A woman from Georgia waits in the Identification and Expulsion Center of Ponte Galeria, a detention complex on the outskirts of Rome, Italy in 2014. Vandeville Eric/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.
On 22 February US President Donald Trump issued new deportation rules to find, arrest and deport irregular immigrants in the United States who have been convicted of any crime. The Mexican Foreign Minister, Luis Videgaray, responded by stating that Mexico will go to the United Nations to defend the rights of immigrants in the United States.
Interestingly, that sort of response has been the exception. Very few commentators have looked to international institutions to advocate against Trump’s deportation policy, or his earlier executive order severely restricting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. This is likely due to the fact that the international advocacy infrastructure around migrants’ rights is weaker than in most other advocacy issue areas. However, in the current context of surging nationalist populism, the need for a new convention on migrants’ rights and a competent entity to oversee, promote and censure violations of these same rights is becoming ever clearer.
