Argentina’s Migration “Security Turn”

In late January, Argentina’s Ministry of Security published a video on Instagram showing federal forces conducting an operation in Villa Celina, a working-class neighborhood in La Matanza, reportedly searching for undocumented immigrants. Days earlier, a Colombian-born trans man who had requested asylum in Argentina, was detained at the airport for six days, unable to communicate with his family. According to La Izquierda Diario, his asylum claim was rejected, and he was placed on a flight to Porto Alegre, Brazil, under the classification of a “false tourist.” According to an X post by Alejandra Monteoliva, Argentina’s Minister of National Security, “in December and January, nearly 5,000 foreign nationals were either denied entry or expelled from the country”.

These episodes unfolded amid significant changes to Argentina’s immigration governance. Before Javier Milei took office in December 2023, immigration policy fell under the Ministry of the Interior, but former Minister Patricia Bullrich transferred oversight of immigration to the Ministry of National Security in November 2025, effectively redefining migration not as a matter of civil administration, but as an issue of national security.

There have been no large-scale arrests of undocumented migrants in Argentina. Yet the symbolic force of security operations in poor neighborhoods and the high-profile expulsion of an asylum seeker signals to a broader political narrative. Like Donald Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric in the United States, Milei’s discourse relies on nationalist appeals and moral distinctions between “decent Argentinians” and those portrayed as threats. Slogans such as “el que las hace las paga” (an idiom similar to “do the crime, do the time”) compress complex social realities into punitive certainties, repositioning immigrants, workers, and other vulnerable groups as subjects of suspicion rather than individuals with rights.

The correlation between Milei’s and Trump’s anti-immigrant policies is clear from the dates of implementation: Javier Milei took office in December 2023 and made no major changes to immigration policies until May 2025 (only five months after Trump took office) with the publication of the decree 366/2025 that announced modifications to the Migration Law, especially in article 114 where the creation of the “Auxiliary Migration Police” was announced.

Furthermore, the desire to emulate Trump’s ICE is explicit even from members of the Milei administration, as reflected in these statements published by La Nacion, by a source close to Patricia Bullrich’s office: “The ANM (National Migration Agency) will adopt a security-driven approach. It will be modeled on the United States Department of Homeland Security, including its Border Patrol and the TSA [Transportation Security Administration, which oversees airport screening]. We are working to establish a civilian-police force operating at all of Argentina’s border crossings — an agency that centralizes migration control and maintains comprehensive records of individuals with criminal backgrounds”.

Argentina’s Ambivalent Immigration Tradition

Argentina’s national mythology celebrates immigration more explicitly than that of most countries in the Americas—a tradition rooted not only in historical narrative but also in constitutional language, and linked to the country’s vast, sparsely populated territory. The 1853 Preamble famously commits the nation to “secure the blessings of liberty … for all men of the world who wish to dwell on Argentine soil,” embedding an explicit invitation to migrants within the country’s founding legal imagination and framing hospitality as a foundational principle rather than a contingent policy choice. Dominant narratives credit European migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with shaping Argentina’s economic and cultural development, as well as its national identity—one that has often imagined Argentines as descendants of Europeans and, therefore, distinct from the rest of Latin America.

However, enthusiasm for immigration was never universal. In 1899, physician and intellectual José María Ramos Mejía wrote in Las multitudes Argentinas that immigration had “made Buenos Aires ill,” contaminating the traditions of established families. This anxiety reflected elite fears of demographic change, urban disorder, and political radicalism. In the context of the country’s expanding capitalist economy, these fears translated into hostility toward labor organizing, often portrayed as a foreign and subversive activity, as unions began to develop under the influence of anarchist and socialist ideas, including organizations such as the FORA, the country’s first major anarchist labor federation, as documented by Working Class History. The state also responded with legislation facilitating deportations, most notably the 1902 Ley de Residencia (Law 4144), which allowed the executive to expel foreigners deemed a threat to public order.

Today’s nostalgia for a “good immigration” rests on two fragile premises. First, European migration is interpreted through a contemporary lens that imagines Europe as inherently prosperous and orderly, projecting present-day “First World” status onto a past marked by poverty, instability, and social conflict. Second, that race did not matter. Yet Argentina’s self-image as a predominantly white nation emerged alongside the violent erasure of much of its Indigenous population, including state campaigns such as the Conquest of the Desert, and the marginalization of Afro-Argentine communities. The celebration of European immigration has always been intertwined with racial hierarchy, evident in the markedly different treatment given to European migrants compared to those from neighboring countries such as Paraguay and Bolivia, who were racialized in distinct ways. The distinction between “good” and “bad” immigrants persists, now recorded through the language of legality and security.

The False Security Argument

The Milei administration justifies its migration policies in the name of public safety. However, official data complicates that claim.

Administrative data from the National Registry of Persons (RENAPER) indicates that Argentina has roughly 2.3 million foreign-born residents, representing about 5 percent of the total population. Compared to countries where immigration dominates electoral politics, Argentina’s foreign-born population remains relatively small. According to 2023 national penitentiary statistics, foreigners account for roughly 6 percent of Argentina’s incarcerated population, approximately in line with their share of the country’s population. These figures suggest that migrants are not overrepresented within Argentina’s criminal justice system.

Framing migration as a primary security concern appears disproportionate to the available evidence and contrasts with claims by President Javier Milei that migrants disproportionately benefit from public services such as health care and education or contribute significantly to Argentina’s economic crisis.

Emulation and Political Strategy

The parallels with Trump-era discourse are not accidental. Javier Milei has openly aligned himself rhetorically with global right-wing leaders who frame migration as both a cultural and criminal threat. The emphasis on border control, internal enforcement, and moral categorization mirrors strategies used by U.S. and European conservatives to consolidate political identity around fear and grievance, while also resonating with broader regional trends.

Argentina is not an isolated case in the adoption of restrictive migration policies; rather, it reflects a broader regional trend. In Chile, President-elect José Antonio Kast campaigned on proposals that included large-scale deportations of undocumented migrants. Similarly, in Costa Rica, President Rodrigo Chaves Robles declared a state of emergency in 2023 in response to migrants transiting the country en route to the United States, as reported by Reuters.

In a recent interview with Louis Sarkozy, son of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Milei argued that when a migrant “does not adapt to your culture,” it constitutes an “invasion” capable of “altering the cultural foundations” of a country.

Yet beneath this security narrative lies a broader political project. The administration’s economic agenda (including labor reforms framed as “modernization”) favors deregulation and business interests. In this context, anti-immigrant rhetoric functions less as a response to empirical conditions than as a symbolic instrument: it constructs an internal adversary while redirecting attention away from structural economic transformation. The coherence of this narrative is further complicated by reports, including those published by The New York Times, suggesting an alleged agreement between Trump and Milei for Argentina to receive deported migrants from the United States.

In this sense, security has become the language through which a deeper class realignment is articulated. Argentina’s history shows that debates over immigration have often reflected anxieties about identity, race, and labor control rather than measurable threats. The current turn toward securitization thus represents not merely a policy shift, but a transformation in democratic language itself.

The question, then, is not whether Argentina faces a migration crisis, the available data suggests it does not, but what political purpose is served by insisting that it does, and what this insistence reveals about the broader direction of governance under Milei.

By constructing an internal enemy embodied by vulnerable populations, the government seeks to redirect attention to politically expedient scapegoats. This logic is reflected not only in the immigration policies described here, but also in labor reforms that frame workers’ rights as a burden on public spending, the repression of retirees demanding improved pensions, and new restrictions on protest and the right to strike that limit collective organization.

Taken together, these measures suggest that immigration restrictions form part of a broader institutional reconfiguration, one that prioritizes the projection of authority over the resolution of concrete social and economic challenges. In doing so, the government reframes manageable social dynamics as existential threats, a shift that risks undermining the very constitutional principles it claims to defend, both domestically and in its international positioning.

Argentina’s Ambivalent Immigration Tradition

The False Security Argument

Essentially, migration has not been a central axis of political instability or social crisis in recent years.

Emulation and Political Strategy