By Chris Jones , Romain Lanneau , Yasha Maccanico u.a.

For at least three decades, the EU and its Member States have engaged in a process of “externalization” – a policy agenda by which the EU seeks to prevent migrants and refugees from setting foot on EU territory by externalizing (that is, outsourcing) border controls to non-EU states. The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, published in September 2020, proposed a raft of measures seeking to step up operational cooperation and collaboration to further this agenda. This report aims to contribute to public and political debate on the transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of the externalization agenda. It contains a series of case studies on three key target states for the EU – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, and Niger – based on information received in response to access to documents and freedom of information requests submitted to institutions within those countries, as well as within the EU itself.

Brüssel:  Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union, December 2022. 48p.

By Mitch Morrissey  and DJ Summers

Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, has made local and national headlines recently for criminal activity in apartment buildings allegedly related to members of a Venezuelan gang. City officials, media commentators, and the public have debated at length the reputed presence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the extent of the gang’s criminal activity across the Metro Denver area. Although crime in Aurora and Denver is still above its pre-pandemic baseline, neither has experienced city-wide elevated crime levels in the last 12 months. However, several areas throughout the cities with documented elevated migrant populations have seen dramatic upticks in crime in 2023 and 2024. Importantly, these trends are not uniform across all centers of migrant populations. The isolated crime that is being committed in the areas in question at apartments on Dallas Street, Nome Street, and 13th Avenue is borne by the surrounding areas, most of which are neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status. There are economic costs associated with this rise in crime.

Key Findings:

Aurora’s violent crime is not rising as a whole. Violent crime in both Aurora and Denver has decreased since a 2022 peak, though in 2023 annual crime remained elevated from crime in 2019.

Identifying crime trends is difficult among noncitizens, as reporting is lower. Cities are estimated to have a 6% decrease in violent crime reporting and 1% decrease in property crime reporting for every 1% increase in noncitizen residents. The recent migrant surge has resulted in a 12% increase in the number of noncitizens in the Denver metro area.

Publicly available geolocated crime maps do not show a consistent trend of rising crime in the Denver or Aurora locations known to house high numbers of migrants. However, they do show a localized spike in police-reported crime at three Aurora complexes.

The apartments at 1218 Dallas Street in Aurora have seen crimes and citations more than double since 2022, from 31 to 80.

The apartments at 1568 Nome Street in Aurora have seen crimes and citations more than double since 2022, from 33 to 76.

The apartments at 15483 E 13th Avenue Aurora have seen crimes and citations nearly double since 2022, from 29 to 44.

Elevated crime has higher costs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The major crimes in 2024 at just the Dallas Street apartments alone have led to $700,000 in tangible and intangible costs. These do not include crimes not reported to police.

Greenwood Village, CO:Common Sense Institute, 2024. 10p.

By Trey Walk, and Maria Burnett,

  Since 2021, political leaders in the US state of Florida have reshaped K-12 schools through laws and policies that censor, distort, and discriminate. Such efforts include passing laws restricting classroom instruction about race in US history, sexual orientation and gender identity, banning books available to students, and setting inaccurate and misleading civics and history standards. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” documents the impacts on students of Florida’s denial of access to accurate information about Black history, systemic racism, and about their health, when related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Florida leads the United States in the number of books banned from classrooms and school libraries, primarily literature written by or about LGBTQ people and people of color. Students and teachers report that new legal and curriculum changes have created an environment more conducive to harassment and discrimination in the classroom on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Parents and teachers describe the difficulty of providing children with an education free from discrimination in the increasingly hostile environment. Human Rights Watch, Florida Rising, and Stanford Law School Rule of Law Impact Lab call on Florida to rescind its discriminatory policies and promote a curriculum that counters discrimination and prepares students to live healthy lives in a diverse society. They also call for a bold federal response to address this civil and human rights crisis in US public schools.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 107p.

By Heather Rolfe, Sunder Katwala and Steve Ballinger

The Ipsos MORI immigration attitudes tracker offers one of the most authoritative and rigorous sources on what the public thinks about immigration, conducted in 12 waves to date across the last seven years. This latest wave of the tracker was a nationally representative survey of 4,000 adults across Great Britain aged 18+, conducted online between 18 June and 10 July 2021. It examines public attitudes across a range of issues, with some questions having been asked in each wave of research since 2015 to enable comparison. Immigration attitudes have softened significantly over the last seven years, with public sentiment becoming more positive after the 2016 EU referendum and sustaining at that level ever since. The public is now more likely to see the contribution of immigration as positive (46%) than negative (28%) overall, in a reversal of the pattern when this tracker series began in 2015. There is an opportunity for more light and less heat in the immigration debate, though different political challenges remain for both sides of the political spectrum. Anyone seeking to affect change will need to engage with the politics and attitudes of immigration as they are now in 2021, in this new context, and this tracker report offers useful insight. A changing debate The latest Ipsos MORI Issues Index, which measures the issues of greatest concern to the UK public, found that immigration had slid to eighth position as of August 2021. Only 12% of people now regard it as a key issue of concern, but salience has been falling steadily over the last four years. Around four in ten people (42%), however, still feel that we don’t talk about immigration enough. A quarter (25%) feel that it’s discussed the right amount, and 17% say we talk about it too much. Since the immigration attitudes tracker began in 2015, it has asked respondents to give a 0-10 score to indicate whether they feel immigration has had a positive or negative impact on Britain. The scores in this latest wave continue a trend of positive sentiment, with 47% giving a positive score of 6-10, compared to the 28% who give a negative score of 0-4. The survey taken at the time of the May 2015 general election, by comparison, found only 35% were positive and 42% were negative. Respondents to each wave of the survey have also been asked if they would prefer immigration to the UK to be increased, decreased or to remain the same. Reflecting these gradually warming attitudes, this latest survey found the lowest ever support for reducing immigration and the highest ever support for immigration to be increased. While 45% would still prefer reductions in immigration, some 29% would prefer it to stay at the current levels and 17% would like it to increase  Public satisfaction with the current Government’s performance on immigration remains very low, with only 1 in 8 (12%) saying they are satisfied with how the Government is dealing with immigration – the same proportion as in November 2020 (and a similar level of satisfaction to that of the two previous governments). More than half the public (55%) say they are dissatisfied. The immigration debate over the last few parliaments was focused on numbers, with repeated failures to meet the government’s net migration target. With that target now dropped there is an opportunity to move the debate on. Our survey asked whether people would prefer an immigration system that prioritises control, regardless of whether numbers go up or down; or whether they would prefer an approach that focuses on reducing immigration numbers. It found that people were almost twice as likely to prioritise control (44%) over reducing numbers (24%). Survey respondents were also asked about the EU Settled Status scheme, which was put in place allow European citizens, who arrived before December 31st 2020, to continue to live and work in the UK post-Brexit. The deadline for applications for Settled Status lapsed at the end of July this year. Almost half (48%) of respondents say that eligible EU citizens should be allowed to make a late application, while just under a third (32%) would not support late applications being accepted.  

Lonson: British Future, 2021. 47p.

By Sunder Katwala, Steve Ballinger, Heather Rolfe and Jake Puddle

Conducted straight after the general election, this report examines shifting public attitudes to immigration and asylum, including the differences in attitudes between Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Reform voters and what that means for the politics of immigration in the new parliament.

The research also examines public attitudes on a series of key issues:

• The role of immigration in the 2024 general election.

• Public priorities for the new government.

• Public trust in the main political parties on immigration, and trust in leading politicians on the issue.

• Public perceptions of immigration: do people think net migration will fall or increase? Which flows do people think make up most immigration to the UK?

• Public satisfaction with the government’s handling of immigration.

• Do people want immigration numbers to reduce, increase or stay the same?

• Attitudes to migration to fill different roles: would people cut the numbers of doctors, care workers, lorry drivers or hospitality staff coming to the UK?

• Asylum, Channel crossings and legal routes

London: British Future, 2024. 74p.

By: Jennifer Vallentine, Roberto Forin, and Bram Frouws  

Migrant-receiving countries are increasingly focusing on return and reintegration as central elements of migration management. This briefing paper outlines key messages from research MMC has carried out on the experience of returning migrants in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe, since 2017

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre, 2024. 8p.

By The American Immigration Council

In recent months, leading politicians and policymakers have renewed calls for mass deportations of immigrants from the United States. While similar promises have been made in the past without coming to fruition—during the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, Donald Trump pledged to create a “deportation force” to round up undocumented immigrants —mass deportation now occupies a standing role in the rhetoric of leading immigration hawks. To cite just one example, former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Tom Homan has promised “a historic deportation operation” should a hawkish administration return to power. While some plans have envisioned a one-time, massive operation designed to round up, detain, and deport the undocumented population en masse, others have envisioned starting from a baseline of one million deportations per year. Given that in the modern immigration enforcement era the United States has never deported more than half a million immigrants per year—and many of those have been migrants apprehended trying to enter the U.S., not just those already living here—any mass deportation proposal raises obvious questions: how, exactly, would the United States possibly carry out the largest law enforcement operation in world history? And at what cost? Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) along with publicly available data about the current costs of immigration enforcement, this report aims to provide an estimation of what the fiscal and economic cost to the United States would be should the government deport a population of roughly 11 million people who as of 2022 lacked permanent legal status and faced the possibility of removal. We consider this both in terms of the direct budgetary costs—the expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing, and removal—that the federal government would have to pay, and in terms of the impact on the United States economy and tax base should these people be removed from the labor force and consumer market. In terms of fiscal costs, we also include an estimate of the impact of deporting an additional 2.3 million people who have crossed the U.S. southern border without legal immigration status and were released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from January 2023 through April 2024. We consider these fiscal costs separately because we don’t have more recent ACS data necessary to estimate the total net changes in the undocumented population past 2022, or the larger impact on the economy and tax base of removing those people, an impact that is therefore not reflected in this report. In total, we find that the cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both those populations—an estimated total of at least $315 billion. We wish to emphasize that this figure is a highly conservative estimate. It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period—incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible. For one thing, there would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an interim step. To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people. To estimate the costs of a longer-term mass deportation operation, we calculated the cost of a program aiming to arrest, detain, process, and deport one million people per year—paralleling the more conservative proposals made by mass deportation proponents. Even assuming that 20 percent of the undocumented population would “self-deport” under a yearslong mass-deportation regime, we estimate the ultimate cost of such a longer operation would average out to $88 billion annually, for a total cost of $967.9 billion over more than a decade. This is a much higher sum than the one-time estimate, given the long-term costs of establishing and maintaining detention facilities and temporary camps to eventually be able to detain one million people at a time—costs that could not be modeled in a short-term analysis. This would require the United States to build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists. The government would also be required to establish and maintain over 1,000 new immigration courtrooms to process people at such a rate. Even this estimate is likely quite conservative, as we were unable to estimate the additional hiring costs for the tens of thousands of agents needed to carry out one million arrests per year, the additional capital investments necessary to increase the ICE Air Operations fleet of charter aircraft to carry out one million annual deportations, and a myriad of other ancillary costs necessary to ramp up federal immigration enforcement operations to the scale necessary.

 American Immigration Council, 2024. 52p.

Edited by Krista Lynes, Tyler Morgenstern, and Ian Alan Paul

In recent years, spectacular images of ruined boats, makeshift border camps, and beaches littered with life vests have done much to consolidate the politics of movement in Europe. Indeed, the mediation of migration as a crisis has worked to shore up various forms of militarized surveillance, humanitarian response, legislative action, and affective investment. Bridging academic inquiry and artistic and activist practice, the essays, documents, and artworks gathered in Moving Images interrogate the mediation of migration and refugeeism in the contemporary European conjuncture, asking how images, discourses, and data are involved in shaping the visions and experience of migration in increasingly global contexts.

Bielefeld : Transcript, [2020]

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and MedicineNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Individuals from minoritized racial and ethnic groups continue to face systemic barriers that impede their ability to access, persist, and thrive in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) higher education and workforce. Without actively dismantling policies and practices that disadvantage people from minoritized groups, STEMM organizations stand to lose much needed talent and innovation as well as the ideas that come from having a diverse workforce. A new report from the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences examines the backdrop of systemic racism in the United States that has harmed and continues to harm people from minoritized groups, which is critical for understanding the unequal representation in STEMM. The report outlines actions that top leaders and gatekeepers in STEMM organizations, such as presidents and chief executive officers, can take to foster a culture and climate of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion that is genuinely accessible and supportive to all.

Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2023. 342p

By Heizler (Cohen), Odelia, Israeli, Osnat

Dramatic events can evoke feelings of compassion, fear, or threat, and can affect public opinion regarding controversial issues. Such an event was the drowning of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Turkish shore, and was photographed, producing an iconic image that was seen worldwide. The image evoked empathy and compassion that neuroscience and psychological research associate with a motivation to help. This paper examines the impact of this event on four different aspects of attitudes toward immigration, some of which are more closely linked to pro-social behavior than others. The timing of the European Social Survey in Portugal allowed us to use this tragic event as a natural experiment. Our results show that Kurdi's drowning had a significant effect on emotion-related sentiments, but no such impact was detected on other attitudes. The results suggest that the event did not change the respondents' opinion regarding the possible negative consequences of immigration on the host country's economy, crime level, or culture, nor did it change their perception of the skills required by immigrants. On the other hand, the empathy induced by the tragic event increased their willingness to have a less restrictive immigration policy and their openness to having close social relationships with immigrants.

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), 2024. 34p.

 By Daniel Di Martino  

This report estimates the lifetime fiscal impact of immigrants, of various ages and educational attainment, to the United States. It offers a methodological upgrade over similar analyses and estimates and evaluates the fiscal impact of various proposed immigration reforms. A clear picture of the fiscal cost of immigrants is particularly important, given the ongoing border crisis. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the border surge will number 8.7 million unlawful immigrants between 2021 and 2026. The original analysis in this report finds that the border crisis will cost an estimated $1.15 trillion over the lifetime of the new unlawful immigrants—a cost larger than the entire U.S. defense budget and almost equal to the cost of Social Security in 2023. Looking at immigrants more broadly, this report shows that the average new immigrant (lawful or unlawful) has a positive fiscal impact and reduces the federal budget deficit by over $10,000 during his lifetime. For comparison, the average native-born citizen is expected to cost over $250,000 to the federal government. Despite the average immigrant reducing the budget deficit, immigrants without a college education and all those who immigrate to the U.S. after age 55 are universally a net fiscal burden by up to $400,000. The large positive fiscal impact of young and college-educated immigrants pulls up the overall average. Each immigrant under the age of 35 with a graduate degree.   Therefore, for policymakers considering the fiscal impact of immigrants to the U.S., the characteristics of people seeking entry into the country are crucial. Certain immigrants are fiscally beneficial; others are fiscally detrimental. This report quantifies the fiscal impact of common immigration reform proposals: • Mass deportations would significantly reduce the national debt over the long run, but a policy of selective legalization, coupled with mass deportations, would be even more fiscally beneficial, reducing the debt by about $1.9 trillion. • Given the education, age, and earnings of H-1B visa recipients, doubling the number of H-1B visas for just one year would reduce the budget deficit by $70 billion over the long run—and by another $70 billion each year thereafter. • The most beneficial immigration policy change would be to exempt STEM graduate degree holders from green-card caps, increasing immigration by some 15,000 people per year and reducing the visa backlog; this would reduce the deficit by $150 billion in the first year and $25 billion each year thereafter. • Eliminating refugee resettlement and permanent immigration by parents of U.S. citizens would reduce the debt by a combined $40 billion in net present value every year. • Congress could upskill the existing immigration flow by eliminating the diversity visa category and increasing the visas available to the top employment-based categories, and requiring immigrants to have earned a high school diploma to be eligible for a family visa, reducing the national debt by over $60 billion per year. By enacting a selectionist immigration policy—which requires securing the border from unlawful immigration, reducing low-skilled immigration, and expanding high-skilled immigration—the U.S. could reduce future federal debt by trillions of dollars over the long run. This report proposes a legislative package that provides over $2 trillion in net present value during the first year and over $200 billion each subsequent year, without accounting for the additional productivity growth resulting from high-skilled immigration. Furthermore, under these reforms, the annual number of immigrants who are new permanent residents decreases by about 15% after a temporary legalization program and a partial clearing of the employment-based visa backlog. Over the long term, annual legal immigration decreases under this plan from approximately 1 million in FY 2019 to approximately 860,000 

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2024. 58p.

By Kayla R. Freemon, Melissa A. Gutierrez , Jessica Huff, Hyunjung Cheon, David Choate, Taylor Cox a, Charles M. Katz 

Limited research attention has focused on homicides involving foreign-born victims. Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, we examined 9428 homicides that occurred in 2017 in the United States across 32 states and D.C. Approximately 8% of homicide victims were foreign-born. Homicide victimization rates were substantially lower for foreign-born persons, compared to U.S.-born persons. However, foreign-born persons from Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica had a substantially higher risk of homicide victimization. Notably, few homicides involving foreign-born victims were gang- or drug-trade-related. With the growing number of immigrants in the United States, policy and prevention efforts should be guided by research.

Preventive Medicine Reports Volume 26, April 2022, 101714

By Alex Nowrasteh, Sarah Eckhardt, and Michael Howard

The National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published ground breaking investigations into the economics of immigration in 1997 and 2017. Both publications contained thorough literature surveys compiled by experts, academics, and think tank scholars on how immigration affects many aspects of the U.S. economy. The 2017 NAS report included an original fiscal impact model as a unique contribution to immigration scholarship. Its findings have been used by policymakers, economists, journalists, and others to debate immigration reform. Here, we acquired the exact methods used by the NAS from its authors to replicate, update, and expand upon the 2017 fiscal impact model published in the NAS’s The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. This paper presents two analyses: a measure of the historical fiscal impacts of immigrants from 1994 to 2018 and the projected long-term fiscal impact of an additional immigrant and that immigrant’s descendants. An individual's fiscal impact refers to the difference between the taxes that person paid and the benefits that person received over a given period. We use and compare two models for these analyses: the first follows the NAS’s methodology as closely as possible and updates the data for more recent years (hereafter referred to as the Updated Model), and the second makes several methodological changes that we believe improve the accuracy of the final results (hereafter referred to as the Cato Model). The most substantial changes made in the Cato Model include correcting for a downward bias in the estimation of immigrants’ future fiscal contributions identified by Michael Clemens in 2021, allocating the fiscal impact of U.S.-born dependents of immigrants to the second generation group, and using a predictive regression to assign future education levels to individuals who are too young to have completed their education. Other minor changes are discussed in later sections. Immigrants have a more positive net fiscal impact than that of native-born Americans in most scenarios in the Updated Model and in every scenario in the Cato Model, depending on how the costs of public goods are allocated. The Cato Model finds that immigrant individuals who arrive at age 25 and who are high school dropouts have a net fiscal impact of +$216,000 in net present value terms, which does not include their descendants. Including the fiscal impact of those immigrants’ descendants reduces those immigrants’ net fiscal impact to +$57,000. By comparison, native-born American high school dropouts of the same age have a net fiscal impact of −$32,000 that drops to −$177,000 when their descendants are included (see Table 31). Results also differ by level of government. State and local governments often incur a less positive or even negative net fiscal impact from immigration, whereas the federal government almost always sees revenues rise above expenditures in response to immigration. With some variation and exceptions, the net fiscal impact of immigrants is more positive than it is for native-born Americans and positive overall for the federal and state/local governments

Washington, DC: The Cato Institute, 2023. 246p.  

By Miguel Pinedo, and Carmen R. Valdez

We examined the differential impact of having a family member, friend, or co-worker/community member detained or deported on the mental health of US citizens. In 2019, a sample of 3446 adult participants of White, Black, and Latinx racial/ethnic descent were recruited to complete an online questionnaire. Participants completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 to screen for anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Analyses were restricted to US citizens (n = 3282). Multivariable logistic and linear regressions were conducted to examine the mental health of US citizens who reported personally knowing a migrant who has been detained or deported and by their relationship to the migrant, overall and among Latinxs only. Among US citizens, 32% reported personally knowing someone who has been detained or deported. In multivariable analyses, US citizens who personally knew a detained or deported migrant were more likely to report anxiety, depression, and greater psychological distress. Associations were more pronounced among those who reported having a family member detained or deported. US-citizen Latinxs with social ties to migrants who have been detained or deported were especially more likely to report poor mental health than White and Latinx participants who did not personally know a migrant who has been detained or deported. It is critical that policy makers consider the potential mental health harms on migrants and its own citizens when designing policies targeting migrant communities. 

Am J Community Psychol (2020) 66:119–129 

May Contain Markup

By Joanne Passaro

Gender and Homelessness: The book explores how gender differences contribute to the persistence of homelessness, with a focus black men in New York City.

Cultural and Moral Location: Homelessness is not just an economic issue but also a cultural and moral one, where homeless men are seen as both hypermasculinized and emasculated.

Survival Strategies: Homeless women often strategize to appear"worthy" to move through the system, while homeless men lack similar strategies and face greater stigmatization.

Impact of Family Structures: The book argues that nuclear family ideologies play a significant role in who remains homeless versus who becomes houseless.

Psychology Press, 1996, 128 pages

May Contain Markup

Edited by Marcela Raffaelli & Reed W. Larson

Focus on Street Youth: The document explores the developmental issues faced by homeless and working street youth around the world,highlighting their unique challenges and resilience.

Geographical Approach: It presents studies from different regions,including India, Brazil, Kenya, and the United States, to show the diverse experiences and factors affecting street youth.

Research and Methodology: The document discusses the methodological and ethical issues in researching street youth,emphasizing the importance of understanding their context and using appropriate research methods.

Developmental Impact: It examines how street life affects the development of street youth, including their cognitive skills, identity formation, and psychological adjustment.

Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999, 90 pages

May Contain Markup

By Lucy Bonnerjea & Jean Lawton

Study Focus: The report examines homelessness in Brent within the context of race and housing, specifically looking at disadvantages faced by black people.

Historical Context: It provides a historical overview of homelessness legislation, highlighting the 1977 Housing Act And its impact on local authorities' responsibilities.

Current Issues: The document discusses current challenges in managing homelessness, including inadequate housing policies, discrimination, and the impact on families.

Recommendations: It offers policy recommendations to improve housing access, quality, and support for homeless families, emphasizing the need for equal opportunities and better planning.

Policy Studies Institute, 1987, 88 pages

By U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Annual Report provides an overview of the agency’s key programs, enforcement metrics, and accomplishments. It represents the agency’s commitment to transparency and accountability, and meets and exceeds the requirements in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act, 2023, which states: ICE is directed to continue issuing annual Fiscal Year ERO and HSI reports by not later than 90 days after [the] end of each fiscal year. The reports should compare data for the reporting fiscal year to the prior five fiscal years in a sortable, downloadable, and printable format, with a description of any significant deviations in data representation when compared to prior years. ICE was created in 2003 through the merger of the investigative and interior enforcement elements of the former U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Today, it is a premier federal law enforcement agency with over 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in more than 400 offices across the United States and around the world. Its mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration. In support of this mission, ICE works to uphold hundreds of federal statutes, administer U.S. immigration laws, oversee the cases of more than 6.2 million noncitizens on the agency’s national docket, combat fentanyl and other illegal narcotics, prevent terrorism, and combat the illegal movement of people and goods across the U.S. border. The agency is one of the three principal operational components charged with the immigration and customs authorities Congress placed in DHS under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and is a member of the federal law enforcement community. ICE’s unique combination of legal authorities and intelligence-driven law enforcement capabilities position the agency to respond to a range of increasingly complex cross-border and domestic threats. The agency has an annual budget of approximately $8 billion, primarily devoted to three operational directorates: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). A fourth directorate — Management & Administration (M&A) — supports the three operational branches to advance ICE’s mission, while the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) promotes integrity and accountability by conducting independent reviews of ICE programs and operations. Additionally, several support programs within the ICE Office of the Director (OD) are devoted to improving the agency’s operational and policymaking capabilities, enhancing stakeholder relationships, cultivating a professionally trained and diverse workforce, and ensuring safe and humane conditions for those in ICE custody.    

Washington, DC: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2023. 99p.

Edited by Ivan Ureta

Sensitive issues like migration and human mobility provoke paradigms and prejudices in public opinion. Media, Migration and Public Opinion is a collective effort of academic criticism to overcome these myths. The main motive of this book is linked to the fact that migration, media and public opinion related issues focusing on North Africa have not been addressed properly by available literature. Against this background, the objective of Media, Migration and Public Opinion pursues three aims: Firstly, it fills a gap in the scholarly literature regarding media, political communication and migration by shifting the focus to the North African countries Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Secondly, it assesses to what extent the paradigms of the «other» and its characterization as a source of problems established in receiving countries are also present in sending and transit countries. Thirdly, the book puts North African issues in relation to European countries by presenting case-studies focused on Spain, Malta and Switzerland in order to raise commonalities and differences.

Bern, SWIT: Peter Lang, 2011. 292p.

By International Organization for Migration Regional Office for Central America, North America and the Caribbean San Jose, Costa Rica

The increase in irregular migration in the Central American and Mexican routes has generated an increase in the flow of migrants through dangerous zones, exposing migrants to various risks, from the use of dangerous means of transportation to situations of exploitation, violence and disappearances. In recent years, hundreds of migrants have been reported missing or dead in these zones. Protection services face challenges and limitations in providing comprehensive care to the large number of migrants passing through the region. These risks are increased for vulnerable populations such as unaccompanied minors, women and LGBTIQA+ persons. In response, governments recognize the need to ensure the physical, legal and emotional safety of migrants in transit through the region. This study, developed by the IOM Regional Program on Migration with the support of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration of the United States Department of State, provides crucial information and lines of action to protect migrants in transit, contributing to the fulfillment of international commitments and the strengthening of coordination among member countries for the assistance and protection of migrants.

International Organization for Migration Regional Office for Central America, North America and the Caribbean San Jose, Costa Rica, 2024. 50p.