Migrants caught in CBP One limbo

Jan. 22, 2025

The abrupt cancellation of the U.S. CBP One program allowing asylum seekers to schedule appointments online to meet with U.S. authorities on Monday, as Donald Trump swore in, was particularly cruel for those migrants who had upcoming appointments, reports the New York Times. (See also BBC.)

Tens of thousands of appointments that were scheduled into February were canceled, applicants were told. Obtaining an appointment was difficult, requiring frequent attempts to obtain one of 1,450 of slots made available each day, and then requiring many months wait.

“Despite a glitchy launch in January 2023, it quickly became a critical piece of the Biden administration’s border strategy to expand legal pathways while cracking down on asylum for people who enter illegally. Supporters say it brought order amid the tumult of illegal crossings,” reports the Associated Press.

Trump’s new raft of migration policies shows how the conspiracy theory rhetoric of an “invasion” has migrated from the rightwing fringe towards mainstream Republican figures, Trump included, writes Alexandra Villarreal in the Guardian. “It is being explicitly used to justify a sweeping crackdown on both unauthorized and legal migration, with seemingly no exceptions for vulnerable people such as unaccompanied children or families with infants.”

Colombia

• Ongoing violence in Colombia’s Catatumbo region is comparable to the brutal conflict in the 1940s and 50s known as La Violencia, said President Gustavo Petro yesterday. (See yesterday’s post.)

• El País describes a scene of terror: “The fighters have shown piles of corpses piled up in a rush and mutilated bodies lying in the middle of the jungle, riddled with bullets and tied with barbed wire, as if they had just been executed. The fighting between armed groups has not only taken place in the open, but also house to house. In addition to direct confrontation, there has been a series of selective murders. Leaders of some gangs have surrendered to the authorities to avoid falling into enemy hands. The morgue of one city was filled to the point of not being able to refrigerate any more dead bodies. The population is fleeing in terror with their houses behind them, as has not happened for some time.”

• Petro will travel to Haiti this week to meet with the transitional presidential council head Leslie Voltaire. (La Silla Vacía)

Regional Relations

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called for cooler heads to prevail, in response to a raft of executive measures from U.S. President Donald Trump, many with significant impact for her country, like efforts to shut down the border to migrants, tariffs and designating criminal organizations as terrorist organizations. The unilateral decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico, she just laughed that one off. (El País, Associated Press)

• Trump has threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, saying on Monday, his first day in office, that they could be implemented by Feb. 1. An executive order the new president signed Monday directs federal agencies to conduct a sweeping review of U.S. trade policies, which could result in further actions against Mexico and Canada, reports the New York Times, separately.

• The New York Times reports that the U.S. Trump administration wants to move up a U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is required for 2026. Concerned about Chinese impact in the Mexican auto sector and protecting U.S. auto jobs, the new U.S. government wants negotiations on the free trade agreement to start sooner.

• The Atlantic Council explains some of the background on the review process: If any one of the three countries decide not to renew the agreement at the required review, representatives will meet every year until they either agree to renew the USMCA—or run out of time before it expires in 2036. Although cumbersome, this process is designed to provide an opportunity for the three countries to regularly adapt the terms as they see fit.”

• The European Union and Mexico revived a stalled free trade agreement last week, reports Reuters.

Cuba

• Trump’s decision to redesignate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism potentially puts political prisoners freed last week at risk, reports Reuters.

Brazil

• Fires consumed a record amount of Brazil’s drought-afflicted wilderness last year: 30.86m hectares. The Amazon was the most affected of Brazil’s six biomes: The area scorched in the Amazon in 2024 exceeds the total burned across the country in 2023. (Guardian)

Peru

• Peruvian journalist Gastón Medina was killed Monday, he was shot by gunmen in the wake of his TV reports on criminal groups that are allegedly extorting Ica’s bus drivers and on alleged irregularities by the Ica city and regional governments, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. (See also IDL Reporteros)

Haiti

• Armed gangs in Haiti have fired on diplomatic vehicles in Port-au-Prince twice this week. In an episode yesterday, one person was killed and five people in diplomatic vehicles were injured with gunshot wounds, reports the Miami Herald.

Panama

• Panama’s vast Rio Cobre copper operation was shut down by judicial decision more than a year ago, but Indigenous people report restrictions on movement and unexplained illness and death - Guardian

Argentina

• The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo human rights group has announced the discovery of "grandchild number 139," the latest of one of the hundreds of children stolen from their parents and clandestinely adopted during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. (Buenos Aires Times)

• Human rights organizations celebrated the news as a counter to growing denialism espoused by the Milei administration, reports El País.