Mexico: News & Updates

For those on the frontlines of Mexico's drug war, the ubiquity of American-made weapons flowing across the border has long been a problem. Mexican police say that criminals and gangs in US border towns have ready access to weapons purchased and smuggled across the border. Mexico's National Guard - which is largely responsible for stemming the flow of weapons into Mexico - could not be reached for comment. Mexican officials at various levels of government, however, have repeatedly vowed to clamp down on the flow of weapons coming across the border, referring to the effort as a "national priority". These efforts occasionally net large quantities of weapons and lead to arrests. Between 1 January 2019 and January 2021 alone, Mexico's Milenio Televisión reported that 1,585 people were detained for weapons trafficking, over 90% of whom were US citizens. In the same time frame, official data compiled by Stop US Arms to Mexico - a project aimed at reducing illegal weapons in the country - shows that 11,613 weapons were seized by the army, a small fraction of what is believed to be on Mexico's streets.

Q REPORTS (EFE) The Latin American economy will grow 2.3% in 2022, estimated this Thursday the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which lowered its outlook for the region three-tenths compared to those calculated six months ago, due to the negative effects of the Ukraine war on the global picture.

Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Immigration authorities in Mexico detained 307,679 migrants in 2021, a 68% increase compared with 182,940 detentions in 2019, according to government data. Most migrants apprehended at the US south-west border come from Mexico and Central America, but an increasing number are arriving from farther places and seeking refuge, including in recent weeks Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country. “In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“

WOLA visited a large segment of the Texas-Mexico border, from Del Rio to Brownsville, during the week of March 7. Joy Olson, WOLA’s former executive director, and Adam Isacson, WOLA’s director for defense oversight, covered three of the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border, crossing into four Mexican border cities along the way. We were pursuing different research questions: Joy was looking at how the U.S. government could respond to ransom kidnappings, and Adam was looking at communities’ and migrants’ interactions with U.S. border law enforcement. Information about both topics is scarcer in this part of the border than it is from El Paso westward, and we wanted to know why. We saw many longtime colleagues, for the first time since before the pandemic, who are doing important work throughout the border zone. We introduced ourselves to many others whom we’d never met before. We talked to service providers, shelter personnel, attorneys, and some government officials and experts—and we put a lot of miles on our rental car. Here are a few things we saw.

The new e-book, International Solidarity in Action: The Relationship Between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, by Robin Alexander tells some of this history from a first-hand perspective. As the first International Affairs Director of the UE, Alexander was there at the start of cross-border labor union campaigning against NAFTA, through to the deal’s 20-year anniversary. It was their shared opposition to NAFTA that led the UE and the FAT, both independent unions, to develop a close working relationship, beginning in 1992. As Alexander details, the bonds between the two unions soon became much closer, and their combined efforts came to include support for shop organizing, strike support, fundraising, labor law reform, and other activities. Along the way, the FAT and other independent unions in Mexico scored historic victories, leading eventually to the labor law reforms that made organizing wins, like the one at Silao, possible. These included holding the first secret-ballot union election in Mexico’s history (in the early ‘90s), and, along with the UE and other unions such as the Teamsters, lodging some of the first complaints under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), NAFTA’s labor side-agreement, in attempts to defend workers’ rights (in 1994).

 A dozen undocumented migrants on Mexico's southern border sewed their mouths shut on Tuesday in a bid to convince the country's immigration authority to grant them passage toward the U.S. border. Mexico's migration agency (INM) said in a public statement that "it is worrying that these measures have been carried out with the consent and support of those who call themselves their representatives, with the intention of pressuring authorities on an attention already provided." In recent years, the number of migrants arriving in Mexico fleeing violence and poverty has jumped. In 2021, Mexico recorded an 87% increase in the number of asylum applications, mainly from Haitians and Hondurans.

With clever Super Bowl ads, an irresistible fruit and apparently insatiable appetite from U.S. consumers, Mexico’s avocado producers have so far been able to separate avocados from the conflictive landscape that produces them — at least until a threat to a U.S. agricultural inspector essentially shut down their exports last week. But as producers continue to suffer extortion from organized crime, and loggers continue to chop down pine forests to clear land for avocado orchards, another threat looms: Campaigns for greener competition and perhaps even a boycott.

Shortages of avocados are already showing up in the supply chain after a suspension of imports from Mexico just days ago. The U.S. market has 57 million pounds of avocados, which translates to just a week’s worth of inventory, according to Stonehill Produce Chief Executive Officer Keith Slattery, who cited industry figures from the Hass Avocado Board. The halt on avocado imports from Michoacán, a coastal state just west of Mexico City that has been plagued with violence in recent years, went into effect Feb. 11 after an inspector said he received a threatening phone call. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador responded by suggesting there were political and economic interests at play in the U.S. decision.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) on Saturday called on immigration authorities to speed up visa processing so that nearly 2000 migrants seeking asylum in the US and Mexico could access documents to regularize their stay in Mexico or let them travel through Mexico without being detained.  Last week, Mexican immigration agents raided migrant shelters in Tapachula, seeking to detain people with “irregular status.” Agents are typically prohibited from raiding the shelters, but the massive influx in asylum seekers have pushed refugees onto the streets and nearby hotels. The commission’s statement said that many migrants currently survive “in conditions contrary to respect for their dignity” due to shelter overcrowding in Tapachula. They called on immigration authorities such as the National Migration Institute (INM) and the Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to these migrants.

As a candidate, President Biden spoke out forcefully against the cruelty, xenophobia, and racism against immigrants and other communities of color stirred by President Trump and other leaders. As president, President Biden from Day One made bold commitments to build an immigration system that is fair, humane, and that “welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allows people across the country – both newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generations – to more fully contribute to this country.” In this report, the We Are Home campaign assesses Biden’s Year One on immigration by looking at his most high-profile promises and longstanding priorities for the coalition.