Border enforcement is more than its widely perceived role of border guards patrolling external boundaries and inspectors admitting traffic through ports of entry. While those are key components, border enforcement represents a more holistic function, integrating resources and information at and between all ports of entry—whether air, land, or sea—with consular operations abroad and more. The research presented here examines these varied facets.
Faced with a flexible, diverse, and seemingly ubiquitous smuggling industry, governments have struggled to respond. Smuggling and trafficking networks, while hardly new phenomena, were put under a harsh spotlight in 2015 for their role as intermediaries in shaping the scale and flow of migrants and asylum seekers around the world.
As seemingly endless waves of asylum seekers and migrants arrived in Europe in 2015, politicians from across the political spectrum invoked forceful anti-immigrant rhetoric that resonated in some quarters. Mainstream politicians began co-opting the tougher, more enforcement-laden language of far-right groups as all parties sought to reassure voters in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris.
Child migrants traveling alone to Europe or the United States face similar dangers and are particularly at risk of abuse and trafficking. The arrival of tens of thousands of such children in Europe and the United States have overwhelmed accommodations as well as legal and integration processes. Furthermore, the unprecedented flows have sparked heated public debate in a number of cities.
Facing electoral challenges, falling approval rates, and weak economies, some political leaders in 2015 altered border policies or engaged in conflicts across borders as tools of domestic policy. This trend looks at the effects on migration of conflicts between Venezuela and Colombia, Russia and Ukraine, and India and Nepal.
Systemic corruption has flourished in South Africa's asylum system due to large backlogs and rising demand. Though apartheid's end ushered in a progressive refugee law, inefficiency, administrative justice violations, and corruption have narrowed the humanitarian protection channel. Asylum seekers and refugees often face the stark choice of paying bribes to access services or risking deportation.
As the Trump administration moves to be able to indefinitely detain parents and children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border, whether illegal border crossers or asylum seekers, recent apprehension trends and history suggest hardline policies might not be a slam-dunk deterrent with a Central American population often driven by the desire to escape gang or other violence, as this Policy Beat explores.
In a commentary, MPI and Penn State researchers explain why an academic article suggesting the unauthorized population is significantly higher than previously estimated derives from seriously flawed assumptions. The researchers, who peer-reviewed the analysis, find the authors overestimate successful illegal crossings by misapplying data from the 2000s to the 1990s, when crossing patterns were much different.
Though the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a major victory by upholding its much-contested travel ban, less noted has been the fact that the ruling left an opening for future challenges to the policy of barring groups of foreign nationals from the country. This Policy Beat explores the evolution of the travel ban, the justices' arguments for and against, and changes in visa grants from travel-ban countries.
As maritime arrivals climbed in 2015, EU policymakers struggled to mount a coordinated response. A range of ad hoc crisis-response tools emerged, but many officials worry that if another migration emergency were to hit Europe, the European Union may still be unprepared. This report traces the evolution of the EU response to the 2015–16 crisis and lays out recommendations to lock in progress and shore up weaknesses.
Even as some pundits assess President Trump's temporary end to family separation as a defeat, the deeper reality is being lost: The administration’s plan to detain all asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, including families, is now on its way to completion. The “catch-and-release” that Donald Trump rails against is, at least in part, effectively over for now, though the price tag is a long way from being tallied, as this commentary explains.
Amid significant tensions over migration that could fracture Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition, a new "migration master plan" set to be unveiled by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer reportedly involves turning asylum seekers back at German borders and refusing them entry. This commentary explores the potential implications of the proposal, which has prompted concern about the ramifications for the Common European Asylum System.
Monthly apprehension statistics at the Southwest border have become a preoccupation for the Trump administration, which compares the 2018 numbers to 2017 and declares a crisis. Yet it was 2017, when the "Trump effect" temporarily paused illegal crossings, that was the outlier. Recent trends have reverted to the pattern seen in 2016, a result notable at a time of very low U.S. unemployment, as this commentary explores.
In recent years, women from Central America have begun to make up a greater share of migrant apprehensions in Mexico and at the U.S. Southwest border. Systemic insecurity, poverty, and corruption are among the factors driving women and others to flee. This article explores the increase in female migration from Central America and the challenges these women face on their journey.
People Leave Footprints: Millions More Unauthorized Immigrants Cannot Be ‘Hidden’ in Data Estimates