By Tuesday Reitano and Prem Mahadevan

This brief brings together key lessons emerging from GI-TOC research on the smuggling of migrants (SOM) between 2015-23. The research emphasises (1) The need to provide sufficient opportunities for legal migration (2) The importance of timing for enforcement-led responses (3) The adaptive nature of the smuggling industry, with route changes being implemented swiftly in response to seemingly formidable obstacles to population movement.

Hostility towards migrants has increased in the aftermath of COVID-19, however drivers of migration have intensified. Regional smuggling markets and routes are consolidating under influential poly-criminals, while governments crack down on smaller players. To counter this, state intervention efforts might consider prioritising the slowing, and ideally, the reversal of this consolidation. This would require a holistic approach that addresses migrant smuggling through development interventions, over solely concentrating on interdiction measures.

Policy implications

• Legal migration prospects offer a clear boundary between lawful and unlawful entry, facilitating prompt action for those not using established channels.

• Setting up humanitarian support infrastructure along smuggling routes could help mitigate power imbalances between migrants and smugglers

• Multilateral intelligence collection states with visa-free travel arrangements between them, could use tracking to detect criminal consolidation on key routes, enabling targeted interdiction and counter-action against smuggling networks.

• Differentiating between migrant smuggling networks: standalone operations vs. career criminal groups.

• Partnering with NGOs and CSOs could help map smuggling networks, as they often have access to migrant accounts.

• Strengthening of data collation capacity within law enforcement agencies could build up a longterm evidence base to curate policy responses.

Briefing Note 28

The Hague: Serious Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE), 2024. 10p.

By Donald Kerwin and Brendan Kerwin

This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.

By American Immigration Council

The collusion between local law enforcement agencies and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is well-documented. Local law enforcement agencies like the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) often work in concert with USBP agents in constructing a dragnet that serves as a force multiplier for USBP to funnel immigrants—most of whom have no criminal history—into deportation proceedings. These enforcement practices often go unchecked despite accounts suggesting a pattern of potentially unconstitutional practices. This unfettered enforcement upends the lives of immigrants who have developed deep ties to the United States and often impacts U.S. citizens and immigrants with lawful status who are part of mixed status families. It also makes Latino residents and people of color who are U.S. citizens or lawful immigrants undue targets of enforcement. Immigrants of color including those of Latin American origin who live, travel, or work in Ohio often bear the brunt of these disproportionate and discriminatory immigration enforcement practices.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2024. 22p.

By Donald Kerwin and Evin Millet

This study examines the legal capacity available to low-income immigrants on national, state, and sub-state levels. Legal professionals working in charitable immigration service programs serve as the study’s rough proxy for legal capacity, and undocumented immigrants its proxy for legal need. The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) compiled data on charitable immigration programs and their legal professionals from the:

• US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) “Recognized Organizations and Accredited Representatives Roster by State and City,” which is maintained by the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR’s) Office of Legal Access Programs (OLAP).

• Directories of two leading, legal support agencies for charitable immigration legal programs, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and the Immigrant Advocates Network (IAN).

CMS supplemented and updated these sources with information from the websites of charitable immigration programs. It also added legal programs to its dataset that did not appear in any of these lists. It counted as legal professionals, attorneys, federally accredited non-attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants. The paper finds that there are 1,413 undocumented persons in the United States for every charitable legal professional and far less capacity than the national average in:

• States such as Alabama (6,656 undocumented per legal professional), Hawaii (4,506), Kansas (3,010), Georgia (2,853), New Jersey (2,687), Florida (2,681), North Carolina (2,671), Virginia (2,634) and Arizona (2,561).

• Metropolitan areas (MAs) such as Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (5,307), Dallas-Fort Worth Arlington (4,436), Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale (3,439) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land (3,099).

• San Bernardino County (6,178), Clark County (4,747), Riverside County (4,625), Tarrant County (3,955) and Dallas County (3,939).

The study’s introduction summarizes its top-line findings. Its first section describes the importance of charitable immigration legal programs to immigrants, families and communities. Its second details the study’s findings on charitable legal capacity and immigrant need. Its third compares the legal capacity of 1,803 charitable legal programs and their 7,322 legal professionals, with the US undocumented population by state and for the 15 largest MAs and counties. Its fourth describes CMS’s research methodology and data sources. The paper ends with policy recommendations on how to expand legal capacity for low-income immigrants and better assess legal capacity and need moving forward.

Journal on Migration and Human Security 2022, Vol. 10(3) 190-214

By David Goodhart

This report calls for a new safe and legal route for genuine refugees – which would only come into effect once illegal Channel crossings have dropped to below 10,000 a year.

Under the plan put forward by David Goodhart, the number of refugees admitted under this new route would be set by an annual cap from Parliament – placing the asylum system under democratic control.

It would be modelled after the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, used for Syrian refugees, and focussed on women and girls in conflict zones, not healthy young male migrants attempting to cross from France.

The report argues that in order to address the numbers of migrants crossing the Chanel illegally in small boats, the Government must prioritise return agreements and rapid deportation of Channel crossers – if necessary, giving aid to countries in exchange for securing return agreements.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 31p.

By: Team from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), including (in alphabetical order) Lucia Bird, Giulia D’Amico, Sarah Fares, Alex Goodwin and Tuesday Reitano

As of January 2024, over 100 000 people had crossed the English Channel using small boats since 2018. The current peak came in 2022, when over 45 000 people were detected arriving in the UK illegally using small boats launched from the coast of northern France. Although small in comparison with the flows of migrants risking the journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe each year, this figure marked a record high for the UK since records began in 2018. The spike in the number of arrivals can be largely explained by the ‘industrialization’ of a system of smuggling migrants by boat, a process that began in 2018.

This report explores how the English Channel has become a commercialized human smuggling route. It analyzes the shift in human smuggling transportation from land to sea, from trucks using the Channel Tunnel to rigid inflatable boats (RIBs).

Geneva, SWIT: 2024 Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.2024. 34p.

By Nicole Ward and Jeanne Batalova

The United States is in the midst of an historic period in its immigration history, facing a changing composition of the immigrant population, pandemic-related pent-up demand for permanent and temporary visas resulting in extensive backlogs, record pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border, and somewhat decreasing public support for expanded immigration. Legal permanent and temporary immigration rose in 2022 after a few years of chill brought about by the COVID-19 public-health crisis and the Trump administration’s restrictive policies and rhetoric. Amid crises around the world, the Biden administration extended or expanded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain eligible immigrants already in the United States and announced special humanitarian parole programs allowing some migrants from several countries to enter the United States and stay temporarily. At the southwest border, record numbers of migrant encounters in 2022 accompanied court orders preventing the Biden administration from revoking the Title 42 public-health order authorizing the rapid expulsion of asylum seekers and other migrants. The administration has proposed a revised system to govern asylum at the border, but as of this writing the situation remains in flux. To promote orderly arrival and processing of asylum seekers and expedite the expulsion of unauthorized migrants, in January 2023 the Biden administration announced another humanitarian parole program to include up to 30,000 authorized newcomers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela every month if they have a U.S. sponsor. This program was followed by controversial proposed changes to U.S. asylum system. Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined, according to the UN Population Division’s mid-2020 data. While the U.S. population represents about 5 percent of the total world population, close to 20 percent of all global migrants reside in the United States. This Spotlight offers information about the approximately 45.3 million immigrants in the United States as of 2021, by compiling the most authoritative and current data available. It provides an overview of historic immigration trends in the United States, sociodemographic information about who is immigrating, through which channels, and how many immigrants become naturalized citizens. It also provides data on the government’s enforcement actions and adjudication efforts to process visas.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2023. 34p.

Edited by Sally Baker

Welcome to this open access annotated bibliography, which has been curated by a collective of scholars who share an interest in the impacts of forced migration on people from refugee, asylum seeking and Culturally and Linguistically Marginalised (CALM) migrant backgrounds. These resources are intended to be shared with the international community of researchers, students, educators, and practitioners who work with, or are interested in, forced migration, education, employment, and resettlement. This bibliography offers a snapshot of some of the available literature that relates to the following areas of scholarly and practitioner interest:

• Refugees and access to, participation in, and transition out of higher education.

• Schooling and refugee youth.

• Adult Education (including learning host language and literacies).

• Resettlement of refugees and CALM migrants.

• Employment of refugees and CALM migrants in resettlement contexts.

• People seeking asylum in Australia.

• Discourses and media narratives relating to forced migration.

• Methodological and ethical discussions relating to research with refugees.

• Citizenship and refugees.

• Complementary pathways, including education pathways.

In this library, you will find summaries and annotated bibliographies of literature with a common focus on refugees and asylum seekers (and to a lesser extent CALM migrants more broadly). This literature has been organised thematically according to patterns that have emerged from a deep and sustained engagement with the various fields that relate to the access to, participation in and ‘success’ of people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds in resettlement, education and employment. The thematic organisation of the bibliography does not reflect the intersecting and complex overlaps of the various foci in the literature, so please keep in mind that this is an interpretive exercise and one that could easily be reworked by another set of authors.

Sydney: Refugee Education Special Interest Group. 2024. 764p.

By Jukka Könönen

Notwithstanding claims about the emergence of ‘crimmigration’ systems, immigration law and criminal law entail two different sets of instruments for authorities to control foreign nationals. Drawing on an analysis of removal orders for foreign offenders in Finland, this article demonstrates that significant administrative powers in immigration enforcement are employed largely autonomously from the criminal justice system. Immigration law enables the police and immigration officials to issue removal orders based on fines or penal orders for (suspected) minor offences, without obtaining criminal convictions. In addition to disproportionate administrative sanctions for foreign nationals, removal orders involve a preventive rationale targeting future risks for the society based on the assumed continuation of criminal activities. While criminal courts adjudicate all severe offences, punitive application of immigration law enables authorities to bypass criminal justice procedures and safeguards, resulting in a distinct, administrative punitive system for visiting third-country nationals.

Theoretical Criminology Volume 28, Issue 1, February 2024, Pages 70-87

By W. David Bradford and Felipe Lozano-Rojas

Alcohol and drug overdoses have multiple complex causes. In this article we contribute to the literature that links homelessness, the most extreme form of housing disruption, to accidental SUD-related poisonings. Using plausibly exogenous variation from a state’s landlord-tenant policies that influence evictions, we estimated the causal impact of homelessness on SUD-related mortality. We found large effects of homelessness on SUD-related poisonings (for example, a 10 percent increase in homelessness led to a 3.2 percent increase in opioid poisonings in metropolitan areas). Our findings indicate that reducing local homelessness rates from the seventy-fifth to the fiftieth percentile levels could have saved more than 1,900 lives from opioid overdoses across all metropolitan localities in the final year of our study data. We conclude that strengthening the social safety net in terms of housing security could help curb the ongoing SUD-related poisoning epidemic in the US.

Health Affairs V. 43(2): February 2024

By Julia Neusner and Kennji Kizuka. Eleanor Acer, Robyn Barnard, Licha Nyiendo, and Sydney Randall

On August 8, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the end of the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” (RMX) policy. The announcement came after a federal district court, following a Supreme Court ruling in June 2022, lifted an injunction that had blocked the Biden administration’s termination of the policy and had compelled its reimplementation.

While the district court order was in effect, thousands more asylum seekers were returned by DHS to dangerous regions of Mexico. There they were forced to wait for immigration court hearings despite being almost entirely cut off from lawyers who could represent them in their requests for refugee protection. In December 2021, DHS stated that in reimplementing RMX it had taken steps to “enhance[] protections” and “protect[] individuals’ rights to a full and fair hearing.”

But the RMX policy—and others like it that would force asylum seekers to wait outside the United States for their cases to be heard—simply cannot be implemented lawfully, safely, fairly, or humanely. During the court-ordered reimplementation of RMX (or RMX 2.0), asylum seekers reported horrific kidnappings, rapes, and other violent attacks after DHS returned them to Mexico. RMX hearings also remained a due process farce. Only a tiny percentage of the individuals whose cases were decided under RMX 2.0 managed to find attorneys to represent them. A vanishingly small number of the mainly Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans subjected to the policy were granted asylum—just 63 people out of more than 1,600 completed cases. This slow winddown process comes as state politicians aligned with the former Trump administration are, yet again, seeking to force the return of RMX. After the Supreme Court rejected their initial case, they amended their lawsuit to challenge the memoranda DHS issued to re-terminate the policy. In early September 2022, the same district court that ordered the Biden administration to restart RMX will consider this latest cynical ploy to force the policy’s continuation—an attempt to again block asylum seekers from safety and subject them to the horrifying human rights abuses detailed in this report. At the same time, the similarly harmful Title 42 policy remains in effect. A court order blocking its termination has resulted in the continued shutdown of normal asylum processing at ports of entry and continued expulsions to highly dangerous places, which at the moment overwhelmingly target asylum seekers and migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Working closely with many other organizations, Human Rights First has monitored and reported on the Remain in Mexico policy since its inception in January 2019, conducting in-depth research and issuing a series of reports in February 2019, August 2019, October 2019, December 2019, January 2020, May 2020, December 2020, December 2021, and January 2022. This report is based on in-person interviews Human Rights First conducted with attorneys and RMX enrollees in Tijuana in April and September 2022; remote interviews held between April and September 2022 with attorneys and asylum seekers returned to Mexico under RMX 2.0; a review of anonymized notes from nearly 2,700 interviews conducted by pro bono law firms and non-governmental organizations providing legal information to individuals placed in RMX 2.0 (representing approximately one quarter of all people enrolled in RMX during the Biden administration); government data, media accounts, and other human rights reports.

New York: Human Rights First, 2022. 26p.

By: Daniel E Martínez, Josiah Heyman, Jeremy Slack

Enforcement along the US-Mexico border has intensified significantly since the early 1990s. Social scientists have documented several consequences of border militarization, including increased border-crosser deaths, the killing of more than 110 people by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents over the past decade, and expanded ethno-racial profiling in southwestern communities by immigration authorities. Less attention has been paid to the pervasive and routine mistreatment migrants experience on a daily basis in CBP custody.

This paper traces major developments in border enforcement to three notable initiatives: the “prevention-through-deterrence” strategy; the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Consequence Delivery System, initiated in 2011. Despite the massive buildup in enforcement, CBP has operated with little transparency and accountability to the detriment of migrants. The paper provides an overview of the findings of nongovernmental organizations and social scientists regarding migrant mistreatment while in CBP custody. It then highlights important shifts in migration patterns over the past decade, as well as changes in border enforcement efforts during the Trump administration. It discusses how these transformations affect migrants’ everyday encounters with CBP officials.

New York: Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School, 2020. 22p.

By Josiah Heyman, Jeremy Slack, Daniel E Martínez

United States Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen allegedly hit an undocumented migrant with his truck in November 2017. In preparation for trial, federal prosecutors revealed that Bowen had a history of making derogatory statements about migrants in text messages, including calling them “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire.” Mr. Bowen’s attorney tried to suppress the disclosure of his text messages, offering the damning argument that this attitude was “commonplace throughout the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector,” and “part of the agency’s culture”(Elfrink 2019). This case is not isolated, and our evidence raises serious concerns about a new proposal to have Border Patrol agents function as asylum officers.

The Trump administration has proposed that about 60 Border Patrol agents serve as asylum officers at the US-Mexico border (Taxin 2019). These agents would receive an unspecified period of training. 1 Their role would be to conduct initial interviews to determine whether asylum-seekers have a credible fear of returning to their countries or should be sent back. Those who pass such interviews can seek asylum before an immigration judge (ibid.). This process applies to people entering without authorization at the Mexican border, either presenting themselves without visas at ports of entry or entering without inspection. Despite it being legal to cross the border and request asylum, Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors are otherwise trained to target unauthorized border crossings as violations of the law. Border Patrol agents-

New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2019. 9p.

By Myrthe Wijnkoop, Stefan Kok, Anouk Pronk, Kathleen Bush -Joseph, Robin Neumann, Monika Sie and Dhian Ho

In this study, ‘In Search of Control’, current developments on access to asylum procedures and humanitarian protection in five destination countries have been studied through five separate country reports. In the synthesis report, results are compared and analysed, looking at which lessons can be learned from the North American context (Canada, United States), the European context (Denmark, the Netherlands) and the context in the Pacific (Australia). Our research shows that all these destination states are facing the same balancing act in search of control of migration. Therefore, they could and should learn from each other’s experiences in tackling this challenge. Firstly, there is a common humanitarian duty and responsibility to provide protection to those in need while demonstrating solidarity with regions facing heightened challenges due to refugee pressures and other geopolitical crises. Secondly, due to an aging population these states face increasing labour shortages, for which migration is needed. Thirdly, states want to remain in control over their borders and want to manage the influx and admission of migrants. Due to this balancing act, there are no ‘quick fixes’ in dealing with asylum migration. As these interrelated challenges are part of a global issue, innovative ways forward need to be based on solidarity and cooperation taking into account mutual interest; of those seeking protection, host countries in the region, transit countries becoming destination countries, communities within traditional destination countries, and of other destination states. To facilitate such cooperation, a clear legal framework with sound preconditions and safeguards is needed to ensure both effectiveness and the protection of the rights of refugees and migrants. This study identifies ten policy approaches that have been initiated or considered by these ‘destination states’ in order to either provide or limit access to asylum procedures and other forms of humanitarian protection. These approaches vary from interdiction to legal pathways, and from procedural measures to strategic communication, as will be briefly described below.

The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael, 2024. 360p.

By Josiah Heyman, Jeremy Slack, Daniel E Martínez

United States Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen allegedly hit an undocumented migrant with his truck in November 2017. In preparation for trial, federal prosecutors revealed that Bowen had a history of making derogatory statements about migrants in text messages, including calling them “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindl for a fire.” Mr. Bowen’s attorney tried to suppress the disclosure of his text messages, offering the damning argument that this attitude was “commonplace throughout the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector,” and “part of the agency’s culture” (Elfrink 2019). This case is not isolated, and our evidence raises serious concerns about a new proposal to have Border Patrol agents function as asylum officers.

The Trump administration has proposed that about 60 Border Patrol agents serve as asylum officers at the US-Mexico border (Taxin 2019). These agents would receive an unspecified period of training.[1] Their role would be to conduct initial interviews to determine whether asylum-seekers have a credible fear of returning to their countries or should be sent back. Those who pass such interviews can seek asylum before an immigration judge (ibid.). This process applies to people entering without authorization at the Mexican border, either presenting themselves without visas at ports of entry or entering without inspection. Despite it being legal to cross the border and request asylum, Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors are otherwise trained to target unauthorized border crossings as violations of the law. Border Patrol agents-turned-asylum officers would mark a significant change to the Border Patrol’s role and in the asylum process overall.

As the Bowen case suggests, many Border Patrol Agents have negative attitudes toward immigrants and are unsuitable for the role of asylum officers. Clara Long from Human Rights Watch reports: “What we see over and over again is Border Patrol just has a culture of disbelieving asylum seekers. It’s really hard to imagine these agents being able to create the openness and trust and listening that’s really required for a credible fear interview” (Taxin 2019). In fact, this seems to be the very reason for the proposal. NBC reports that “Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller in particular has argued that CBP agents will be tougher on asylum-seekers and will pass fewer of them on the initial screening” (Ainsley, Lee, and Welker 2019). Yet the point of a credible fear interview is not to be negative or positive; the relevant regulations state that “the asylum officer…will conduct the interview in a non-adversarial manner… The purpose of the interview shall be to elicit all relevant and useful information bearing on whether the applicant has a credible fear of persecution or torture.”[2] The thinking is that the United States would rather afford people the benefit of the doubt and give them access to a full immigration hearing than to send them back home where they may be persecuted or killed. We have robust data that supports Long’s concern over Border Patrol agents being given this responsibility.

As part of the second wave of the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), we surveyed 1,109 recently deported Mexican migrants who crossed the border without documents, were apprehended, and deported to Mexico. From 2010-2012, we completed surveys in Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California; Nogales, Sonora; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas; and Mexico City. Our response rate was over 90 percent. The cities where we worked received 65 percent of all deportees along the US-Mexico border during the study period. Table 1 (below) provides basic descriptive findings from the MBCS. The typical MBCS respondent was male, between the ages of 18 and 34, from west-central (e.g., Jalisco or Michoacán) or southern/southeastern Mexico (e.g., Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca), with some prior migration experience, who most recently crossed through the Tucson, San Diego, or Laredo Border Patrol sectors.

New York; Center for Migration Studies, 2019. 8p.

By Eleonora Celoria, and Marta Gionco

This briefing presents noteworthy practices at the national and European Union (EU) level related to safeguarding the rights of people in immigration detention and ultimately ending detention for migration purposes, by focusing on a wide range of actors spanning from civil society to national governments. It focuses on three advocacy objectives: 1. raising the visibility of detention and its harms, 2. ending the detention of children in the context of migration, and 3. implementing community-based solutions that can ultimately prevent and contribute to ending detention. The first chapter of the briefing explores civil society efforts aimed at unveiling what happens in immigration detention centres as well as the harmful impact of immigration detention itself. Ensuring that people in detention speak to the outside world and giving NGOs access to detention centres have been identified as the most important tools in this regard. It is also contended that further research, as well as litigation and advocacy, related to the right to communicate is needed. NGOs in the Netherlands and the UK have set up hotline systems to establish contact with individuals in detention, most of whom do not have access to their mobile phones. In Italy, strategic litigation has challenged the state’s denial to grant NGOs access to detention facilities. Both activities – phone communication and civil society visits - can be seen as part of a wider advocacy strategy to end immigrant detention, as exemplified by the work of civil society coalitions and organisations in Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom, among others. The second chapter focuses on immigration detention of children, a practice which is never in the child’s best interests and should always be forbidden. While EU law still allows for immigration detention of children, there have been developments at the political and legislative levels in Germany, Belgium, France and Greece aiming at restricting the situations in which children could be detained for immigration purposes. The cases of Ireland, Italy and Spain are also explored, as these states do not generally detain children (whether they are unaccompanied or with their families). Overall, to comply with international standards and to put an end to child detention in the migration context, further efforts are needed at both the EU and national levels. The final chapter focuses on community-based solutions to prevent or end immigration detention. This section focuses in particular on the advantages of providing support through case management, which is a structured social work approach which empowers individuals to work towards case resolution (i.e., any temporary or permanent migration outcome, such as a visa, regularization scheme, re-migration or voluntary return). This section explores case studies from Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, the UK and Italy, where case management projects are run by civil society originations, in cooperation with local (Belgium) or national (Bulgaria, Poland, UK) governments. Although each national experience is unique, the independent evaluation of these projects showed that they have some features in common: high levels of compliance of the people involved with the project, the limited numbers of migrants who have access to case management in comparison to the number of undocumented migrants, and the fact that these projects need to be accompanied by a general policy shift towards the implementation of non-coercive solutions in migration management. To conclude, this briefing analyses the practices of two countries, Ecuador and Uruguay, which are among the few states in the world that never applied or no longer resort to immigration detention.

Brussels, Belgium : PICUM – Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, 2024. 28p.

By Yvonne Giesing

We study the effects of technological change on immigration flows as well as the labor market outcomes of migrants versus natives. We analyse and compare the effects of two different automation technologies: Industrial robots and artificial intelligence. We exploit data provided by the Industrial Federation of Robotics as well as online job vacancy data on Germany, a highly automated economy and the main destination for migrants in Europe. We apply an instrumental variable strategy and identify how robots decrease the wage of migrants across all skill groups, while neither having a significant impact on the native population nor immigration flows. In the case of AI, we determine an increase in the wage gap as well as the unemployment gap of migrant and native populations. This applies to the low-, medium- and high-skilled and is indicative of migrants facing displacement effects, while natives might benefit from productivity and complementarity effects. In addition, AI leads to a significant inflow of immigrants. Policymakers should devote special attention to the migration population when designing mitigation policies in response to technological change to avoid further increases in inequality between migrants and natives.

Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich, 2023. 50p.

By I. Kulu-Glasgow M. van der Meer J.M.D. Schans M.P.C. Scheepmaker

Unaccompanied minors (UM) coming to Europe form an especially vulnerable group of migrant children, traveling without their parents or other adults exercising authority over them. In many European countries, asking for international protection is the main way for them to receive accommodation and a residence permit. However, minors coming from so-called safe countries, where in general there is no (fear of) persecution (e.g. Morocco, and in the Netherlands until June 2021 Algeria) have little or no chance of receiving a residence permit. Some of these mostly North African youngsters travel from one European country to another, in search of opportunities to work and earn money. According to Dutch supervisors (legal guardians and mentors in the accommodation centres), this group of nomadic minors often face multiple problems, such as drug addiction and mental health problems. This is also the group that sometimes causes incidents at or outside the accommodation centres or is involved in criminal activities (see also Inspectie Justitie en Veiligheid, 2021). Studies in the Netherlands show that many of these youngsters go off the radar either before or during the asylum procedure and it is suspected that they stay in the Netherlands or move on to different European countries. In general, knowledge about this group is both limited and fragmented. The aim of this study was to learn more about the background of this group of minors, and gain knowledge about the experiences of other European countries with this specific group of minors.

The Hague: WODC, 2023. 146p.

By Robert Warren.

This report describes estimates of the undocumented population residing in the United States in 2022 compiled by CMS. The estimates are based on data collected in the American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the US Census Bureau.

The report finds that the undocumented population grew from 10.3 million in 2021 to 10.9 million in 2022, an increase of 650,000. The increase reverses more than a decade of gradual decline. The undocumented populations from 10 countries increased by a total of 525,000. The report explains why undocumented population growth is much less than the number of apprehensions by the Department of Homeland Security. Finally, the Appendix provides a detailed description of the CMS methodology.

The report includes the following topline findings:

• After remaining at or near zero growth from 2010 to 2021, the US undocumented population increased by 650,000 in 2022.

• The largest population gains in 2022 were for Central America (205,000), South America (200,000), and Asia (140,000).

• From 2015 to 2022, the undocumented population from Mexico declined by 1.3 million; in the same period, the combined population from Central and South America increased by 1.2 million.

The report describes changes in the US undocumented population by country of origin and state of residence since 2018 with special emphasis on changes from 2021 to 2022. The rapid increase in annual apprehensions and expulsions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border that began in 2019 has dominated media attention on migration for the past four years. That, in turn, has focused attention on the prospect of large annual increases in the undocumented population. Unfortunately, ACS data needed to monitor changes in the population are not available until about a year after the ACS survey is completed. The unique CMS methodology made it possible to derive these estimates less than two months after the release of 2022 ACS data.

By: Priyanka Bhatt, Katie Quigley, Azadeh Shahshahani, Gina Starfield, Ayano Kitano

Immigrants detained at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia have, for years, suffered egregious medical abuse, including invasive and medically unnecessary gynecological procedures without consent. Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracted with ICDC in 2011, advocates have consistently raised concerns about the treatment of immigrants at the facility, including the lack of adequate medical and mental health care. Yet, months after that announcement, immigrants were still being detained in inhumane conditions at ICDC, until the last ones were transferred to other facilities in early September 2021. This report highlights the stories of women who suffered lasting trauma and debilitating physical and psychological effects of the medical abuse they endured while detained at ICDC. The abuses they suffered were first brought to light in September 2020, when Project South, together with Georgia Detention Watch, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and the South Georgia Immigrant Support Network, filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE, and ICDC detailing the gross disregard for the health and medical well-being of immigrants detained at ICDC. The complaint, submitted on behalf of immigrants held at ICDC and whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse at ICDC, publicized multiple accounts of immigrant women subjected to non-consensual, medically unnecessary, or invasive gynecological procedures while in detention. Many women detained at ICDC did not understand the invasive medical procedures they were subjected to and, as a result, suffered not only lasting trauma but also debilitating effects of the procedures that they were not informed about. The complaint prompted more than 170 members of Congress to demand an investigation by DHS, which is ongoing. In October 2020, an independent team of medical experts, including board-certified obstetricians, reviewed the medical records of multiple women at ICDC and found a significant pattern of incorrect diagnoses and failure to secure informed consent for medical procedures.8 These abuses occurred despite the fact that the doctor who perpetrated them, Dr. Mahendra Amin, had already been investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice for similar abusive behavior, specifically for performing unnecessary medical procedures in violation of the False Claims Act. After these women and many others came forward, DHS and ICE retaliated by deporting and threatening to deport those who spoke out. These actions violate the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to petition the government and participate in federal investigations. By detaining these women for months on end during a global pandemic, DHS, ICE, and ICDC also failed to protect their health and safety, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, statutes, and regulations. The non-consensual treatment of these women also violates fundamental human rights, including the right to informed consent and bodily autonomy, which may not be violated under any circumstances. The United States must be held accountable for failing to uphold its obligations under both domestic and international law.

Atlanta: Project South, 2021. 37p.