U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Venezuelan Migration, Notes from Mexico, Border Barriers |
Adam Isacson
Adam Isacson
Director for Defense Oversight
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With this series of updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past updates here.
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THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:
THE FULL UPDATE:
Venezuelan citizens living in the United States and elsewhere are voicing cautious optimism in the aftermath of the January 3 U.S. military operation that extracted the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. Few are making plans to return, however, since the remainder of Maduro’s regime is still in power and apparently working with the Trump administration. “Most of my clients were very, very happy in the immediate aftermath, but are now concerned you’re going to have the same group of individuals in power in Venezuela,” Helena Tetzeli, a Miami-based immigration attorney with around 100 Venezuelan clients, told CNN.
The uncertain current moment affects nearly 8 million Venezuelan citizens (about a quarter of the country’s population) who have fled their country since the mid-2010s. Venezuelan people entered Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody at the U.S.-Mexico border 831,473 times since 2020, and about 6.91 million are living elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the UNHCR/IOM Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V). Hundreds of thousands more migrated to Europe, Canada, and elsewhere.
In the United States, the Trump administration has pursued several severe measures to encourage recently arrived Venezuelan migrants to abandon protection claims and leave the country. They include:
To this list, of course, must be added the administration’s March 2025 invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelans without due process on suspicion of ties to the Tren de Aragua organized crime group. Courts have since blocked Alien Enemies Act removals, requiring advance notification and opportunities for defense.
Nonetheless, the New York Times reported on December 27 that, in internal deliberations, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “told officials that if the United States and Venezuela were at war, the Trump administration could again invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law, to expedite deportations of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans the administration stripped of temporary protected status.” The Justice Department cited Maduro’s extraction in a January 5 filing defending its Alien Enemies Act invocation before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Venezuela is “more free today than it was yesterday,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem