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On December 1, 2018, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assumed office and promised to change Mexico’s migratory policy. Initially, López Obrador championed a humanitarian approach to migration, placing migrant rights defenders in key policy positions and directing INM to issue an unprecedented number of humanitarian visas. However, this approach did not last. By June 2019, amid intense U.S. pressure, the López Obrador administration shifted its migratory strategy to an enforcement-based approach. As a result, Mexico has increased its number of apprehensions, detentions, and deportations. This report will detail López Obrador’s migratory policy and its consequences during his administration’s first year in office. This report’s first chapter focuses on Central Americans’ decisions to migrate to Mexico and the United States. It covers the factors that historically led people to leave their homes, including civil wars and natural disasters, which set in motion today’s migration patterns. It also looks at the current factors driving migration, such as gang and gender-based violence, political instability, and a lack of economic opportunity. The report’s second chapter outlines Mexico’s legal framework for migration, which guides the López Obrador administration’s response to Central American migration. It also provides an overview of each Mexican federal agency involved in migratory policy. This report’s third chapter covers the López Obrador administration’s migratory policies, starting with the initial push toward a more humanitarian focused policy. It also explores the López Obrador administration’s Central American development programs and the mounting challenges for Mexico’s underfunded refugee resettlement agency. Finally, the chapter also outlines the administration’s shift to an enforcement strategy and the National Guard’s deployment to the southern border. The fourth chapter chronicles these migratory policies’ effects. It covers the policies’ effects for Mexico’s foreign relations, state and local level governments, civil society organizations, Mexican citizens, and Central American migrants transiting through the country. In particular it details how these policies have shifted migrants’ transit routes, increased crimes against migrants, and ongoing xenophobic attitudes in Mexico. This report concludes with a series of recommendations for improving Mexico’s migratory policies. These include: 1) putting Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior back in control of the country’s migratory policy; 2) strengthening INM’s commitment to human rights through improved training and better infrastructure; 3); increasing the number of legal channels for Central Americans to work in Mexico; 4) expanding funding for Mexico’s refugee resettlement agency; 5) streamlining Central American development programs; and 6) reducing the National Guard’s role in migration enforcement.

In November 2018, the United States and Mexico negotiated the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Before MPP, asylum seekers were allowed to wait in the United States during their asylum cases. However, with MPP, asylum seekers are now forced to wait in Mexican border cities as their cases move through the U.S. immigration system. In January 2019, U.S. officials began to implement MPP in San Diego and then extended the program across the rest of the border. As of April 2020, more than 64,000 asylum seekers had been returned to Mexico as part of the program. The majority of the asylum seekers returned to Mexico under MPP are from the Northern Triangle of Central America, although individuals from other nationalities have also been put in the program. As of March 2020, the highest number of MPP returnees were from Honduras, accounting for 35 percent of individuals in the program. This was followed by asylum seekers from Guatemala (24 percent), Cuba (12.7 percent), and El Salvador (12.5 percent). U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have exempted some groups from MPP, including unaccompanied minors, Mexican citizens, non-Spanish speakers (although Brazilians were eventually included), and asylum seekers in certain “special circumstances.” However, CBP officers have discretion regarding who is subject to the program, and these exemptions have not been consistently implemented. Additionally, CBP officers have also included members of “highrisk populations” in MPP, such as pregnant women, LGBTQ+ individuals, minors, and people who are disabled. Once asylum seekers are returned to Mexico, they face various challenges. Although the Mexican Migratory Law of 2011 guarantees asylum seekers the right to healthcare and education in Mexico, it can be difficult to access these services. Asylum seekers are also responsible for acquiring their own housing, even though they often have few resources. Further, they must navigate these situations while at risk of violence from criminal organizations or predatory actors. Criminal groups often target asylum seekers because they have no local ties or community and because they often have friends and family in the United States who can pay their ransom. This report recommends that MPP be immediately discontinued. However, understanding that this may be difficult in the short term, this report provides additional recommendations to address the most egregious conditions under MPP.These include improving safety for asylum seekers, excluding at-risk populations, and providing asylum seekers with greater access to due process and legal representation.

Over the last two decades, Mexico has enacted multiple domestic programs and international initiatives to manage the movement of migrants and illicit goods across its southern border states. In July 2014, Mexico launched its most recent major initiative, the Southern Border Program (Programa Frontera Sur), amid the arrival of an unprecedented number of Central American minors traveling through Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border. This report provides an analysis of Mexico’s Southern Border Program, setting it within a historical context, describing the program and its consequences, and examining its legacy.