Human Rights and Militarization at the U.S-Mexico Border

Human Rights and Militarization at the U.S-Mexico Border, and their Origins in the Crisis of Human Rights in Mexico and Central America

This presentation will explore how intensified immigration enforcement and militarization of the U.S-Mexico border region during the Trump Administration has resulted in the criminalization of migrants, asylum seekers, and border families and communities, and how current U.S and Mexican policies related to the drug war, free trade, national security, and development have resulted in the forced migration of hundreds of thousands who have been denied the right to a dignified life in their countries of origin.

Camilo Perez-Bustillo, J.D is Director of Advocacy, Research, and Leadership Development at Hope Border Institute (hopeborder.org) in El Paso, Texas; a Fellow of the University of Dayton School of Law, and of the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP, a project of the International Social Sciences Council based at the University of Bergen in Norway) and the Migration and Poverty program at FLACSO in Guatemala City; founding coordinator of the secretariat of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement (ITCPM) based in Mexico City, and was formerly inaugural director of the Human Rights Center and Research Professor of Human Rights and Law at the University of Dayton, holder of the W. Haywood Burns Memorial Chair at CUNY School of Law, and Research Professor at the Graduate Program in Human Rights of the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM); he is also co-author with Karla Hernandez Mares of Human Rights, Hegemony and Utopia in Latin America: Poverty, Forced Migration and Resistance in Mexico and Colombia (Brill 2016/Haymarket Books 2017).