Beyond the Wall: Migration, Rights, and Border Security

A New WOLA Initiative to Respond to Trump-Era Policies

We are witnessing a U.S. assault on migrants on a scale that will have implications for human rights in our hemisphere for years to come. The Trump administration’s immigration and border security policies threaten great harm to thousands of people in the United States and abroad.

Building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border would be ineffective and expensive, diverting billions of dollars from international aid and domestic poverty reduction programs.

Pressures to hire several thousand Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—without proper vetting or training—risk making those forces more abusive and less accountable.

Under the Trump administration, people fleeing violence in Central America and those who face persecution elsewhere in the region are facing serious obstacles to obtaining the asylum and legal protections to which they have a right under international law.

The Trump budget proposal would drastically cut key funding to address the root causes of migration from Central America, and instead adopt a militarized approach to citizen security—ignoring how weak institutions, corruption, and abuses fuel the cycle of violence.

WOLA is an organization with over four decades of research and advocacy experience in Central America, Mexico, and U.S. foreign policy toward the region. We are expanding our border security and migration efforts to push back and take a stand.

Our program and communications experts are leading a new, dynamic, and strategic campaign to expose and challenge Trump-era policies.

WOLA’s “Beyond the Wall” initiative will:

1. Stop funding for Trump’s useless and expensive wall, as well as a similarly dangerous and unnecessary effort to ramp up border security agents.
2. Investigate and expose abuses against migrants, asylum seekers, and deportees at the border and on their journey by working with partners on the ground. Human rights are part of our values as a nation—honoring them doesn’t threaten us, it strengthens us.
3. Help people seeking asylum by providing expert information to activists and attorneys about the situation on the ground in Central America.
4. Advocate for continued, robust, accountable, and transparent U.S. aid to Central America focused on tackling corruption and bolstering the capacity of police and justice systems to prevent and reduce violence and insecurity. The creation of safer communities with greater respect for human rights would address the root causes of migration and the reasons why people are forced to migrate.

You can help defend the rights of migrants and stop these harmful policies. Take a stand and join WOLA at a time when it matters most.

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