“Gotaways” Increasing Faster than Apprehensions on Southwestern Border

This post was co-authored by Daniel E. Martínez, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The George Washington University and co-author of the Migrant Border Crossing Study. With the deadline looming for Congress to approve funds to keep the lights on at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the nation’s border protection forces, new data released under … Continue reading →

“At least we’re better than Mexico in our FOIA policy, right?”

Here’s a good example of why we take the time to file access to information requests on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and how this strategy sometimes encourages governments to disclose information on migration and border security policies that they would otherwise withhold from release. One objective of our two-country FOI strategy was to … Continue reading →

New Report, Declassified Documents, Highlight Security Concerns at “Mexico’s Other Border”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) closely monitors a special class of migrants in Mexico—known as Special Interest Aliens (SIAs)—that are thought to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document obtained by the National Security Archive and cited in an important new report on Mexico’s southern border published this week by the … Continue reading →

Carmen Aristegui Tweets Story on Napolitano/Snowden Briefing Papers

This morning, Carmen Aristegui of Noticias MVS in Mexico essentially live-tweeted a story about the Napolitano briefing papers we published yesterday. These documents included a bullet point indicating that Mexico wanted to “put to bed” issues stemming from leaked documents on U.S. spy operations in Mexico. You can read the documents in our original post … Continue reading →

Mexico Privately Hoped to “Put to Bed” Tensions Raised by Snowden Leaks

This post was co-authored by Michael Evans and Jesse Franzblau. Just three months ago, Mexico wanted to “put to bed” bilateral tensions arising from the leak of sensitive intelligence information indicating that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spied on Mexican citizens. The new information was discovered by the non-governmental National Security Archive among a set of … Continue reading →

Mexican Migration Agency Posts U.S. Primer on Latin Gang Tattoos

Recently, our colleagues at Fundar discovered a truly bizarre document buried deep inside the Web site of Mexico’s National Institute for Migration (INM): an 86-page report featuring graphic photos of the body art adorning the bodies of Mexican and Central American gang members. (You can download the full report here.) In some cases, the individuals … Continue reading →