EVENT: Launch of The State of the Border Report

Thursday, May 23, 2013 / 3:30 – 5:30 pm / Wilson Center

Details & RSVP: http://bit.ly/StateofBorder

In conjunction with the North American Center for Transborder Studies and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute is pleased to invite you to the launch of The State of the Border Report.

The report provides a comprehensive look at the state of affairs in the management of the U.S.-Mexico border and the border region, focusing on four core areas: trade and competitiveness, security, sustainability, and quality of life.

MAY 6 EVENT: Thinking Regionally to Compete Globally

On May 6 — just days after President Obama sits down with Mexican and Central American leaders to discuss economic growth, citizen security, and migration — the Regional Migration Study Group will issue a final report outlining its findings and offering recommendations to policymakers and civil society in the region. Please join us for an event in Washington where the Co-Chairs will present the Study Group’s principal findings and consider the implications for the future of the region. Copies of the final report will be available at the event.

Click here to RSVP…

THIS THURSDAY: “New Ideas for a New Era”

WHEN: Thursday, May 2, 2013 from 9-10:30am

WHERE: 5th Floor Woodrow Wilson Center

On the same day that President Obama begins his trip to Latin America, the authors of the Mexico Institute’s new policy report will present their recommendations for strengthening U.S.-Mexico relations. President Obama and President Peña Nieto will meet in the context of booming bilateral trade, a major U.S. effort to reform immigration law, a potential Mexican energy reform, and ongoing but evolving cooperation in addressing public security and organized crime. The discussion will touch on each of these topics, as well as other issues in the bilateral relationship.

To RSVP, click here…

NEW REPORT: Mexican Migration to the US – Economic Factors & Future Flows (Spanish)

The latest publication by the Regional Migration Study Group – a collaboration between the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Migration Policy Institute – addresses the economic factors that have influenced Mexican migration to the United States, and attempts to construct scenarios on how these migratory flows might change in the near future.

Click here to read the report…

The majority of poor in Mexico are children – UN report

UN News Centrer, 4/3/2013

More than 20 million children and adolescents in Mexico are estimated to live in poverty, and five million of them in extreme poverty, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today reported in a joint study with the Mexican Government. “The economy has grown well over the past years but this does not always mean that the poor are better off,” said the UNICEF Representative in Mexico, Isabel Crowley. “The human development indexes in some parts of Mexico are close to those of some of the world’s least developed countries.”

According to the ‘Child and Adolescent Poverty and Social Rights in Mexico’ study, produced by UNICEF and the national social policy evaluation agency CONEVAL, children are overrepresented among the poor. According to 2010 figures, 46.2 per cent of Mexico’s residents lived in poverty – a figure that rises to 53.8 per cent among children.

Read more…

Report: Focused Deterrence, Selective Targeting, Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime: Concepts and Practicalities

By Vanda Felbab-Brown, International Drug Policy Consortium, February 2013

In “Focused Deterrence, Selective Targeting, Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime: Concepts and Practicalities,” published by the International Drug Policy Consortium in February 2013, Vanda Felbab-Brown first outlines the logic and problems of zero-tolerance and undifferentiated targeting in law enforcement policies. Second, she lays out the key theoretical concepts of the law-enforcement strategies of focused-deterrence and selective targeting and reviews some of their applications, as in Operation Ceasefire in Boston in the 1990s and urban-policing operations in Rio de Janeiro during the 2000s decade. Third, she analyses the implementation challenges that selective targeting and focused-deterrence strategies have encountered, particularly outside of the United States. And finally, she discusses some key dilemmas in designing selective targeting and focused-deterrence strategies to fight crime.

Read the full report here…

Report Launch: Immigration and U.S. Competitiveness: A View from the Midwest

Next Thursday, February 28, 2013

The economic future of the Midwest rests in part on US immigration policy. The twin realities of a struggling industrial base and population decline demand a rethinking of how the country and region attracts and retains human capital. Join cochairs and members of The Chicago Council’s independent task force on US Economic Competitiveness at Risk: A Midwest Call to Action on Immigration Reform, as they release their report, 12 months in the making. This report release event will introduce attendees to immigration initiatives being undertaken throughout the Midwest to promote the region’s economic competitiveness.

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Mexico’s ‘Crisis Of Disappearance’: Families Seek Answers (Audio)

NPR, 2/21/2013

Maximina Hernandez says she begged her 23-year old son, Dionicio, to give up his job as a police officer in a suburb of Monterrey. Rival drug cartels have been battling in the northern Mexican city for years. But he told her being a police officer was in his blood, a family tradition. He was detailed to guard the town’s mayor.

In May 2007, on his way to work, two men wearing police uniforms stopped Dionicio on a busy street, pulled him from his car and drove him away. That same day, the mayor’s other two bodyguards were also abducted. Witnesses say the kidnappers wore uniforms of an elite anti-drug police unit. The three men haven’t been seen since.

Read more…

 

Human Rights Watch Faults Mexico Over Disappearances

The New York Times, 2/21/2013

Nearly 150 people and possibly hundreds more have disappeared at the hands of Mexico’s police and military during the drug war with little or no investigation of the cases, a human rights group said Wednesday, as it called on the new government to account for the country’s missing. The organization, Human Rights Watch, said in a report that Mexico has “the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades.” The group found a litany of cases in which witnesses reported people had been abducted or were last seen with the military or the police, never to be seen again.

Altogether the group documented 149 such cases in the past six years, after the previous president, Felipe Calderón, began his term with heavy deployments of military and federal police to combat exploding violence. The group’s investigation found 60 cases in which witness testimony and other evidence demonstrated that local police officers had colluded with cartels in abductions.

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New report: Juarez After the War

In Sight Crime, 2/13/2013

The following is an excerpt from Steven Dudley’s latest report for In Sight Crime: Organized Crime in the Americas, titled Juarez After the War.

For many crime watchers, the fighting in Juarez that cost nearly 10,000 people their lives over a four year stretch was a battle of the titans: the Juarez Cartel versus the Sinaloa Cartel. But beneath that analysis is the deeper question of who pushes the levers of power in Mexico.

The question is even more complicated in Juarez, a border city where several layers of power brokers are still seeking to impose their will on one another and control this lucrative plaza. These include large criminal groups, local and federal police, the army, the state Attorney General’s Office, politicians, and street gangs.

Read full report here…