On March 27, a fire broke out inside a Mexican migrant detention facility, killing 40 people held there. The incident is one of the most gruesome examples of abuses committed against migrants at the Mexico-U.S. border in recent years. When the fire started in the facility—which is run by Mexico’s National Migration Institute, or INM—security personnel saw smoke and flames filling the men’s cell. Yet, as security camera footage showed, they walked away from the blaze, leaving the men locked inside. As well as the 40 people who died, dozens more were hospitalized with burns and organ damage.
The men were migrants from Central and South America, with most of them headed for the United States in the hopes of reuniting with loved ones or finding work to support family who had stayed behind in other countries. They were detained by Mexican authorities for lacking a documented status, despite some of them actually possessing authorization to be in the country. The men formed part of the burgeoning population of migrants and asylum-seekers stranded in and around Mexican border towns, as U.S. ports of entry largely remain closed to asylum requests. Many migrants and asylum-seekers who cross between official ports of entry are subject to summary expulsion into northern Mexico—regardless of their protection needs—under Title 42, a pandemic-era measure invoked by U.S. authorities to expel thousands of migrants from the country on public health grounds.
This tragic case has yet again exposed the failure of U.S. as well as Mexican migration and border-control policies. The Western Hemisphere is experiencing increased migration flows, driven to a considerable extent by repression, persecution, crime, conflict, poverty and the climate emergency. In this context, thousands of individuals and families are caught between Washington’s continued closure of the U.S. southern border to most asylum-seekers under Title 42 and the dangers they face on the Mexican side of the border. These hazards include the risk of being swept up in raids like the ones that led to the detention of many of the fire’s victims. Migrant detentions have reached record numbers during the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO.
The restrictions placed on pathways to legal migration and asylum, combined with the threat of detention that migrants and asylum-seekers face at the hands of authorities, force them to travel via more dangerous routes in Mexico as well as at the country’s border with the United States. These routes expose them to dangers like kidnappings, sexual assault and disappearances.
In addition to the threats to their safety from nonstate individuals and groups, migrants in Mexico also face human rights violations by state institutions. They describe constant extortion by Mexican security forces who threaten them with detention or violence, while investigations have shed light on the extent of corruption within the INM. Migrants reportedly faced extortion at the INM-run facility where the deadly fire occurred, with personnel said to have regularly demanded bribes from migrants as a condition of their release from detention. Those who are unable to pay the bribes may face deplorable conditions and abuses that can amount to torture. Child migrants are frequently deported to their home countries without a proper evaluation of their individual conditions.
The fire took place against the backdrop of a crucial moment for U.S. immigration and border-security policy: Title 42 is set to end May 11, after the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden announced it will halt the country’s emergency response to COVID-19. As a result, U.S. ports of entry will be reopened to asylum applications, which theoretically would enable asylum-seekers to apply in person for asylum in the U.S., as opposed to remaining bottled up indefinitely in northern Mexican cities. But seeking asylum at the border could end up being no less challenging due to a range of policy proposals put forth by the Biden administration.
Though Title 42 is set to end May 11, seeking asylum at the border could end up being no less challenging due to a range of policy proposals put forth by the Biden administration.
Under Biden, U.S. officials have prioritized a reduction of northbound migration at the border with Mexico at any cost. Even as the Biden administration has opposed litigation by Republican-controlled states intended to preserve Title 42, it negotiated an agreement with Mexican officials to expand the list of nationalities eligible for expulsion from the U.S. to Mexico under the policy.
While asylum-seekers can technically make an appointment through a U.S. government-created smartphone app to request an exemption that would enable them to enter the U.S., the app’s technical glitches and the small number of appointments available have left many asylum-seekers stranded in Mexico. In addition, Washington has expanded a humanitarian parole program to admit up to 30,000 migrants per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti. Though this is a welcome step, the hurdles to qualifying for this pathway—notably the requirement to have a passport and a U.S. sponsor—keep it out of reach for most applicants.
In the meantime, elevated migration levels continue unabated. Crossings of the treacherous Darien Gap—which connects Colombia to Panama—increased by 55 percent from February to March 2023. After a perilous journey north, arriving migrants who would be subject to Title 42’s provisions are regularly stranded in, or returned to, Mexican border cities notorious for violence. Since January 2021, Human Rights First, a U.S.-based human rights organization, has tracked over 13,000 publicly reported cases of kidnapping, rape, murder and other violent crimes committed against migrants blocked from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border or returned to Mexico under Title 42.
But despite this, Mexico City has continued collaborating with Washington under the provisions of the directive. AMLO has also doubled down on using the Mexican armed forces as part of his border-control strategy, regularly deploying up to 30,000 troops along Mexico’s borders. In August 2021, Defense Minister Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval stated that the military’s main objective at Mexico’s southern border was to “stop all migration.” Given the Mexican military’s concerning human rights record, deploying it along the border to be the first point of contact for migrant families and individuals presents obvious risks.
Despite overwhelming evidence that border closures and expulsions of migrants endanger their lives, a full-scale reopening of the U.S. border to asylum-seekers is unlikely, notwithstanding the expiration of Title 42. As the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign begins in earnest, immigration policy will be a salient issue, and Biden will seek to deflect accusations by Republicans that he is fostering a “border crisis” by reopening access to asylum.
In the past few days, the Biden administration announced that it would send 1,500 military troops to the border to support enforcement operations there, while Mexico City and Washington announced that they had reached an agreement for Mexico to accept the mass deportation of non-Mexican nationals after Title 42 ends. A proposed U.S. rule would create an “asylum transit ban” at the border, rendering non-Mexican asylum-seekers ineligible for asylum in the U.S. if they do not follow the limited legal pathways available for entry and fail to seek asylum first in another country. Access to U.S. ports of entry would continue to require asylum-seekers to make appointments through the U.S. government’s “CBP One” app—something most have found impossible.
Members of Congress, the United Nations Refugee Agency and civil society groups have expressed their opposition to the Biden administration’s new plans to restrict access to asylum. Meanwhile, in the wake of March’s deadly fire, Mexican civil society has renewed calls for AMLO’s administration to prioritize the protection of migrants and asylum-seekers over their detention. But it remains to be seen whether Mexico City or Washington will take meaningful steps to protect migrants and asylum-seekers in Mexico and at the U.S. border.
At stake is whether the anti-asylum model embodied by Title 42 will truly have been temporary, or whether it will be followed by a permanent set of asylum restrictions and mass deportations that would continue to violate the international human right to seek asylum. Such a scenario would push the Americas ever farther from the “safe, orderly, humane, and regular” migration paradigm that regional governments committed to at last year’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. It would also increase dangers for vulnerable migrants and asylum-seekers who face violence and human rights abuses, of which the recent fire is one particularly painful example.
Stephanie Brewer is the director for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, an independent organization that promotes human rights in the Americas. She has worked on human rights issues in Mexico since 2007.