(Washington, DC) – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador should reject any proposed new agreement with the United States that would lead to an increase in the immediate expulsion of asylum seekers to Mexico, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to López Obrador and Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena, who will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, DC on Friday.
US President Joe Biden and US lawmakers are currently considering tough new immigration measures that would violate international human rights standards and harm thousands of migrants and asylum seekers, with some of the proposed measures requiring the consent of the Mexican government to be implemented.
“President Lopez Obrador has an opportunity to defend the rights of thousands of vulnerable, mostly Latino, migrants and asylum seekers by rejecting a new agreement that would allow the US to summarily expel people to Mexico,” said Juanita Gebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The Mexican president should make it clear that he will not join the US Congress’ attempts to dismantle the US asylum system.”
US lawmakers have proposed tough new immigration restrictions in exchange for backing the approval of more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine and Israel as part of negotiations over the 2024 US federal budget.
Proposals under consideration include creating new rules similar to the now-defunct Title 42 border expulsion policy that ended in May 2023 that would allow U.S. immigration authorities to expel asylum seekers without hearing their claims; restricting the humanitarian parole program that allowed Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to apply for permission to travel legally to the United States; and making permanent a revised Trump-era “no transit” rule that requires asylum seekers who pass through another country on their way to the U.S. to prove they have already applied for and been denied asylum in that country.
Any new policies regarding migration to Mexico or the expulsion of asylum seekers would require the participation of the Mexican government, since Mexican authorities would need to give permission for expelled migrants to enter the country.
Beginning in 2019, the Lopez Obrador administration allowed the United States to expel non-Mexican migrants and asylum seekers to Mexico under a series of agreements, including the “Remain in Mexico” program and later the Title 42 policy. People expelled to Mexico under these policies are regularly targeted by cartels and corrupt officials and suffer serious abuses, including kidnapping, extortion, robbery, sexual assault and murder. Crimes against migrants are rarely reported, investigated or punished.
President Lopez Obrador has also stepped up efforts to prevent migrants from traveling through Mexico to the United States, deploying more than 32,000 troops for immigration enforcement and setting up internal immigration checkpoints across the country. Mexican authorities have detained 686,000 migrants in 2023, the highest number ever.
The right to seek asylum and to be protected from being returned to a country where one faces a risk of persecution, torture, or other serious harm is recognized in U.S. and Mexican law and is a core principle of international law guaranteed by the Refugee Convention, the Convention against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Mexico has ratified all three conventions. The United States has ratified the Convention against Torture and the ICCPR, and is a party to the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention, which obligates the United States to comply with core provisions of the Refugee Convention.
Everyone seeking international protection has the right to apply for asylum and to have their case heard by the appropriate authorities. Expelling asylum seekers without recognizing their claim is both unlawful and dangerous.
“These proposals would violate basic human rights and further empower Mexican criminal gangs who profit from kidnapping and extorting vulnerable migrants,” said Goebertus. “President Lopez Obrador should make it clear that he prioritizes the safety of Mexicans and the basic human rights of vulnerable migrants, and that Mexico will not be complicit in facilitating further deportations.”