Economic and political turmoil in Venezuela has led to a record number of Venezuelan migrants making the dangerous trek across Central America to seek refuge in the United States. Since last October, more than 150 thousand Venezuelans have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. For the first time on record, in August of this year, the number of Venezuelan migrants detained by Mexican authorities exceeded the number of migrants from Central America. Until recently Venezuelan migrants were allowed to stay in the United States while they waited to go through immigration court and apply for asylum, but now the situation is more complex and the Biden Administration announced in mid-October that Venezuelan migrants would start being expelled back to Mexico under the controversial public health order, known as Title 42.

For more, we spoke with Ambassador Patrick Duddy, director of Duke University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and from 2007 to 2010 he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for both President Bush and President Obama.