graves, Benjamin Meadows 

Federal immigration statutes are enforced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, ICE enforcement does not occur in a vacuum; it has a well-documented legacy of spillovers. Understanding the actual behaviors of immigration enforcement is exceedingly difficult owing to opaque or unavailable data. In this article, we are able to match the level of local immigration enforcement in local areas to school-district-level elementary and middle school achievement scores. Specifically, we merge ten years of individual-arrest ICE records from the New Orleans district field office obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request to district-level achievement scores to understand how immigration enforcement affects the human capital of children. We find that overall responses to enforcement as measured by district-level achievement scores are sharp and large, with achievement scores dropping anywhere between 0.27 and 0.52 of a standard deviation.

By Agustina Laurito, Ashley N. Muchow 

Deportations of immigrants from the United States have grown substantially over the past two decades. While existing research has examined how changes to US laws and policies have contributed to this increase, less attention has been given to how conditions in immigrants’ countries of origin shape deportation patterns. This article investigates how an important external shock—home-country natural disasters—influences immigrant removals from the US. We combine annual data on removals by country with information on natural disasters to estimate difference-in-differences models that exploit exogenous variation in the timing and magnitude of natural disasters across countries. Our results show that immigrant removals increased, on average, by 29 percent after salient natural disasters. When we explore mechanisms, we find little evidence that home-country natural disasters increase irregular migration, but we do find that noncitizen and likely undocumented immigrants increase their labor force participation and employment following these shocks. This finding suggests that natural disasters in immigrants’ countries of origin may influence the economic behavior of immigrants, putting them at greater risk of detection by immigration enforcement authorities.