Mexico

Advocacy for Mexico

What’s Happening?

While Mexico’s asylum laws are generous, asylum seekers still face a broad range of challenges accessing safety and integration in Mexico. The United States also exerts a great deal of influence on Mexican migration policy, including pressuring Mexico to increase enforcement measures to keep asylum seekers away from the U.S. southern border and to accept removals of third country nationals to Mexico. This has overwhelmed Mexican shelters and increased the power of criminal gangs who target stranded asylum seekers in Mexico. At the same time, violence and extortion is leading increasing numbers of Mexicans to seek asylum in the United States.  

What Must Be Done?

Refugees International is urging the government of Mexico to continue to invest in its protection system and improve the ability of asylum seekers and refugees to gain access to work and services, especially through access to regularization and engagement with the private sector.  It also recommends Mexico engage with other Latin American governments to increase access to protection in the region overall, especially given the withdrawal of U.S. leadership on refugee resettlement and other pathways.