IRTF News

Review of the Year 2021 The past year was a challenging year for FOR Peace Presence and Colombia. Let's look back on the year together.

The "Remain in Mexico" program, first implemented by the Trump administration in 2019, was halted after President Biden took office. A federal judge ordered the program, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, to be reimplemented after Texas and Missouri sued over the way the policy ended. The Biden administration has defended the restart as something it was forced to do. Nicaraguans have been the largest group returned under the beginning of the reboot. Asylum seekers from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and Ecuador have also been sent back under MPP. Many details about the program’s logistics remain unclear.

The National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, a coalition of environmental and social movement organizations, universities, water justice activists, faith communities, human rights defenders, and others, issued a warning last week regarding the intention of the Bukele administration to permit metal mining in El Salvador, reversing the ban passed unanimously in 2017. As background, in 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a total ban on metal mining. The historic legislation was the achievement of over a decade of community organizing and education, led principally by rural women, and came at the cost of violent harassment, threats, and even the assassination of community leaders involved in the struggle. Four years later, under the Bukele administration, environmental and social movement organizations are again on alert over the possible return of metal mining in El Salvador. “We are not being alarmists," said Omar Serrano from the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA). "There are signs indicating that [the administration] is thinking of returning to mining, even if they do not say so publicly.”