Migration from Latin America to the United States has reached record levels, with more than 370,000 people intercepted at the US-Mexican border in December 2023 alone. Economic need, political repression and civil war were once the primary factors pushing flows of Latin American migrants northward. This has changed. Today, most are fleeing countries in the grip of criminal violence and state failure.
In some cases, criminal networks and governments themselves have a direct hand in trafficking their own citizens. For the US, migration is already a deeply divisive issue and played an important role in the 2024 presidential election. The recent spike in Latin American migrants is politicizing the debate further.
The resulting cycle of state failure, criminal enterprise and decline in civil discourse over migration represents a regional crisis. It also plays into a geopolitical contest in which Russia is exacerbating state failure in Latin America and, with China, promoting the belief that democracy around the world is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Can Latin America’s failed and failing states be turned around? Quite possibly, but the response required is global, structural and long-term.
Increasing flows
According to US Customs and Border Protection, more than 80 per cent of people held or denied entry between October 2020 and June 2024 were Latin American citizens. Venezuela and Mexico have been the two largest ‘sending countries’ to the US for the past 10 years. In Mexico, which accounts for a quarter of migrants into America, the steady deterioration of security, particularly in states such as Michoacán, Guerrero and Sinaloa, has encouraged this exodus. In Venezuela, almost 8 million people – a quarter of the population – have left since 2014, fleeing economic collapse, criminality and political decay.
The deterioration of state capacity across much of Latin America is key to explaining the dynamics of this exodus. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index, which measures state failure, shows a steady decline in the ability of Latin America governments to maintain law and order. When compared against immigration trends they roughly correspond: the countries experiencing a decline in security are those seeing an increase in migration to the US.
Smaller states under the grip of violent crime and repression have also become some of the biggest sending countries to the US over the past four years. They include Guatemala, Cuba, Honduras and Haiti. The table overleaf shows a noticeable increase in migrants from countries in which criminal elements are either in control of government or parts of it.
Illegal migrants trying to enter the US, by ‘sending country’
Criminal trafficking
The increasing numbers of migrants come after the explosive growth in human trafficking by criminal groups. According to a 2023 report by the US Department of Homeland Security, 80 per cent of unlawful border crossings were organized by smugglers, reportedly earning between $4 billion to $12 billion a year.
The spike in human smuggling reflects the broader breakdown of law and order. The roots of the decline in security and the penetration of criminal groups in government are long-standing. In Haiti, the reliance of political leaders on private militias stretches back to the reign of the Duvalier dynasty, from 1957 to 1986. The collusion between criminal gangs and politics erupted into public view in July 2023 when President Jovenel Moïse was killed by Colombian mercenaries who had entered the presidential palace.
By mid-2024 a coalition of criminal gangs controlled more than 80 per cent of the capital Port au Prince, asserting their power against an under-manned international peacekeeping force and a fragile transitional government.
In Honduras, the former president Juan Orlando Hernández is currently serving a 45-year prison term in the US for ‘conspiring to distribute more than 400 tons of cocaine’ to America. In Venezuela, which the NGO Insight Crime has described as a mafia state, the US has placed sanctions on or charged 11 individuals and 25 companies for involvement in narcotics trafficking, illegal mining and money laundering.
Stirring the pot
In other cases, the flow of people northward has become a tactic by anti-US governments to weaponize migrants and stir the pot of xenophobia in America.
According to reporting by Le Monde, the regime in Nicaragua has been a major organizer of irregular migrants into the US, in some cases even through chartered flights. The country’s leaders have been under US sanctions since their violent crackdown on political opposition in 2018, and clearly see this as a way of not just embarrassing Washington but sowing domestic division.
It is not alarmist to see how this plays into the Russian and Chinese narrative about the dysfunction of democracy globally. Both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were quick to recognize a stolen election by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and there have been credible rumours of Russian support for the armed gangs that have overrun Haiti.
The political polarization and paralysis in the US over migration fit with China and Russia’s efforts to stain the West’s reputation and undermine democracy. It also mirrors Russia’s longstanding efforts to encourage illegal immigration in northern Europe and the Baltic states to sow unrest.
And it is only likely to get worse. This was most evident in the US where President-elect Donald Trump spread false information about immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela during the recent election campaign. But anger at the 3 million Venezuelan migrants now living in Colombia, close to half a million in Chile, Ecuador and Mexico within those countries is also on the rise.
Reacting to the challenge
The increase of failed and criminal states will remain a long-term structural challenge not easily resolved. In the best of cases, rebuilding failed or failing states in Venezuela, Haiti and Ecuador will need investment in institutional reform and the creation of professional, accountable security forces and judicial systems. This is the work of decades not years.
The international community, including drug-consuming countries in Europe, bears a responsibility to re-gear these economies away from illegal activities. It also demands systematic efforts to coordinate security and development efforts between the United States, the European Union, Britain and regional partners. At times this may mean closer cooperation on intelligence to isolate and contain criminal regimes, as well as sharing information between receiving and sending countries to help repatriate undocumented immigrants.