• U.S. Foreign Policy
• Human Rights
• North America
• South America
• Catherine Osborn

March 14, 2025, 8:00 AM View Comments ()

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Some migration flows shift south as the U.S.-Mexico border hardens, Cuba finalizes a Vatican-mediated prisoner release, and a trial on the circumstances of soccer legend Diego Maradona’s death gets underway in Argentina.

Migration Patterns and U.S. Politics

Around 50 days have passed since U.S. President Donald Trump made it nearly impossible to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. In addition to restricting eligibility rules, Trump discontinued a mobile app that allowed some migrants waiting in Mexico to book asylum appointments with U.S. authorities.

Amid those and other U.S. immigration policy changes, a shift seems to be underway in migration patterns farther south.

Migration flows appear to have at least partially reversed at the jungle border between Colombia and Panama, known as the Darién Gap. The region made headlines in recent years as record numbers of northbound undocumented migrants passed through it. But in February, Panamanian authorities registered figures that showed a significant shift.

Last month, only 408 migrants moved north through the Darién Gap, according to Panama’s government. For much of 2024, northbound crossings through the region numbered more than 25,000 per month. But Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said on Feb. 27 that around 2,200 migrants had entered Panama heading south so far this year.

In Mexico, meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration received 2,862 requests in January and February to help migrants move back to their home countries, Reuters reported. That’s more than three times the requests made during the same period last year.

Even more migrants are attempting to apply for asylum in Mexico—some 500 to 600 per day, three times higher than during the same period last year, the U.N. refugee agency’s Giovanni Lepri said. The elevated demand for asylum protection in Mexico is quickly straining authorities’ processing capacity.

In Mexico City, the wait time at the end of 2024 for an asylum appointment was roughly one to two weeks; that grew to around two months in February, according to a source familiar with the data who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. Mexico’s refugee agency, which handles intake for asylum applicants, did not respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment.

It’s too early to tell whether the elevated number of asylum applications in Mexico will become the new normal, said Gretchen Kuhner, who works for the Institute for Women in Migration, a Mexican nonprofit.

Mexico granted refugee status or complementary protection to 26,855 people last year. In addition to offering legal status, the government works with the U.N. refugee agency and private companies to connect refugees with jobs. Several Mexican companies participate in refugee job recruitment programs due to their labor needs.

Even so, the Mexican asylum system has significant pitfalls. Mexico’s refugee agency has a small budget and a growing backlog. Much of its funding comes from the U.N. refugee agency, where the Trump administration recently slashed funding.

Since at least early last year, under pressure from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to halt northward migration, Mexico has also failed to provide asylum-seekers consistent access to temporary residency cards, which ease their access to jobs and other benefits. Some Mexican officials “view asylum as a pull factor” for migration, Kuhner said.

Kuhner said that now would be “the perfect time” to give up that stance and fully resume granting residency cards. She asked: Considering Trump’s crackdown on asylum and Mexico’s own workforce needs, “why don’t you regularize all of these people?”

At the end of former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tenure last year, Mexico’s foreign minister tried to position the country as a regional leader on migration policy. She often said that Mexico was embracing its role not only as a place that migrants pass through, but also as a migrant destination.

Yet López Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rarely used that language, according to Colégio de México sociologist Isabel Gil Everaert. When speaking about migration policy, Sheinbaum focuses instead on “Mexicans who are being deported, or Mexicans who are sending remittances” from the United States, Gil said.

Still, it’s early in both the Sheinbaum and Trump administrations. Problems with refugee processing may not be getting the attention that they deserve because of competing emergencies, such as trade tensions between the neighbors, Gil said.

Upcoming Events

Sunday, March 16: Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks before a new session of Congress.

Tuesday, March 18: The U.N. Human Rights Council discusses Venezuela.

Monday, March 24, to Saturday, March 29: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visits Japan and Vietnam.

What We’re Following

People walk through flooded waters carrying dogs the day after a heavy storm in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, on March 8.Pablo Presti/AFP via Getty Images

Flooding in Argentina. The Argentine city of Bahía Blanca was submerged last Friday in the latest extreme weather event to hit Latin America. The city received a year’s worth of rain in just several hours. Sixteen people were reported dead, and many neighborhoods were left flooded.

Although President Javier Milei has threatened to pull Argentina out of the Paris climate agreement, a senior regional Argentine environmental official acknowledged that the event was “a clear example of climate change.”

The disaster was reminiscent of the severe flooding that hit the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul last April, killing more than 180 people. Like that flood zone, Bahía Blanca lies in a coastal region where a river meets the ocean. It had been experiencing a heat wave and high humidity, which primed the sky for heavy rain.

Cuban prisoner release. The Cuban government said on Monday that it had concluded a round of prisoner releases that were thrown into question after Trump’s inauguration.

One of Joe Biden’s final acts as U.S. president in January was to remove Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that hampered U.S. economic relations with the island. In tandem, Cuba’s government announced that it would free 533 prisoners in a move brokered by the Vatican. Rights groups said that many were understood to be Cuban political prisoners.

But on Trump’s first day in office, he reversed Biden’s move. Fewer than 200 prisoners had been freed by that time, and progress on releasing the rest appeared to stall. Then, on March 10, Cuban state television reported that 533 former detainees had been released, citing the country’s top court.

Relitigating Maradona. More than four years after Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona died at the age of 60, the circumstances of his death are being examined in a trial that began this week in Buenos Aires.

Maradona passed away in November 2020 while at home and recovering from brain surgery. He was under the supervision of a medical team, seven of whom a public prosecutor has accused of homicide by negligence. The trial is expected to last months and hear dozens of witnesses; in addition, one of Maradona’s nurses will face a jury trial later this year on the same charges.

Unlike in the United States, photos and videos are allowed in Argentine courtrooms, and details from the first day splashed across the media. They included a photo of Maradona near the time of his death and a speech from the prosecutor, who called the soccer star’s home care a “theater of horrors” and argued that his death from a cardiac event could have been prevented.

Doctors and nurses failed to provide standard inspections and reports, the prosecution alleges; the defendants deny wrongdoing.

In polarized Argentina, love of Maradona crosses ideological divides—and the trial is expected to dominate headlines this year. Had Maradona lived two more years, he would have seen his national team win another World Cup.

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In Focus: Brazil’s Take on U.S. Tariffs

Cranes operate at an iron ore mine in Congonhas, Brazil, on Feb. 11.Douglas Magno/AFP via Getty Images

Brazil was directly hit by Trump’s tariffs for the first time this week, when the United States imposed 25 percent levies on all steel and aluminum imports. Around 60 percent of Brazil’s steel exports went to the United States last year, totaling some $4 billion of goods, according to the Brazil Steel Institute.

Brazil was already indirectly affected by Trump’s other tariffs: Brazilian officials and producers have been gearing up to sell more agriculture products to China as trade tensions between Washington and Beijing increase.

On Monday, China targeted the United States with 10 percent to 15 percent tariffs on U.S. agriculture exports. During the U.S.-China trade war of Trump’s first term, Brazil’s agriculture sales to China expanded. Brazil overtook the United States in agricultural exports to China, and it has remained on top since.

Anticipating more of those dynamics with Trump’s return to the White House, Brazilian and Chinese officials in recent months negotiated new permissions for certain Brazilian agriculture products to enter China, such as sorghum and sesame.

Knowing that Brazil can shift some of its U.S.-bound exports to other markets may help Brazilian officials maintain a somewhat coolheaded response to Trump’s tariffs. Following this week’s U.S. levies on steel and aluminum, Brazil did not immediately retaliate. Senior officials from both countries are due to speak today, Brazil’s presidential chief of staff said.

But Brazil’s ability to sell more to China does not mean that the trade upheaval comes without a cost. Food inflation is already hurting Brazilian households this year, and analysts say that it may rise if more of Brazil’s output is shipped to Asia.