Mexico

Beginning under the first Trump administration, Mexico has continuously received third country nationals who were either turned back from U.S. ports of entry, returned to await the adjudication of U.S. immigration court proceedings (as in the case of the Remain in Mexico policy), expelled, or deported. There has been no written agreement and little transparency about the arrangements accepting third country nationals from the United States. Forcible transfers of non-Mexican migrants from the United States to Mexico have continued under the second Trump administration.

Unlike the detailed statistics it releases on deported Mexican nationals, the Mexican government does not publish data on non-Mexicans returned from the United States, nor does it make public any policy outlining their rights. Mexico received at least 11,886 non-Mexican nationals between January 20 and December 10, 2025. The primary groups include people from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Non-Mexicans sent to Mexico under the Trump administration have included numerous individuals granted humanitarian protection by the United States due to the danger they would likely face in their home countries. Upon being sent to Mexico, many non-Mexicans have been separated from children, spouses, or other family members who remain in the United States.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents hand over most third country nationals directly to Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) at the U.S.-Mexico land border. Advocates have documented disturbing reports of ICE officers forcibly expelling non-Mexican asylum seekers—particularly Cubans and Guatemalans—into Mexico without any formal deportation process.  Multiple testimonies describe ICE shackling detained individuals, transporting them from El Paso to the remote Santa Teresa, New Mexico border crossing, and transferring them to masked officers who ordered them to scale the border wall into Mexico. Detainees reported that these officers threatened them with federal prosecution and transfer to “a jail cell in El Salvador or Africa,” and in some cases physically beating them to force them to cross the border to Mexico. Elderly and infirm Cubans who have lived in the United States for decades have been arrested in Florida and New York, transported to Arizona, and summarily deported to Nogales, Mexico without any identity documreents or property whatsoever. 

Once in Mexico, Mexican officials bus the vast majority of non-Mexicans from the U.S.-Mexico border more than 2,000 miles south to Villahermosa, Tabasco or to Tapachula, Chiapas. What happens to individuals next depends largely on their nationality. Independent monitoring by IMUMI and Refugees International shows that Cubans and Venezuelans are often released on the street without immigration documentation, leaving them unable to work legally and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. By contrast, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans are typically deported by bus to their countries of origin. Mexican officials have deported Guatemalans and Salvadorans to their home countries despite having been granted protection by a U.S. judge from removal there. For example, a gay Guatemalan man, who had been granted protection from return to Guatemala because of the risk of sexual violence, was unlawfully sent to Mexico despite testifying in U.S. immigration court that he had already been raped there. The Mexican authorities then deported him to Guatemala, where he went into hiding. A U.S. federal judge later ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to bring him back under the D.V.D. v. DHS litigation, which challenges the deportation of people to third countries that DHS had never raised as potential countries of removal during immigration court proceedings and who did not have notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim with respect to the third country.  

IMUMI has documented repeated violations of Mexico’s own Migration Law, including detention beyond the 36-hour legal limit, denial of communication with lawyers or consulates, and failure to inform people of their right to apply for asylum. Even for those who try to apply for asylum, Mexico’s asylum system is overburdened and underfunded, with long waits and little protection in the meantime. Over the past two years, the Mexican government has stopped issuing documents that grant work authorization and legal status to asylum applicants, leaving many in a precarious legal and economic position. Cuts in U.S. financial support have worsened processing delays, leaving applicants in limbo for years.

Mexican officials justify accepting transfers from the United States as “humanitarian,” yet the country doesn’t provide non-Mexicans with legal status or any form of protection. In 2022, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled—in a case brought by IMUMI and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM)—that authorities must publish reception guidelines for non-Mexican asylum seekers, including a mechanism to grant them legal status. To date, the government has not issued those guidelines or created the required mechanism.

Non-Mexicans are exposed to repeated detention, exploitation, and abuse by Mexican authorities and criminal groups, including robbery, kidnapping and rape. Many areas of Mexico experience high levels of violent crime, such as homicide, an estimated two-thirds of which is attributed to organized crime.  The Trump administration has sent non-Mexicans to Mexico who could face harm there. For example, a transgender Honduran woman– who lived in the United States for over 30 years and was granted withholding of removal for Honduras– was sent to Mexico, even though Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries to be transgender and researchers have referred to transfemicide, the killing of trans women, as a silent epidemic.

Sustained U.S. pressure, backed by trade leverage and security concerns, has long tied Mexico’s cooperation on migration enforcement in the broader U.S.-Mexico relationship. Sharing a 2,000-mile land border, the two countries are major trading partners, with supply chains tightly integrated under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Since the first Trump administration, the Mexican government has cooperated with the United States on a range of bilateral migration policies, including Remain in Mexico and Title 42. Under sustained pressure from both the Trump and Biden administrations, Mexico increased its interior enforcement efforts and received from the United States third country nationals, especially from seven countries: Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.  During his first term, President Trump leveraged the threat of tariffs on Mexican goods to secure greater cooperation on migration, and in February he announced a 25 percent tariff on Mexico, citing fentanyl trafficking and border security concerns. In addition, Trump repeatedly discussed striking fentanyl laboratories in Mexico during his first term and in his second term has more explicitly threatened potential U.S. military action there, particularly following U.S. intervention in Venezuela.  Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the Mexican government has also had to contend with the detention and deportation of thousands of Mexican nationals who had been living in the United States for decades as well as the transfer of Mexican nationals from the United States to third countries such as South Sudan and Honduras.