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Content warning: This briefing may contain references and links to descriptions of abuse, torture, and racial and gendered violence at borders. 

AT A GLANCE

• US/World: The US has suddenly all gone a bit 2005, right down to extrajudicial assassinations from the sky and possible invasions of sovereign states. But back in the vintage Global War on Terror days, migration sat behind terrorism, policing, and the War on Drugs in its rhetorical priority list. Today it takes centre stage, forming part of the US’ case for a quixotic regional foreign policy that spans Caribbean maritime airstrikes and deportations to systematic torture in El Salvador. Away from the Western hemisphere, a vast web of US deals with African states continues. Nineteen West African nationals deported to Ghana seem to have disappeared. Eswatini has received more than $5m to accept deportees, and South Sudan - the world’s poorest country - has also joined the pack. It seems odd that such a sweeping arrangement of deals would be undertaken for the sake of a presumably low number of deportations; which leaves the question: what else is going on? 

• UK/Europe: Keir Starmer’s government has unveiled new and draconian migration restrictions to arrest Reform’s continuing poll lead (we promise we don’t just copy and paste the same sentence every month.) Plans include fast-tracking deportations, overhauling human rights law, and making refugees wait 20 years to apply for citizenship, were announced this month by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Critics have pointed out that aside from anything else, making settlement near-impossible undermines the government’s supposed commitment to migrant integration. Labour’s briefing machine pointed to Denmark’s Social Democrats shoring up their vote with similar measures. The very next morning, said  Social Democrats lost control of the capital to the left, with Copenhageners registering - among other things - their dissatisfaction over the messy social consequences of the migration crackdown.

BORDER EXTERNALISATION

• Central Mediterranean: On a visit to Malta, EU migration chief Magnus Brunner praised Valletta’s “strong” relationship with Libya, which seems to mainly consist of allowing Libyan militias to operate freely in the Maltese-assigned search and rescue area. Brunner insisted that there was “no alternative” to maintaining dialogue with Libya, but in a previous meeting stressed that the engagement was “not fun”, so glad we cleared that up at least.  

• Osama Almasri Njeem, the former head of the Libyan judicial police wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), has been arrested in Libya for torture, murder, war crimes and sexual violence. He was released by Italy earlier this year, in a case which critics argued was linked to Italy’s border externalisation relationships with Libyan security forces. Almasri’s alleged victims intend to sue Italy for damages. 

• Following multiple attacks on people in distress and increasingly also on rescue ships by Libyan security forces, thirteen organisations active in Mediterranean search and rescue have suspended all coordination with Tripoli’s maritime coordination authorities. Meanwhile, rescue ship Mediterranea was detained after docking in a port closer to the one Italian authorities assigned them, citing deteriorating weather and medical conditions among rescued people. A year after they were forced to suspend operations due to state obstruction, Médecins Sans Frontières have returned to the Central Mediterranean with a new, smaller ship.

• Greece/Germany: Greece and Germany want to follow the Trump model, establishing facilities in Africa to receive and detain people deported from Europe, according to Greece’s migration minister - who claims that negotiations are already underway. 

• UK/Albania: Albanian premier Edi Rama accused British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood of “ethnic stereotyping” after she singled out 700 Albanian families whose asylum claims had failed. It is now [0] days since the UK last antagonised the country it’s trying to do a deportation deal with. 

• Atlantic: Al Jazeera reports on migrants caught up in a violent government crackdown. The Mauritanian Association for Human Rights (AMDH) estimated that in March alone, 1,200 people were deported. Of those, about 700 had residence permits allowing them to legally work in Mauritania. 

• This follows increased EU and Spanish collaboration with Mauritania. Spain and Senegal are also cooperating on preventing migration, with Spain’s interior minister taking credit for reportedly stopping 3,500 irregular migrant departures this year.

• EU/Bosnia: In an escalation of its externalisation operations, Frontex has sent 100 officers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to help prevent irregular crossing attempts. The news comes as the EU announces plans to radically expand Frontex’s mandate.

DETENTION, DEPORTATION AND BORDER VIOLENCE

• US/South Asia: After an Afghan man (and apparent former operative in a CIA-backed unit known for operating outside the law during the US’ Afghanistan occupation) shot two National Guard personnel in Washington DC, the Trump Administration has halted the processing of all Afghan immigration applications. Trump then escalated again, promising to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” alongside stripping federal benefits from non-citizens, and deporting any foreign national deemed a security risk or “incompatible with Western civilization.” No, we don’t know how they’re defining any of this either. The New Humanitarian has more on the global crisis facing Afghan refugees, as Pakistan also ramps up deportations to Afghanistan. 

• US: Per Austin Kocher (who has also been busy mapping two centuries of US migration control data), new ICE figures now show a record 65,000 people in detention, and 35,000 GPS tagged. The biggest growth is among people with no criminal histories, and 78% of arrests have targeted immigrants deemed low risk by the government. Meanwhile the Department of Justice (DoJ) has begun hiring “deportation judges.” This, to be clear, is not a thing. In reality, they are hiring regular immigration judges, but DoJ’s framing has raised fears of further attempts to politicise the judiciary. 

• ICE is also running out of the staff needed to meet targets, but the Administration is banking that offering extra federal cash to local police departments to cover gaps will fix everything. 

• As a new report describes ICE-raid hit Chicago as a war zone and a judge issues a restraining order against violent protest policing tactics, questions hang over the future of ICE raids in New York, and whether President Trump’s on-screen rapprochement with incoming left-wing mayor Zohran Mamdani will ease pressure on the city. Nationally, Trump seems determined that the beatings will continue until morale improves. A hard-hitting ad targeting ICE recruits has also landed. 

• Germany: Whilst Washington has Afghans in his sights, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is signalling an increase in attempts to get Syrians to return to their (still deeply conflict-affected) country, and to work with the Syrian government to do so. This is supposedly an attempt to deflate the far-right AfD (who currently seem to be on a charm offensive). 

• Sweden/Syria: Stockholm and Damascus have announced closer cooperation on the deportation of Syrians who have been convicted of crimes in Sweden - which is making aid to Syria conditional on the move. 

• Greece: The head of Greece's coast guard and three other senior officers are being prosecuted for negligent manslaughter, following the 2023 Pylos shipwreck that killed an estimated 650 people. 

• A riot in a detention centre in northern Greece has highlighted poor conditions in the country’s detention estate yet again, and comes as the government enforces sweeping new penalties for rejected asylum seekers.

• Italy/EU: Lampedusa, a key arrival point for people crossing the central Mediterranean, is serving as the pilot site for the EU's new migration screening system, part of its Pact on Migration and Asylum. A detailed read on all the problems with this system can be found here.

• Shockingly, it turns out that when you clamp down on migration and drive it underground whilst also overseeing a low-wage economy, exploitation and trafficking go up. A recent study shows new routes of exploitation opening up via Italy’s Flows Decree, while a Guardian report deals with other cases of European border enforcement forcing people onto more dangerous routes, increasing dependency on smugglers.

• UK: Thirty asylum seekers in detention in the UK have gone on hunger strike in protest against their imminent removal to France. It comes as another person deported under the new “one in one out” returns to the UK, and France plans a new wave of interceptions of small boats. The UK continues to expand its border externalisation agenda.

• UK/Vietnam: Under a new deal with the Vietnamese government, people who arrive in the UK by irregular means will be fast-tracked for deportation.

• Tunisia: Tunis boasts of deporting around 10,000 irregular migrants so far this year via the IOM-coordinated voluntary* (*your experience may vary) returns scheme. 

• Finland: Helsinki’s tougher new immigration posture has led to a surge in deportations, prompting fear among undocumented people who face being sent back to danger. 

SURVEILLANCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INDUSTRY

• US: The car may be culturally synonymous with American visions of freedom, but now US Border Patrol is monitoring millions of drivers in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, using predictive AI. The programme has resulted in stops, searches, and arrests.

• The FBI spied on a private Signal group chat of immigrants’ rights activists who were organizing “courtwatch” efforts in New York City earlier this year, records shared with the Guardian indicate.

• NGO Human Rights First has found that ICE conducted over 10,000 deportation and shuffle flights in ten months. The human, financial, and environmental costs of a year of deportation chaos continue to mount.

• US/Central America: A report tracks the buildup of biometric infrastructure in Mexico and Central America supported by the US.

• EU: Proposed new powers for police agency Europol would allow it unprecedented powers to collect, process, and share personal data, including biometrics such as facial recognition, even with non-EU countries and "authoritarian regimes," European Digital Rights (EDRi), a collective of NGOs, experts, and advocates, has warned.

• EU/Greece: Greece is a testing ground for smart surveillance technologies, says a new report by We Are Solomon. Europe is rapidly building an AI-ready smart-border regime — funded by the EU, lobbied for by Germany, contracted out to military and security industry players including US Big Tech firms and tested in Greece. Much of it is unfolding quietly, with big questions about safeguards. 

• UK: Byline Times has a report on conditions inside Brook House, an infamous private UK detention centre. Elsewhere, Corporate Watch has a new investigation on soaring profits and squalid conditions overseen by asylum housing subcontractors Cromwood and NACCS. And in a similar vein, migration charity RAMFEL has a forensic expose of conditions in Britain’s controversial asylum hotels. Spoiler: they’re bad.   

MIGRATION POLICY AND POLITICS

• Peru/Chile: Peru has declared a state of emergency at the border with Chile, closing the crossing and deploying troops to stop irregular migration. Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, fleeing Chile amid fears of a crackdown if far-right candidate José Antonio Kast wins the country’s presidency, are now stranded in limbo. 

• EU/Sudan: Sudan’s ambassador to the EU warned that European-made weapons are finding their way onto battlefields. EU migration policy has also previously empowered Sudanese paramilitaries now committing atrocities and responsible for massive displacement. 

• EU/US/World: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered American diplomats in Europe and in Canada, Australia and New Zealand to press their host governments to restrict most immigration and to file reports if the governments appear to be overly supportive of immigrants, according to the New York Times. 

• EU: Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy have been formally recognised as being under acute migratory pressure, and are therefore eligible for assistance from the bloc’s new solidarity pool, where EU countries will provide financial and logistical support or relocations. 

• Amidst all the furore, migration numbers in both the EU and UK are retreating.

• Netherlands: Dutch election winners D66 may have staved off the far-right, but are keen to appear tough on migration, supportive of strong EU measures and externalisation deals.  

• Palestine/Israel: A flight which brought Palestinian evacuees to South Africa, many without travel documents, has raised questions about a scheme which claims to organise evacuations, but which campaigners argue is part of a programme of ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The news comes as a submission arrives at the UN pointing to the use of authoritarian tech to shrink Palestinian civic space.

• Ireland: Dublin is concerned that asylum restrictions in the UK could have implications for the country, with one minister insisting that he is “committed to ensuring that Ireland is not viewed more favourably than the UK by those seeking to claim asylum.” 

• Australia: The deportations of two more men to Nauru in a reportedly opaque process has raised broader questions about the Albanese government’s orientation, as its Coalition opponents are set to propose new plans to drastically cut migration numbers.

CLIMATE, NATURE, AND THE FUTURE OF MIGRATION

• World: As COP30 opened in Brazil’s Belém, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published figures showing that weather-related disasters caused about 250 million people to flee their homes in the past decade. While the voices of climate-displaced people were present, questions of climate mobility were largely absent from the talks. Elsewhere UCL academic Andrea Rigon argues that in a climate affected world, we can choose to “share resources…or protect a small, wealthy minority through walls, mass deportations and border violence on an unprecedented scale.”

• US: Climate impacts and migration continue to tangle in the borderlands, as the drying Rio Grande basin affects both US and Mexican water security, and warnings circulate of disruption to river culture from border wall projects. A new exhibition looks at the disabled ecology of the border. 

• Australia: Australia will receive the world’s first officially recognised climate refugees in 2026. The arrivals are the product of an Australian treaty with climate-affected Tuvalu. 

• Guatemala: What would meaningful adaptation for climate-linked refugees look like, asks a new project from NGO Climate Refugees, reported in the Border Chronicle. 

• Ireland: A talkshow debates whether Ireland may become a country of climate emigrants this century.