Mexico City, Mexico — Mexico’s immigration authorities on Monday reported that 1.74 million migrants had requested asylum during the six years of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration.
Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) shared its figures on human mobility, including that overall, more than 146 million foreign citizens entered Mexican territory since López Obrador (also known as AMLO) took office in December 2018.
The report underscored that 1,742,365 foreigners entered the country for humanitarian reasons. According to the INM, all were authorized to stay in Mexico and were granted migratory documentation to lawfully transit Mexican territory with 513,063 papers issued for humanitarian causes.
In recent years, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) has documented a significant increase in refugee applications within the country.
Migration by the numbers
In the first six months of 2024 alone, 41,427 refugee claimants were reported in Mexico, which exceeds the registrations for all of 2020, when 40,733 applications were registered, or 2018, with 29,410.
During AMLO’s administration, 2023 was the year with the most refugee applications reported, with 140,831 total.
Although Mexico is a crucial point of passage for immigrants from all over the world, Latin American and Caribbean countries make up the majority of the migratory flow, specifically within Central America.
In their April 2024 report, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) revealed that more than 100 nationalities requested refugee status in Mexico in 2023. Haiti represented 31% of the requests, followed by Honduras with 30% and Cuba with 13%.
So far, in 2024, Honduras is the leader in asylum applications with 17,441 cases, followed by Cuba with 8,833 and Haiti with just over 3,600.
Historically, Mexico has served as a transit state for migrants in the hemisphere looking to cross the border into the United States. Stringent policies and coercive measures pushed by Washington could explain the uptick in migrants settling in Mexico.
During his administration, former President Donald Trump unleashed a series of measures that sought to contain the migratory flow at the border with Mexico and, in some cases, even expel migrants back into Mexican territory.
Measures such as Title 42, now repealed by President Joe Biden, were responsible for more than 2 million migrants sent back into Mexico.
Similarly, the Migrant Protection Protocols or the “Remain in Mexico” policy ensured that migrants remained in Mexico during their immigration proceedings, which were often denied.
