The Individuals weren’t completely happy.
The migrant state of affairs on the border was uncontrolled, they mentioned, and Mexico was not doing sufficient to cease it, in accordance with officers from each international locations.
In reality, the disaster was worse than Mexican officers had been led to imagine by their very own immigration chief, Francisco Garduño Yáñez.
The revelation in October 2023 led Mexico’s protection secretary on the time to fly right into a rage at an emergency assembly, officers with information of the encounter mentioned.
“You fooled me,” the protection secretary, Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, yelled at Mr. Garduño, in accordance with two individuals accustomed to the incident.
The protection secretary repeatedly briefed Mexico’s then-president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. However Mr. Sandoval had realized days earlier from the Individuals that the migrant disaster was extra dire than he realized.
“You hid data from me, making me mislead the president,” the protection secretary lashed out.
It was a tense chapter in U.S.-Mexico relations, in accordance with 5 Mexican and American officers aware of bilateral talks on migration, and Mr. Garduño, 76, had landed in the midst of it. Past being accused of mismanaging and minimizing the migrant disaster, he’s individually dealing with legal prices in reference to a fire at a migration detention center that killed 40 individuals in 2023.
Now, as Mexico stands on the precipice of what are anticipated to be contentious border discussions with the incoming Trump administration, the identical Mexican official blamed for mismanaging the migrant disaster, Mr. Garduño, will probably be a pivotal participant in these negotiations. The American president-elect has vowed to start mass deportations of undocumented immigrants as quickly as he takes workplace.
The Protection Ministry, Mr. Garduño and the company he led, the Nationwide Migration Institute, didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Controlling the Mexico-U.S. border is a sprawling endeavor, involving 1000’s of presidency brokers from each international locations. The difficulty is usually used as a political cudgel. U.S. Home Republicans accused the Biden administration of failing to manage the border and voted to question his homeland safety secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.
In Mexico, Mr. Garduño was the one within the cross hairs.
A former director of Mexico’s jail system, he has been criticized for counting on troops to assist handle migrant flows. Mr. Garduño’s company has additionally been accused of primarily waving migrants via to the northern border for bribes. In interviews, migrants mentioned they needed to pay Mexican migration brokers to journey via the nation to succeed in the US.
In 2022, the British Embassy additionally commissioned a labeled report on Mexico’s migration system, a replica of which was obtained by The New York Instances. It discovered systemic corruption within the authorities’s dealing with of migrants, together with extortion, sexual abuse and collusion with legal organizations to kidnap migrants for ransom.
In a 2022 interview, Mr. Garduño defended his efficiency, saying he had fired almost half of the company’s staff for extorting migrants. His company had issued paperwork to almost two million migrants from 2018 to 2022, he mentioned, serving to to regularize their presence within the nation.
It’s “a humanitarian coverage of integration and brotherhood,” he mentioned.
However interviews with officers from each international locations have laid naked the discontent of American officers with how Mexico was dealing with migration.
In 2023, President Biden’s reputation was slipping forward of the 2024 elections. Migration was a high concern amongst American voters. So the president dispatched Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Mr. Mayorkas for an emergency assembly in Mexico Metropolis that October.
They advised Mr. López Obrador that American border brokers had encountered almost 220,000 migrants on the southern U.S. border that September — one of many largest flows ever recorded, officers with information of the assembly mentioned.
Border patrol brokers have been overwhelmed. The freight trains from Mexico to the US had no safety. Corrupt conductors, the Individuals mentioned, have been stopping or slowing the trains to permit migrants to hop on.
They requested Mexican officers to maneuver extra aggressively to interrupt up giant teams of migrants heading to the U.S. border and to finish visa-free journey for international locations whose nationals used Mexico to enter America illegally, officers mentioned.
The fact that the American delegation revealed was grimmer than the one introduced by Mr. Garduño’s company, which gave every day briefings to the Mexican administration on the variety of migrants intercepted in southern Mexico.
Three officers engaged on migration and have been aware of these figures mentioned the numbers hardly ever correlated with the information introduced by the U.S. Customs and Border Safety and the federal government of Panama, which many migrants go via to succeed in Mexico.
The Mexican army reported that it and the migration company encountered 5 million migrants from 2018 to 2024, however Mexico’s Inside Ministry reported about half that quantity in that point. The 2023 numbers assorted extensively as nicely; the migration company reported almost 1.5 million encounters that 12 months, whereas the Inside Ministry reported about 500,000.
“Mexico’s authorities is blurring the image by issuing two extensively divergent numbers, with out even explaining the divergence,” mentioned Adam Isacson, a director on the Washington Workplace on Latin America, a analysis institute. “It’s complicated, it undermines the federal government’s credibility, and it makes it tougher to anticipate rising developments.”
After the U.S. delegation returned to Washington, Mr. López Obrador referred to as the emergency assembly of Mexico’s most senior safety and migration officers on Oct. 13, 2023. It was held in Tapachula, a metropolis on the border with Guatemala and a funnel for migrants coming into Mexico.
The town’s refugee company was about to break down, with about 7,000 migrants a day flooding its places of work to register as asylum seekers — a quick monitor to receiving a migrant allow.
The permits have been form of a golden ticket: They permit asylum seekers to check, work and get entry to primary providers. Although asylum seekers are supposed to remain within the state the place they apply, many use the Mexican permits to navigate to the U.S. border with out being detained, officers say.
On the emergency assembly, the inside secretary on the time, Luisa María Alcalde Luján, zeroed in on the permits, officers mentioned.
She grilled Mr. Garduño about whether or not his company was handing out the permits however permitting asylum seekers to move north towards the U.S. border, in accordance with 4 officers with information of the assembly, two in attendance.
Sure, Mr. Garduño replied.
As Ms. Alcalde berated him, Mr. Garduño regarded down at his lap and fell silent, officers with information of the encounter mentioned.
She then introduced to the room that she was stripping Mr. Garduño of the flexibility at hand out new migration permits with out the approval of different authorities branches.
Ms. Alcalde didn’t reply to requests for remark.
As quickly because the migrant permits stopped, 1000’s of asylum seekers in Mexico have been plunged into authorized limbo.
The transfer made them “simpler prey for legal teams,” mentioned Dana Graber Ladek, the Mexico chief of mission for the Worldwide Group for Migration. It left “migrants with mainly no choice to have the ability to work legally within the nation,” she added.
Ultimately, Mexico restarted issuing the migration permits, however right this moment they’re a trickle of what they as soon as have been: Solely about 3,500 permits have been issued final 12 months, in contrast with almost 130,000 in 2023.
After the assembly, Mr. Garduño shortly moved to reveal that his company was able to controlling migrant flows, officers mentioned.
His brokers made it tougher for migrants to succeed in the U.S. border and stepped up safety on the trains many used to journey north. The variety of migrants encountered on the U.S.-Mexican border dropped from September to November by nearly 13 percent, in accordance with November 2023 statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Safety.
However simply because the numbers trended down, a leak prompted high-level officers to name one other emergency migration assembly in Mexico.
The Mexican treasury secretary briefly stopped funding components of the federal government in November 2023, together with Mr. Garduño’s company, due to budgetary constraints. However as a substitute of lobbying the treasury to launch funds, as different officers did, Mr. Garduño proactively halted his company’s operations.
On Dec. 1, he despatched a memo ordering his agency to pause deportation flights that carry undocumented migrants, withdraw personnel from checkpoints and shut down the busing program that had relieved strain on the northern border.
The memo was swiftly leaked and went public.
Migrants rushed to the U.S. border, many unhindered by Mexican migration brokers. That December, U.S. Customs and Border Safety registered the very best variety of migrant encounters on the border in historical past: almost 250,000 migrants.
Overwhelmed American border patrol brokers shut land border crossings in Lukeville, Ariz., and San Diego. The U.S. border safety company suspended a number of railway crossings in Texas.
Mexico’s authorities, attempting to include the fallout, publicly pledged extra funds to its migration company. Mr. Blinken flew again to Mexico Metropolis, on Dec. 27 — with a fair bigger delegation.
The subsequent month, January 2024, after Mexico and the US cooperated to implement stricter measures, the migrant stream on the U.S. border was lower in half.
The strain from Washington has continued to work; illegal border crossings have declined. Final June, Mr. Biden issued an govt order to primarily block undocumented migrants from receiving asylum on the border.
Mexico has deployed Nationwide Guard troops to immigration checkpoints and bused migrants farther south, exhausting their efforts to move north. The authorities have additionally damaged up migrant caravans so that they now not attain the U.S. border.
In October, Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as president of Mexico. She named a brand new immigration chief, however mentioned Mr. Garduño would proceed to advise the federal government to create a “profound transformation” of its migration company and to assist climate the storm after Mr. Trump takes workplace Jan. 20.
Mr. Garduño nonetheless faces legal proceedings over the migration middle fireplace. A number of Mexican and American officers mentioned they thought he would resign after the tragedy. However he has been a confidante of Mr. López Obrador for many years.
Mr. Garduño isn’t underneath arrest, however each two weeks, he must check in with the prosecuting judge.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Paulina Villegas contributed reporting.
