Mexican and Central American Immigrant Rights; Local Justice Struggles in a Global City

And the government will open Regional Processing Centers, initially in Guatemala and Colombia, to screen individuals in the region for possible eligibility for humanitarian protection or other legal pathways, in a bid to forestall chaotic border arrivals and reduce the turn to smuggling operations. On the other, the administration has also steered billions of dollars in private investments as well as government aid and assistance to Central American countries extended the Central American Minors (CAM) Program to offer refugee status and parole to some Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans under age 21 with parents in the United States expanded refugee resettlement and created new family reunification parole processes for individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as Colombia. border unless they had first applied for and been denied asylum in at least one other country along their route. On the one hand, a new rule prohibits many irregularly arriving non-Mexican migrants from seeking asylum at the southern U.S. The Biden administration has responded to this migration with a mix of stringent and humanitarian approaches. Between October 2019 and March 2023, nationals of these four countries accounted for nearly one-third of all 5.8 million migrant encounters at the southern border. In the first six months of FY 2023, there were about 287,300 border encounters of these nationals. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered nationals of the four largest Central American sending countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) at the U.S.-Mexico border 109,100 times in fiscal year (FY) 2020, a number that increased to about 705,500 in FY 2022. Much of the recent migration has been irregular. Persistent economic and political challenges in Central America have been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic and political upheaval, and increasingly extreme weather, causing more Central Americans to migrate to the United States. Given the close cultural, geographic, and trade ties between the United States and countries in Central America, migration to the United States and within the region has been a longstanding phenomenon. Haga clic aquí para leer este artículo en español.

Mexican and Central American Immigrant Rights; Local Justice Struggles in a Global City