Data Obtained by Frontera Federation Shows Scope of US Enforced Disappearances Across the Border
(MEXICO CITY) – July 7, 2025 – More than 70,500 non-Mexican citizens, primarily from Venezuela, have been deported to Mexico by the U.S. government, according to Mexican immigration data obtained by the Frontera Federation. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments know that people migrating are specifically and systematically targeted in Mexico for kidnapping for ransom, extortion, sexual assault, and other harms by organized crime groups as well as Mexican state actors.
Deportations of non-Mexicans to Mexico amount to enforced disappearances, the deprivation of liberty with state support, for which both countries should be held accountable. Enforced disappearances are particularly dangerous since in the process, people are placed outside of the protection of law and due process, leaving them vulnerable for other human rights abuses, including torture.
“These unlawful deportations would not be possible without the close collaboration of the Mexican government,” said Ari Sawyer, co-director of the Frontera Federation. “In response to Trump’s plans to ramp up fascist raids in U.S. communities and abusive detentions and deportations, President Sheinbaum should set an example and put a stop to life-threatening enforced disappearances to Mexico once and for all.
”The data span the time period between when deportations of non-Mexicans to Mexico first began in March 2023 under former presidents Joseph Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (in the wake of the Title 42 expulsion policy, which allowed U.S. authorities to rapidly expel asylum seekers at the border without due process, and June 2025, as deportations have continued under deals struck between presidents Donald Trump and Claudia Sheinbaum.
Despite the serious risks involved, the number of non-Mexican people the United States has deported to Mexico include nearly 5,000 vulnerable children, according to the data. (Please see the table below for a breakdown of the data by nationality.)
The practice of sending non-Mexican people to Mexico began under the first Trump administration, when former President López Obrador agreed to allow the United States to send refugees to Mexican border cities under the now defunct Remain in Mexico policy while they waited for their U.S. asylum court hearings. Under the policy, kidnapping rings and cartel profits exploded, with cartels contacting U.S.-based relatives of migrants and refugees to demand ransoms in U.S. dollars.
Biden continued to expel, remove, or push back hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other forcibly displaced people across the U.S.-Mexico border, including under Title 42, the continuation of Remain in Mexico which forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous border cities for the processing of their immigration cases, and Biden’s CBP One digital metering system rationing asylum appointments, which contributed to the rise in kidnapping rings in southern Mexico. Kidnapping for ransom is now an entrenched pillar of the cartel profit model – a fact that belies U.S. claims that border deterrence policies are designed to weaken organized criminal groups in Mexico, where over 111,000 people have been disappeared and remain missing.
As in many of these other policies, the incommunicado detention and deportation of non-Mexicans to Mexico constitute enforced disappearance carried out by both the United States and Mexico. Mexico is a signatory to the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which expressly forbids “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State.”
Indeed, the Mexican government has often doubled down on enforced disappearances by taking deported people into custody, detaining them incommunicado, and transporting them over a period of days to southern Mexico, typically without screening them for protection needs. The data we obtained indicates that some 6,611 people were forcibly transported to the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco in this manner. That number includes two U.S. citizens and 2,357 children.
“The Frontera Federation has launched a campaign to investigate and hold accountable any state actors involved in enforced disappearances of non-Mexican displaced people in Mexico as the result of joint U.S.-Mexico border and immigration policies,” Sawyer said. “We urge both governments to take immediate steps to end further endangerment of people migrating and to instead implement policies honoring human rights and dignity.”
Total non-Mexicans deported to Mexico by the United States, Jan 1, 2023-June 2, 2024
Source: Instituto Nacional de Migración, MX