CIS Reports From America's Other Southern Border: Guatemala-Mexico

From January 8-18, 2020, CIS Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman traveled to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. A primary purpose was to assess the impacts of President Donald Trump's policies to slow the 2018-2019 mass illegal immigration from Central American countries through that key chokepoint to the American southern border. In the White House's diplomatic and policy responses, Mexico's southern border came to be seen as an extension of the American one due to unique regional geographies, push-pull factors, and geopolitical circumstances that have channeled large flows of people over it, initially, into the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Bensman traveled to Tapachula, Chiapas, into Guatemala's northern highlands, three border crossings, and throughout the interior of Chiapas where he interviewed migrants, government officials, and military personnel.