27th Parliamentary-Intelligence Security Forum – Weaponized Migration: A Global Challenge
Professor Joseph Humire opened by thanking the organizers and participants, noting the broader global shifts taking place alongside political changes in Washington. He focused his remarks on what he described as “strategic engineered migration,” also known as weaponized migration, arguing that migration must be understood not only as a humanitarian or immigration issue but as a geopolitical tool.
He traced the U.S. experience back to October 2018, when large migrant caravans from Honduras moved through Guatemala toward the U.S. southern border. Based on his field research embedded with the caravans, he concluded that the phenomenon was not entirely organic. He observed coordinated logistics, NGO infrastructure along specific routes, and the involvement of certain organizations that appeared to provide political guidance rather than purely humanitarian support. He pointed in particular to links between the NGO Pueblo Sin Fronteras and the Venezuelan government, suggesting that migration flows were being catalyzed to pressure the United States.
Humire defined strategic engineered migration as the deliberate manipulation or inducement of mass migration by state or non-state actors to achieve political or geopolitical objectives. He referenced documented cases since the 1951 Refugee Convention and highlighted the 2021 Poland–Belarus border crisis, where migrants from the Middle East were funneled toward Poland. Although Belarus did not secure immediate concessions, he argued the crisis functioned strategically as a preparatory condition ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turning to Latin America, he described how Venezuela’s mass exodus—over eight million people since 2014 has destabilized neighboring Colombia. He outlined a progression from humanitarian strain to criminal control of border regions, followed by the insertion of great-power competition, including alleged Russian radar systems, Iranian drones, and Chinese satellite tracking activity near the Colombia Venezuela border.
He concluded by urging policymakers to view large-scale migration through a broader strategic lens. Beyond legal or humanitarian dimensions, he argued, mass migration can function as an instrument of asymmetric warfare, an indirect method of compulsion used to pressure sovereign states and reshape geopolitical environments.
