US-Mexico Border Theater Goes Binational
The Trump administration is exporting its draconian approach to border enforcement to Mexico through aggressive political pressure and drastic reductions in NGO funding.
By Pablo De La Rosa (Border Chronicle)
HAVANA TIMES – Ramping up its plans to deport millions of people, President Trump’s federal government has rapidly expanded the powers of the U.S. military and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sparking a civil liberties crisis.
Communities on the border and around the country are seeing the repercussions of this expansion—illegal arrests, the politically motivated incarceration of legal residents, and the improper detainment of U.S. citizens. The number of people now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention is at its highest level since 2019, at almost 46,000.
But the effort doesn’t end on the U.S. side. The Trump administration is exporting its draconian approach to border enforcement to Mexico through aggressive political pressure and drastic reductions in NGO funding. A military operation launched in February on Mexico’s northern border shows the U.S. influence on border security.
“The Mexican government has really cracked down on migration and acted on behalf of the U.S. to deter folks from getting up north,” said Ari Sawyer, an immigration policy expert who has worked extensively on the U.S.-Mexico border and recently launched Frontera Federation, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing policing on the border. The administration of Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, Sawyer said, “has sold migrants out for political capital in Washington, DC, without providing any sort of benefits here in Mexico.”
In early February, Mexico capitulated to demands for increased border security from the Trump administration to address a nonexistent “invasion” of migrants at the southern U.S. border. The high tariffs on Mexican products that Trump threatened to impose were enough for Sheinbaum to deploy 10,000 military personnel to Mexico’s northern border, launching Operación Frontera Norte (Operation Northern Border).
Border commuters suddenly faced six-hour inspection lines while crossing back into the US. This remains a major disruption for the hundreds of thousands of binational people who cross the border daily to work or visit family, though the impact varies by location and time of day.
The delays brought back memories of the commercial truck inspections carried out by Texas governor Greg Abbott, which caused billions of dollars in trade losses in 2022, yet found not a single undocumented migrant. Now, however, the work is being undertaken not by the Texas DPS but by the Mexican military. The soldiers order international commuters to exit vehicles for lengthy and thorough inspections before they return to the U.S.
Like the inspections implemented under Abbott’s controversial border security mission Operation Lone Star (OLS)—which Texas has called a “blueprint” for Trump—the inspections in Mexico are failing to target areas where migrants would actually be present. This is a hallmark of American border theater—highly publicized and camera-ready operations launched to address immigration, but disconnected from reality.
For border communities, the policies championed by Abbott, Trump, and Sheinbaum have merged in unexpected ways. Mexico’s security operations now mirror the same border theater long seen on the U.S. side—complete with Abbott-style traffic disruptions and CBP-style field reports for Operación Frontera Norte. The irony is striking: in an effort to appease Trump, Mexico is replicating the same ineffective security spectacle that American officials have used for years.
Since its inception in 2019, the Mexican National Guard has meant human rights violations for migrants inside Mexico. And since Biden’s last year in office, migrants are detained and forcibly relocated deeper into Mexico. Some are even pushed across the border into Guatemala.
“This policy of sending people all the way back to the start, it really drains pocketbooks,” said Sawyer. “So it’s not only about exhausting people emotionally and physically, but financially.”
According to the Migration Policy Institute, Mexico’s migrant relocation practice continues to play “a pivotal role” in the historically low levels of border crossings at the southwest border that first Abbott and now Trump have taken credit for achieving.
Sawyer said Trump’s influence on Mexico’s immigration infrastructure extends to the “massive gap being left by the pullout of NGOs,” through funding cuts. Thanks to an executive order freezing billions in foreign aid, organizations in Mexico have been forced to pause essential programs, including medical care and food aid that supported thousands of migrants and low-income communities.
Sawyer said human rights monitoring, provided by a variety of NGOs, is critical for migrants in Mexico, but it has largely disappeared for the same reason. This could be a boon for organized crime groups that target migrants, Sawyer added, because “they know these people have no protection, no real options, and that their families will pay to get them back.”
Meanwhile, U.S. guns continue to flow into Mexico, where they are used by organized crime to terrorize migrants and traffic the very narcotics that Abbott and Trump claim to be targeting. Neither U.S. nor Mexican authorities have established southbound traffic inspections targeting the massive flow of U.S. weapons into Mexico.