Central America & Mexico Policy Initiative

Ben Rohrbaugh, Fellow in the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, recently co-authored a report titled “Transnational Threats and the 2020 Election.” In it, he and his co-authors asses the changing international threat landscape, emphasizing that today’s most daunting national security threats are of non-state origin—a complication which will inevitably bedevil…

Ben Rohrbaugh, a Fellow in the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative, recently published a book More or Less Afraid of Everything: Homeland Security, Borders, and Disasters in the Twenty-First Century. The book covers migration, borders, cybersecurity, natural disasters, and terrorism. Despite ongoing attention, these problems seem to be getting bigger even as the political…

Stephanie Leutert, Director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, was recently interviewed for an article on the fatal injury of a woman just north of the border wall in New Mexico. The article poses the question: “how many migrants die and then fall through the cracks of complex bureaucracy, with far-away…

From Mexico to Chile, Latin American militaries are increasingly visible in domestic security roles, with significant implications for both security and democracy. The Militarization in Latin America website is intended to help illuminate this rapidly evolving phenomenon, as manifested in 12 key countries around the region. The website provides detailed narrative descriptions of internal military…

Professor Stephanie Leutert, Director of the Central America & Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, recently completed a year-long Policy Research Project (PRP) with a group of graduate students at the LBJ School. The project, titled “Beyond the Border: Central American Migration and Mexico’s Migratory Policy,” took a Mexican policy perspective on Central American migration, and…

Benjamin Rohrbaugh, Fellow in the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, co-authored a report for the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School titled Closing Critical Gaps that Hinder Homeland Security Technology Innovation. COVID-19 has overwhelmed the response systems of the United States and clearly shown the scale of the federal government’s underinvestment in public safety…

Stephanie Leutert, Director of the Central America/Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, participated in a recent panel on the state of emigration from Central America and immigration reform. Panel members discussed the push and pull factors for migration, the smuggling industry surrounding this migration, and the current humanitarian crisis at the border. The panel was presented by…

Stephanie Leutert, Director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center, recently authored an article for the national security law blog Lawfare. In her article “One County, 650 Migrant Deaths: An Introduction,” she introduces a series of essays on the deaths of 650 people in Brooks County, Texas, between 2009 and…

Director of the Strauss Center’s Central America / Mexico Policy Initiative, Stephanie Leutert, wrote about her experiences seeing the “metering” program along the Mexican border in her article “What ‘Metering’ Really Looks Like in South Texas.” Leutert highlights that 18,000-people are waiting along the border due the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) metering policy.