Dear John,
As you will have heard by now, this week the Biden administration announced executive action on immigration, severely curtailing the right to asylum at the U.S border. My colleague Adam Isacson put together this Q&A on the futility of attempting to shut down asylum and the need for long-term solutions to address the significant uptick of migrants and asylum seekers arriving at the border in recent years.
WOLA experts Stephanie Brewer, Adam Isacson and myself have been busy talking to the press about this important setback for those seeking protection in the United States. As I told NPR, one big question is how many migrants will now, out of desperation, resort to taking more remote routes, putting them at increased risk of harm. In the meantime, we have also spoken about what this will likely mean for U.S-Mexico relations, particularly as Mexico welcomes its first female president: Claudia Sheinbaum.
Next week kicks off the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress in Bogotá (June 12-15) with WOLA Senior-Fellow, Jo-Marie Burt at the helm. WOLA will be co-sponsoring a presidential panel on authoritarianism featuring our President Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, as well as roundtables on forced disappearance, and on migration and displacement in Colombia. We will also be taking part in discussions on elections in the region, as well as on the 40th anniversary of the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees.
Presidential panels will be open to the public and livestreamed on LASA’s YouTube and Facebook channels. The full program is available here.
Best,
