Updates from Adam Isacson (December 23, 2023)
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I know I said in last week's email that it was the last email of the year. But it turns out that there are a few items to share from this past week. So this is the last email of the year.
This one has the weekly Border Update, more new migration numbers, a panoramic WOLA podcast episode, some written congressional testimony about Colombia, and the usual links. Have a great holiday and see you next year.
Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: December 21, 2023
Read the whole update at WOLA's website. This one is getting heavy website traffic because so much is going on. Also, at this time of many fast-moving border events, see our archive of daily updates.
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
This will be the last Weekly Border Update until January 19. Best wishes for a happy holiday.
THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:
More than 10,000 migrants per day, mostly asylum seekers, have been arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol sectors seeing the most arrivals are Del Rio and El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and San Diego, California. Some of the rush is likely the product of false rumors and misinformation. Notably, it is happening even though U.S.-bound migration through Panama and Honduras has been dropping sharply since October.
The U.S. Congress has adjourned for 2023 with no agreement on Republicans’ demands for new restrictions on asylum and other migration pathways—their main condition for supporting a $110.5 billion package of aid to Ukraine and Israel, new border spending, and other priorities. A small group of senators and senior Biden administration officials has been meeting regularly, but has produced neither legislative language nor a basic framework. They will resume consideration of the spending bill after Congress returns on January 8, amid a growing outcry from progressive legislators and migrants’ rights defense groups.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law S.B.4, which makes irregular border crossings into Texas a state crime. Upon arrest, migrants will be jailed if they do not agree to be returned to Mexico—but Mexico is refusing to accept returnees from the Texas state government. The ACLU, El Paso County, and El Paso-based rights groups quickly filed suit in federal court to block the law.
The Number-One Nationality of Migrants Apprehended in each Border Patrol Sector in November
CBP pushed out November migration numbers at the end of the day Friday the 22nd. I've updated a few charts from them so far, and at GitHub I've pushed the updated data to a tool that you can use to make tables from CBP's dataset, if you know how to run a web server on your computer (it's free and not too hard).
I used that tool this morning because I wanted to see who was coming to each of the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border. I found a remarkable variation, in both nationalities and overall numbers. Here are sectors and number-one nationalities:
- Tucson, Arizona: Mexico (30,201 of 64,638)
- Del Rio, Texas: Venezuela (12,932 of 42,952)
- San Diego, California: “Other Countries” (7,174 of 31,164)
- El Paso, Texas-New Mexico: Mexico (6,209 of 22,403)
- Rio Grande Valley, Texas: Venezuela (4,199 of 18,774)
- Yuma, Arizona-California: Peru (1,742 of 6,159)
- Laredo, Texas: Mexico (1,650 of 2,809)
- El Centro, California: Mexico (876 of 1,787)
- Big Bend, Texas: Mexico (330 of 427)
Total: Mexico (50,967 of 191,113)
At CBP’s U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry (official border crossings):
- Laredo, Texas: Mexico (6,735 of 24,224)
- San Diego, California: Cuba (5,074 of 15,432)
- El Paso, Texas-New Mexico: Venezuela (2,163 of 7,617)
- Tucson, Arizona: Mexico (1,646 of 4,032)
Total: Mexico (13,844 of 51,305)
WOLA Podcast: A Review Of 2023 in the Americas with WOLA President Carolina Jiménez Sandoval
The last WOLA Podcast episode of the year is with my boss and our president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval. We talk about what’s happened in Latin America in 2023 and what our plans are for 2024, WOLA’s 50th anniversary year, in four areas: democracy, migration, climate, and gender and racial justice.
Here’s the text of WOLA’s podcast landing page.
As WOLA approaches its 50th anniversary, four areas are orienting our work alongside partners in the Americas: democracy, migration, climate, as well as gender and racial justice. It is a challenging moment for all four. Several democracies are under assault, forced migration is at historic levels, climate impacts are a bigger part of everyday life, and progress on gender and racial equity is fragile.
In this 2023 year-end podcast episode, WOLA’s President, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, takes stock of trends and concerns in all four of these areas. There is much to do in 2024, and Jiménez explains how, as it enters its next 50 years, WOLA is aligning its research, advocacy, communications, and relationships to fight for human rights.
Download the podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.
Testimony on Organized Crime and Human Rights in Colombia
I had a few extra days to submit my written testimony from last week’s hearing of the U.S. Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, since I was added to the panel a couple of days before. I just finished it and sent it in.
Here it is—and here as a PDF.
Written testimony of
Adam Isacson, Director for Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America
Hearing: “Organized Crime, Gangs and Human Rights in Latin America”
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC
December 14, 2023
Chairmen McGovern and Smith, thank you for calling this hearing. It’s an honor to be with you today.
I’m going to talk about Colombia, which today has a confusing array of armed and criminal groups. A decade ago, I could have named all armed or criminal groups in Colombia that had more than 100 members; today, I cannot do that with confidence. A February 2023 report from the Colombian think-tank INDEPAZ counted about 22 of them, in the categories of “narco-paramilitaries,” “post-FARC groups,” and “guerrillas.”[1]
They run the drug trade. They degrade the environment. They facilitate migration, including through the treacherous Darién Gap, where the Gulf Clan “narco-paramilitary” organization has a monopoly on smuggling on the Colombian side.[2] They kill thousands each year, including the world’s highest numbers of murdered human rights and environmental defenders.[3] They displace or confine hundreds of thousands more.
INDEPAZ categorization of Colombian armed and criminal groups
| Narco-Paramilitaries | Post-FARC Groups (FARC Dissidents) | Guerrillas |
| Drug trafficking groups, most of which have leaders who participated in the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a confederation of pro-government militias that demobilized in 2006. The Gulf Clan is by far the largest. | Loose confederations of groups led by former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, who rejected the 2016 peace accord. Less than 10 percent of FARC members who demobilized in 2017 have re-armed.[4] | The National Liberation Army (ELN), founded in 1964, is the only remaining leftist guerrilla group. |
| Active in about 345 of Colombia’s 1,104 municipalities (counties) | Active in about 161 municipalities | Active in about 162 municipalities |
| – Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces or Gulf Clan – EPL or Pelusos – La Oficina – Los Pachencas – Los Puntilleros – Los Rastrojos – Los Caparros – Los Costeños – Los Pachelly – La Constru – Los Contadores – Los Shotas – Los Espartanos | – Southeastern Bloc (Central General Staff) – Comando Coordinador de Occidente (Central General Staff) – Segunda Marquetalia – “Independent” groups: – 33rd Front – 36th Front – Oliver Sinisterra Front – Guerrillas Unidas del Pacífico – 4th Front | – ELN |
| Source: “Informe sobre presencia de grupos armados en Colombia 2021 – 2022” (Bogotá: INDEPAZ, November 25, 2022), https://indepaz.org.co/informe-sobre-presencia-de-grupos-armados-en-colombia-2021-2022-1/ | ||
Why organized crime is so much harder to fight than guerrillas
In 2016 Colombia’s largest leftist guerrilla group, the FARC, signed a peace accord and demobilized, following a decade-long, U.S.-backed series of military offensives and four years of negotiations. Guerrillas have disappeared from many areas, from the roads around Bogotá to the slums around Medellín. But it is difficult to identify a territory in Colombia that was under organized crime’s influence 30 years ago—going back to the heyday of the now-defunct Medellín and Cali cartels—that is not under organized crime’s influence today.
Hundreds of top cartel and criminal-organization leaders have been killed, imprisoned, and extradited to the United States. The groups’ names change, they divide internally, or are supplanted by other groups. But organized crime is still remarkably active throughout Colombia, and a constant factor in millions of Colombians’ daily lives. Often, today’s active groups can trace their DNA back to the cartels of the 1980s and 1990s, the paramilitaries of the 1990s and 2000s, and remnants of demobilized leftist guerrillas.
Weakening the FARC to the point that it was willing to negotiate cost Colombia tens of thousands of lives, and billions of dollars (many from Washington) that could have saved or improved millions of lives. After all that, Colombia’s other adversary, organized crime, remains as strong and as wealthy as ever.
Why has organized crime been so much more resilient, and so much harder to confront, than leftist guerrillas? There are a few key reasons.
- The FARC had a firm command hierarchy, while organized crime is looser and networked. Removing leaders did more harm to the FARC’s command and control.
- Because of its loose structure, organized crime often fragments when confronted (and sometimes fragments anyway because of internal divisions). The result is dozens of groups instead of just a few.
- Members and leaders of organized crime groups are more often mixed in with the population, more likely to be in towns and less likely to be in distant areas like jungle encampments, which are more susceptible to aerial attacks and other offensive operations.
- Most importantly, the FARC actually wanted to fight the government. Organized crime groups will confront government forces or institutions when they see their interests gravely threatened or wish to send a message. But they prefer not to do that. Fighting the government is bad for a group’s business, as it focuses the state’s military and intelligence resources against it.
Instead, organized crime thrives on its relationship with government. Corruption is the oxygen that it breathes. Criminals need police who will look the other way when a cocaine shipment is going downriver. They need mayors who go along when they traffic people or dig illegal gold mines out in the open. They need prosecutors who let cases die.
The problem of government collusion with organized crime is especially concerning when it concerns the security forces. (Colombia’s military and police have been the Americas’ number-one recipients of U.S. security assistance since the early 1990s.) A scan of Colombian media reveals numerous examples of military and police personnel, at all levels and all around the country, accused of colluding with armed and criminal groups.
Mexico Encountered a Record 97,969 Migrants in November
Mexico's government also dumped its November data this week, showing that it recorded 97,969 “events of people in irregular migratory situation” during November 2023. That’s 5 percent more migrant encounters than October, and sets a new record for the most that Mexico has ever recorded in a month:
Migrants came from 111 countries. Of nationalities with more than 1,000 migrant encounters, those that increased the most from October to November were Mauritania (119%), the Dominican Republic (92%), and Honduras (65%). Those that declined the most from October to November were Cuba (-52%), Senegal (-28%), and Guinea (-11%). Venezuela, the number-one nationality, declined 8 percent.
Even as Mexico measured an increase in migration in November, two countries to the south, Panama and Honduras, reported double-digit percentage decreases.
Here’s Panama: a 24 percent decline in migration through the Darién Gap from October to November, and a 50 percent decline in migration from September to November. So, fewer people departing the South American continent.
Here’s Honduras: down 41 percent from October to November. So, fewer people coming from South America and through the increasingly used aerial entry point in Nicaragua.
Links from the Past Week
Julie Turkewitz, Live From the Jungle: Migrants Become Influencers on Social Media (The New York Times, Wednesday, December 20, 2023).
TikTok, Facebook and YouTube are transforming global migration, becoming tools of migrants and smugglers alike
Alex Bare, Mariakarla Nodarse Venancio, Five Key Trends in Cuban Migration in 2023 (Washington Office on Latin America, Wednesday, December 20, 2023).
Reforms in Cuba have failed to improve living conditions, and there is little political resolve in the U.S. to reassess policies exacerbating Cuba’s economic hardship
Informe Revela Que Sacar a Policia del Mindefensa No Es Prioridad para el Gobierno (El Espectador (Colombia), Wednesday, December 20, 2023).
La Fundación Alfredo Molano Bravo y la ONG Temblores presentan el informe “No basta”, una investigación que le pone la lupa a lo que han hecho el Estado y la Alcaldía de Bogotá para garantizar el derecho a la protesta
Las Americas v. Mccraw Complaint (American Civil Liberties Union, Tuesday, December 19, 2023).
This action challenges Senate Bill 4 (88th Leg. (4th special session)) (“S.B. 4”), which purports to give Texas state officials the unprecedented power to arrest, detain, and deportnoncitizens in the State of Texas
And Finally
