Mexico assumes migration enforcer role ahead of US election

A National Guard soldier by a bus to the Tabasco state capital. Image: Carlos Jasso / Reuters.

Words by David Agren.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) boasted encountering just 53,900 migrants along the US-Mexico border during September. That continued a precipitous decline in migration detentions ahead of the November 5 election. CBP framed the decline in terms of White House policy, saying encounters plummeted 55% after the Biden administration imposed an asylum ban in early June.

Left unsaid in the statement was the role Mexico played in thwarting those migrants from reaching the border. The country has stepped up enforcement throughout 2024, detaining more than 700,000 migrants this year. Tactics include pulling travellers without the proper papers off intercity buses, forcing them off trains and nabbing them at checkpoints the length of the country. Those figures mean Mexico at times detains more migrants than the US.

Mexico, however, deports few of the detainees. Roughly 11,500 migrants were returned to their countries of origin during the first five months of 2024. Most are sent to its backwater southern states, Tabasco mainly, along with Chiapas and Veracruz. There migrants are disgorged with little more than notices to regularise their immigration statuses in 20 days.

“I pulled up the map [on my phone] and it said ‘Villahermosa.’ That’s how I knew we were in Villahermosa,” a migrant from El Salvador told The Mexico Brief from a shelter in the Tabasco state capital. The 29-year-old and her daughter, 5, were grabbed while transiting Veracruz state. They were sent to a city lacking services for migrants and closer to her native country than the US border.

Migrants sent south would previously hit the road north again, rather than self-deporting. Often they'd be detained and returned again to places like Villahermosa. Many would try to reach Mexico City, where they could access CBP One, an app used for requesting appointments to enter the United States. But increased enforcement has made that harder. “The game has totally changed for them,” said Josué Martínez, director of Albergue Amarito, the lone shelter welcoming migrants in Villahermosa.

The migrant presence in Mexico City has swollen in recent years. And not just by digital nomads. The city made for an attractive respite: migrants could work in the vast informal economy, get their paperwork in order and apply for CBP One appointments. CBP expanded the app’s reach to southern Mexico on August 23. Advocates for migrants offer mixed opinions on motives behind its expanded coverage area. Most, however, coincided with the idea that the US government wanted migrants kept far from the border to avoid mass crossings. Mexican officials preferred migrants stay out of Mexico City, advocates say, despite the capital’s professed progressive politics.

The app, combined with Mexico’s enforcement dragnet, appears to keep migrants stuck in southern Mexico. It’s also working more effectively than past attempts at keeping migrants in the underdeveloped south. The app’s availability, however, seems to be attracting migrants to southern Mexico. “People have a lot of hope in this application; the number of people has increased by more than 100 percent,” Father César Cañaveral said, director of migrant ministries in the Diocese of Tapachula, where most migrants enter the country from Guatemala, according to El País.

Some recent arrivals win the migration lottery. Ednnys, a 37-year-old Venezuelan, got a CBP One appointment at the Brownsville, TX, port of entry, just three days after arriving in Tapachula. She also received a bus trip north, with a National Guard escort, such is the insecurity for migrants transiting Mexico. Most migrants will wait, though. Father Brian Strassburger, a Jesuit working in Reynosa and Matamoros, opposite the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, calculates most non-Mexicans wait seven months for appointments. Mexicans, he said, receive 16 percent of the 1,450 daily appointments, and wait 10 months.

Mexico says little about its enforcement role. The foreign ministry (SRE) told Reuters it protects migrants from smugglers, rather than expecting them to self-deport. The comments parroted former President López Obrador's (AMLO) insistence that Mexico “cared” for migrants, even as they were extorted and kidnapped.

According to Reuters, Mexican officials acted after being spooked by the closure of rail crossings into the United States in response to rising migrant entries. AMLO paid no political price for increasing migrant enforcement, despite promising not to do foreign governments' "dirty work." President Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to do the same. She promoted nearshoring during her campaign, which requires an open border. That means Mexico will likely continue its migrant enforcer role long after November 5.