IRTF News

sing pandemic-related border restrictions, the Biden administration this month launched a deportation operation to Colombia amid a sharp increase in arrivals of migrants from that country to the U.S.-Mexico border. Since the start of the campaign, which had not been previously reported, the U.S. has expelled several hundred Colombians under a border rule known as Title 42, which blocks migrants from seeking asylum due to public health concerns, the DHS officials said. The rule was first implemented by the Trump administration. Fourteen months in, the Biden administration has continued the Title 42 expulsions, arguing they remain necessary to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 inside border processing facilities. To date, U.S. officials have carried out 1.7 million expulsions under Title 42, over 70% of them under President Biden. In February, 9,600 Colombian migrants entered U.S. custody along the southern border, an all-time high, according to government data. In fiscal year 2022, which started last October, U.S. border officials have already processed 23,985 Colombians — a 287% increase from the previous fiscal year.

Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Immigration authorities in Mexico detained 307,679 migrants in 2021, a 68% increase compared with 182,940 detentions in 2019, according to government data. Most migrants apprehended at the US south-west border come from Mexico and Central America, but an increasing number are arriving from farther places and seeking refuge, including in recent weeks Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country. “In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“

A delegation of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. solidarity organizations met with President Xiomara Castro of Honduras this weekend. The delegation, organized by SOA Watch and WFP Solidarity Collective, included Representatives Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Cori Bush (MO-01), as well as representation from the office of Jan Schakowsky (IL-09). President Castro is Honduras’ first woman president and was inaugurated in January following historic elections in which the Honduran people turned out in massive numbers to reject the U.S.-backed regimes that have devastated Honduras since the 2009 coup d’état. President Castro and members of her cabinet shared key challenges facing Honduras following the Hernández dictatorship, including enormous debt that severely limits the new administration’s ability to invest in schools, hospitals, and other urgently needed social programs. The regimes that governed Honduras over the past twelve years took out significant loans from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while also emptying the country’s coffers through widespread corruption. As a result, President Castro has inherited a government with debilitating debt and very few resources.

She is an Afro-Colombian environmental crusader who has faced down untold death threats and survived at least one assassination attempt to become one of the leading lights of Latin America’s new left. Now, Francia Márquez could be on the verge of becoming Colombia’s next vice-president after the leftist frontrunner, Gustavo Petro, picked her as his running mate – a move that has thrilled progressives and civil rights activists across the region. “Every Colombian, in their diversity, from the regions, from each territory, made it possible for us to be here,” said Márquez, who, if elected in the 29 May vote, would join Costa Rica’s Epsy Campbell Barr as one of only two black female vice-presidents in Latin America. Afro-Colombians make up nearly 10% of Colombia’s population of 50 million, descending from enslaved people brought from Africa to work on sugar cane plantations, goldmines and the large estates of landowning Spanish colonists. They remain under-represented in business and politics.

This spring, Colombia could elect its first progressive president. In primary elections earlier this month—held for left-wing, centrist, and ruling right blocs—former Bogotá mayor and 2018 presidential candidate Gustavo Petro won an astounding nearly 4.5 million votes to emerge as nominee for the left-wing coalition known as the Historic Pact. Petro has pledged to ban new fossil fuel exploration from day one, proposing to "end oil exploration, but not exploitation. The old coffee-growing country has been left behind and sadly we moved into oil and coal. This is unsustainable and will bring about extinction. We need to move away from an extractivist economy and move towards a productive one.” Petro has been involved in politics ever since the M19 pivoted toward the constitutional process, and is no stranger to challenging the right. He called out right-wing government connections to far-right paramilitaries as a lawmaker, consequently receiving death threats, which is no surprise as Colombia is the world’s most dangerous country for human rights defenders and environmentalists.

Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice said on Tuesday it has suspended Judge Pablo Xitumul, who is known for his fight against corruption and handling high-profile cases against the military and former government officials. The decision comes a day after the prominent Judge Erika Aifan resigned from the post and fled into exile to the United States, alleging persecution over her work as a renowned anti-corruption figure in the institution. Xitumul and Aifan have both worked as judges in the country’s so-called “high risk” courts, which were created after the CICIG, a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission; and they both pushed for reforms to investigate organized crime and corruption. So far this year, at least 10 justice figures have fled the country to the United States due to the cases opened against those who worked on CICIG cases.