In one of the most impressive feats of immigration-related reporting in decades, the Atlantic Magazine’s Caitlin Dickerson details the harrowing trek that immigrants and refugees take through the Darien Gap in the September 2024 issue of the magazine.

Joining Dickerson on her journey were immigrants and refugees from Haiti, Ethiopia, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Brazil, Peru, heading north “across the only strip of land that connects South America to Central America,” she notes in her article, “What I Saw in the Darien Gap.”

Her reporting brings the reader into an immersive experience where one lives the journey in all of its terrifying moments.

“I went to the Darién Gap in December with the photographer Lynsey Addario because I wanted to see for myself what people were willing to risk to get to the United States,” writes Dickerson.

“Crossing the jungle can take three days or 10, depending on the weather, the weight of your bags, and pure chance. A minor injury can be catastrophic for even the fittest people,” she notes.

The most heartbreaking moment of the article is when a single mother from Vietnam named Bé loses her son to a flash flood as she and others tried to cross a river.

“Bé said she felt all the energy drain from her body as she sat on the beach, speechless and unmovable. Some of the other migrants in their group told her they had heard Khánh call out ‘Mommy’ as he was pulled away,” wrote Dickerson.

If only more Americans took the time to read this remarkable piece of journalism, perhaps empathy would eclipse xenophobia as the dominant force in today’s debates about immigration.

It is beyond disturbing and disappointing that when a migrant is charged with a crime in the U.S., conservative media outlets jump on the news and try to portray the crime as part of a broader trend that migrants are engaged in an ongoing crime wave.

So I was glad to see the New York Times and John Oliver recently puncture holes in the myth of “migrant crime.”

“It’s no accident that Republicans were focusing so hard on immigration,” John Oliver, Host of “Last Week Tonight,” said in reference to this month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“Recent polling shows it’s the second most important issue among Americans. But a big reason for that is the relentless, bad-faith fearmongering around the issue by the Republican party themselves, perhaps best summed up by the startling growth this year of the toxic phrase ‘migrant crime,’” said Oliver.

The Guardian noted Oliver’s comments in a recent article. “There is no migrant crime wave happening right now. In fact, there is no crime wave at all. Crime in general has been trending downward in recent years, including this one,” Oliver said.

U.S. rates of crime and immigration “have moved in opposite directions in recent years. After illegal immigration plummeted in 2020, the murder rate rose. And after illegal immigration spiked in 2021 and 2022, murders plateaued and then fell,” notes German Lopez, a reporter for the New York Times in a July 18 article.

Lopez points out that undocumented migrants “have an incentive to avoid trouble with the law so they do not get caught by the authorities and deported.”

“Despite claims from conservative media and campaign rhetoric pointing to immigration as the cause of crime increases, there is no evidence that immigration — and in particular the recent influx of immigrants to Democratic-run cities — is causing a ‘crime wave,'” the Brennan Center for Justice noted in late May.

Refugees and migrants continue to face extreme forms of violence, human rights violations and exploitation not just at sea, but also on land routes across the African continent, towards its Mediterranean coastline, a new report released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC)

The new report, titled “On this journey, no-one cares if you live or die” (Volume 2), was released on July 4.

With more people estimated to cross the Sahara Desert than the Mediterranean Sea – and deaths of refugees and migrants in the desert presumed to be double those happening at sea – the report casts light on the much less documented and publicized perils facing refugees and migrants on these land routes, a news release related to the report said.

Spanning a 3-year data collection period, the report also warns of an increase in the number of people attempting these perilous land crossings and the protection risks they face.

This is in part the result of deteriorating situations in countries of origin and host countries – including the eruption of new conflicts in the Sahel and Sudan, the devastating impact of climate change and disasters on new and protracted emergencies in the East and Horn of Africa, as well as the manifestation of racism and xenophobia affecting refugees and migrants.

“The report also notes that across parts of the continent, refugees and migrants are increasingly traversing areas where insurgent groups, militias and other criminal actors operate, and where human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, forced labor and sexual exploitation are rife. Some smuggling routes are now shifting towards more remote areas to avoid active conflict zones or border controls by State and non-State actors, subjecting people on the move to even greater risks,” the news release said.

Forced displacement surged to historic new levels across the globe last year and this, according to the 2024 flagship Global Trends Report from the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. 

The rise in overall forced displacement – to 120 million by May 2024 – was the 12th consecutive annual increase and reflects both new and mutating conflicts and a failure to resolve long-standing crises.

“A key factor driving the figures higher has been the devastating conflict in Sudan: at the end of 2023, 10.8 million Sudanese remained uprooted,” the UNHCR said.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar, millions were internally displaced last year by vicious fighting. UNRWA estimates that by the end of last year, up to 1.7 million people (75 percent of the population) had been displaced in the Gaza Strip by the catastrophic violence, most of whom were Palestine refugees. Syria remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 13.8 million forcibly displaced in and outside the country.

In a new research briefing, Amnesty International “documents extensively the ways in which technology contributes to the growing trend of human rights violations at borders and urges that states stop using such technologies until they can ensure their use does not violate  human rights,” the group said on May 21.

The briefing, The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, and Inequality, outlines how the use of new technologies by both state and non-state actors in migration systems across the world increases the likelihood that the human rights of people on the move—including the rights to privacy, non-discrimination, equality, and to seek asylum—will be violated, Amnesty International said.

The technologies “also exacerbate underlying racial, economic, and social inequalities at borders and beyond. Migrant workers and others with insecure citizenship status are often subject to the same forms of digitally enabled surveillance, monitoring, and exploitation as asylum seekers and refugees, and are similarly targeted by these technologies because of their inability to opt out or seek redress from harm,” Amnesty International said.

More than one-third of deceased migrants whose country of origin could be identified come from countries in conflict or with large refugee populations, “highlighting the dangers faced by those attempting to flee conflict zones without safe pathways,” the International Organization for Migration said on March 26.

However, the information on the identities of missing migrants is highly incomplete, IOM said in a new report.

Among the report’s key findings is the high number of unidentified deaths. More than two-thirds of migrants whose deaths were documented remain unidentified, “leaving families and communities grappling with the ambiguous loss of their loved ones. This underscores the need for better coordinated data collection and identification processes to provide closure to affected families,” IOM said.

The report, A Decade of Documenting Migrant Deaths, looks back at the last ten years, with more than 63,000 deaths and disappearances documented during migration over that period – and more deaths recorded in 2023 than in any prior year.

   

Washington University in St. Louis is launching Empower: Career Success for Refugees, a 26-week program to help refugees develop next-level language and professional skills to succeed in health care and other high-demand industries.

The program will be offered at no cost through WashU’s School of Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS) and will take place at the Delmar Divine, home to a growing number of health, education and human service organizations. 

Applicants must have legal refugee status, basic English skills and a high school education. Students will gain applied language skills as they work toward a certificate in health care or another CAPS program such as geographic information systems, data analytics and project management. CAPS will provide all course materials, including laptops. Classes will take place two nights a week.

A state grant is funding the program’s 18-month rollout. After that, Washington University will assume all costs thanks to a $10 million donation from a university donor. 

The St. Louis Mosaic Project, a leading nonprofit committed to promoting regional prosperity through immigration, is partnering with CAPS, publicizing the Empower program to the refugee community and helping students build resumes and apply for jobs. WashU staff also will work one-on-one with job seekers and track their success.

 At least 8,565 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2023, making it the deadliest year on record, according to data collected by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.

“The 2023 death toll represents a tragic increase of 20 per cent compared to 2022, highlighting the urgent need for action to prevent further loss of life,” IOM noted.

Last year’s total surpasses the number of dead and missing globally in the previous record year of 2016, when 8,084 people died during migration, making it the deadliest year since the Missing Migrants Project’s inception in 2014. As safe and regular migration pathways remain limited, hundreds of thousands of people attempt to migrate every year via irregular routes in unsafe conditions. Slightly more than half of the deaths were a result of drowning, with nine per cent caused by vehicle accidents, and seven per cent by violence. 

The Mediterranean crossing continues to be the deadliest route for migrants on record, with at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances, IOM reported. This is the highest death toll recorded in the Mediterranean since 2017.

Regionally, unprecedented numbers of migrant deaths were recorded across Africa (1,866) and Asia (2,138). In Africa, most of these deaths occurred in the Sahara Desert and the sea route to the Canary Islands. In Asia, hundreds of deaths of Afghan and Rohingya refugees fleeing their countries of origin were recorded last year, IOM said.

Established in 2014 following two devastating shipwrecks off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, the Missing Migrants Project is recognized as the sole indicator measuring the level of “safety” of migration in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.  

An upcoming report provides detailed analysis of missing migrants data from 2023 and key facts and figures on migrant deaths and disappearances over the last ten years. 

 

A March 6 New York Times article profiles Chinese immigrants who are arriving in New York City after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Once they reach the city, “many are tapping into long-established family and social networks in Chinese enclaves to get on their feet quickly and, for the most part, on their own,” the article notes.

“It is not known exactly how many Chinese migrants have landed in New York. But immigration court filings since October 2022 show that New York State was their top destination — with more than 21,000 filings for Chinese migrants — followed by California,” the Times reported, citing an analysis by Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute.

“The influx of Chinese migrants into the city has been the largest in more than a decade, and marks a return to the sizable immigration of Chinese people beginning in the 1980s that revived struggling neighborhoods like Chinatown, and cemented newer ethnic strongholds in Flushing, Queens, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn,” report Winnie Hu and Jeffrey Singer.

Nik Zemke and a team of tech activists have developed an app that will soon be rolled out on search-and-rescue vessels operated by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the Mediterranean, reports Beatrice Tridimas of the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a March 1 story published in the Christian Science Monitor.

Migrant rescue NGOs “hope the One Fleet app, along with drones and vessel auto-detection tools in development, will make it easier for them to find and respond to boats in peril,” writes Tridimas.

Search and rescue ships using the app “will be able to log the coordinates of emergency mobile or satellite phone calls made from vessels in distress to help identify which response team is closest.”