Quixote Center recognizes migration as a fundamental human right under international law. In the United States, migrants strengthen our economy, enrich our culture, and strengthen our social fabric. We are a nation built by migrants for migrants.
The Quixote Center’s principal international partnership is with the Franciscan Network for Migrants (FNM). FNM connects Franciscan-run shelters and other humanitarian assistance programs for migrants who are making the dangerous trek through Mexico, Central America, and South America. We serve as the fiscal sponsor for the FNM within the United States, and coordinate advocacy efforts with their staff. We provide on-going financial support to FNM programs in Panama, a particularly strategic and dangerous migrant crossing point. We offer capacity-strengthening funding to FNM teams, so far supporting teams in Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico.
Quixote Center and FNM organize Solidarity Trips approximately every six months since 2022 as part of our advocacy and education mission, bringing U.S. based migrant justice activists and other professionals to Southern Mexico and Panama to see firsthand how the U.S. border policies impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homelands to seek a new life, in the United States or elsewhere.
View our Between Borders video series HERE.
Find out more about our Solidarity Travel Program HERE.
Read the Red Clamor statement February 2025 in English HERE y en Español AQUI.
Read the Red Clamor Panama statement February 2025 HERE y en Español AQUI.
Read January 21st, 2025 Joint Statement with our partners at the Franciscan Network on Migration here
Read November 22nd, 2024 statement from the Franciscan Network on Migration's National Assembly in Mexico here.
Participants from our March 2025 trip to Panama hosted a webinar titled Stranded and Forgotten. You can listen to it HERE.
Participants from the March 2024 trip wrote the report: Danger in the Darién Gap: Human RIghts Abuses and the Need for Human Pathways to Safety to denounce US efforts to further externalize US border to Panama.
At 6 AM on a Wednesday, I joined community organizers and volunteers outside Union Station to greet migrants bused from the US-Mexico border to Washington DC. I expected everyone to arrive haggard and exhausted, as I feel after just a few hours on a bus. Instead, they came bright-faced and smiling, exuberant to have arrived.
The Biden Administration expelled 450 people to Haiti, including 44 children, 20 of whom were infants, on three flights this week. These flights bring the total to 235 expulsion flights to Haiti since Biden took office, more than 23,000 people in total, and 21,000 in the eight months since the debacle in Del Rio last September. Another 8,000 people were summarily expelled into Mexico during the Del Rio crisis.
“I'm not here because I want to be here. I'm here to save the lives of my children.” - Mexican asylum seeker, expelled under Title 42 in March 2022
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
Texas' governor Greg Abbot is putting immigrants on buses to Washington, D.C., apparently as some kind of protest related to the Biden administration's decision to end Title 42. The first bus arrived on Wednesday, April 13, but not at Homeland Security, Congress or the White House. Rather, the bus arrived in front of a building on Capitol Hill that houses several television networks' newsrooms, including Fox.
“Expelling asylum seekers under Title 42 has not done anything to protect us from COVID” From the Congressional Testimony of Dr. Adam Richards, Physicians for Human Rights
Title 42 appears to be on its way out. After two years and 1.8 million expulsions, impacting well over 1 million people, Biden announced, and the CDC confirmed, that Title 42 would end on May 23, 2022.
April 1, 2022 | Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 1st, 2022
CONTACT: Alexandra Gulden
alexandra@quixote.org
301-699-0042
Washington D.C.—Today, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued a new order terminating the Title 42 order on May 23rd. Under the Trump-era policy, U.S. border officials were allowed to summarily expel or turn away over a million migrants and asylum seekers. The Quixote Center issued the following statement in response:
The Centers for Disease Control and Protection issued the Order Suspending Introduction of Certain Persons from Countries Where a Communicable Disease Exists on March 20, 2020. The order claimed authority under Sections 362 and 365 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act, 42 U.S.C.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 21, 2022
CONTACT: Alexandra Gulden
alexandra@quixote.org
504-495-6970
“‘He won over everyone with his smile, fearlessness and determination worthy of a real hero,' the statement said. It is unclear why the boy was unaccompanied.”
The story of an 11-year-old boy, who was put on a train to Slovakia by his parents so he could get out of Ukraine, was celebrated by Slovakian authorities who called him a “hero of the night.”
"We are looking for a way to get out of Chiapas because in Chiapas there is no way to live because people are treating you like animals, your rights are being violated. So if we are refugees we are fighting so that we can get out and looking for a way to live so that we can eat.” —Haitian migrant statement to the Colectivo de Observación y Monitoreo de Derechos Humanos en el Sureste Méxicano, August 2021.
Biden has expelled nearly as many Haitians in 12 months (20,200+) as were deported during the previous 20 years (22,000-23,000)*** under three different presidents. Indeed, Biden’s administration has likely expelled far more: In addition to these official removal numbers, another estimated 8,000 Haitians were expelled back into Mexico in September of 2021, voluntarily according to DHS Secretary Mayorkas, but in circumstances that make that characterization suspect.
The Biden administration extended Title 42 again this week. This ensures that for the next 60 days at least, migrants encountered at the border will continue to largely be denied any kind of due process, most of them facing immediate expulsion.
