Americans were not happy.
Officials from both countries say the migrant situation at the border is out of control and Mexico has not done enough to stop it.
In fact, the crisis was worse than Mexican officials and Immigration Commissioner Francisco Garduño Yáñez had believed.
The October 2023 revelations outraged Mexico’s then-defense minister at an emergency meeting, officials with knowledge of the meeting said.
“You tricked me,” Defense Secretary Luis Crescencio Sandoval González shouted at Garduño, according to two people familiar with the incident.
The defense secretary regularly reported to then-Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But Mr. Sandoval learned from Americans a few days ago that the immigration crisis is worse than he thought.
The Minister of Defense criticized, “You hid information from me and made me lie to the president.”
It was a tense chapter in U.S.-Mexico relations, and Mr. Garduño, 76, arrived in the middle of it, according to five Mexican and U.S. officials involved in bilateral talks on immigration. Beyond charges that he mismanaged and minimized the migrant crisis, he faces separate criminal charges in connection with a fire at a migrant camp in 2023 that killed 40 people.
Now, as Mexico stands on the precipice of expected border talks with the incoming Trump administration, Mr. Garduño, a Mexican official who has come under fire for mismanaging the migrant crisis, will play a pivotal role in those negotiations. . The US president-elect has pledged to begin mass deportations of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office.
The Defense Department, Mr. Garduño, and the agency he heads, the National Migration Institute, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Controlling the Mexico-United States border is an extensive effort involving thousands of government agents from both countries. This issue is often used as a political cudgel. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives accused the Biden administration of failing to control the border and voted to impeach his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
In Mexico, Mr. Garduño was in the crosshairs.
The former director of Mexico’s prison system has been criticized for relying on the military to manage migrant flows. Mr. Garduño’s agency has also been accused of luring migrants to the northern border, essentially in exchange for bribes. In interviews, migrants said they had to pay Mexican immigration agencies to reach the United States.
In 2022, the British Embassy also commissioned a confidential report on Mexico’s immigration system, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The report found systemic corruption in the government’s handling of migrants, including extortion, sexual abuse, and collusion with criminal gangs to kidnap migrants for ransom.
In a 2022 interview, Mr. Garduño defended his performance, saying he fired nearly half of the agency’s staff for robbing immigrants. He said his agency issued documents to about 2 million immigrants between 2018 and 2022, helping to regularize their stay in the country.
“It is a humanitarian policy of unity and brotherhood,” he said.
But interviews with officials from both countries revealed dissatisfaction among U.S. officials with the way Mexico handles immigration.
President Biden’s popularity was declining ahead of the 2023 and 2024 elections. Immigration was a top concern among American voters. So the president dispatched Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Mr. Mayorkas to hold an emergency meeting in Mexico City that October.
They told Mr. López Obrador that U.S. border agents encountered nearly 220,000 migrants at the U.S. southern border that September. This is one of the largest migrations ever, officials with knowledge of the meeting said.
Border patrol agents were overwhelmed. There was no security whatsoever on the freight train from Mexico to the United States. Americans say corrupt conductors are stopping or slowing down trains to allow migrants to board.
They have asked Mexican officials to move more aggressively to break up large groups of migrants heading to the U.S. border and to stop visa-free travel from countries that use Mexico to enter the U.S. illegally, the officials said.
The reality revealed by the U.S. delegation was bleaker than that presented by Mr. Garduño’s representative, who reported daily to the Mexican administration on the number of migrants apprehended in southern Mexico.
Three officials who work on immigration and have access to the numbers said the numbers bear little correlation to data presented by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the government of Panama, where many migrants pass through to reach Mexico.
Mexico’s military and immigration authorities reported encountering 5 million migrants between 2018 and 2024, but Mexico’s Interior Ministry reported about half that number at the time. The 2023 numbers also varied widely. The Immigration Service reported almost 1.5 million encounters that year, while the Home Office reported around 500,000.
“The Mexican government is muddying the picture by publishing two wildly different numbers without even explaining the difference,” said Adam Isaacson, director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a research organization. “It’s confusing, reduces trust in government, and makes it harder to predict new trends.”
After the U.S. delegation returned to Washington, Prime Minister López Obrador convened an emergency meeting of Mexico’s top security and immigration officials for October 13, 2023. The meeting was held in Tapachula, a Guatemalan border town and transit point for incoming migrants. Mexico.
The city’s refugee agency was on the verge of collapse as about 7,000 migrants a day flocked to its offices to register as asylum seekers. This was a fast track to obtaining a relocation permit.
Permission was a kind of golden ticket. Allow asylum seekers to study, work and access basic services. Asylum seekers are required to stay in the state where they applied, but many are able to use Mexican permits to get to the U.S. border without being detained, officials say.
In an emergency meeting, then-Interior Minister Luisa María Alcalde Luján focused on permits, the official said.
She asked Mr. Garduño whether his agency was handing out permits but allowing asylum seekers to head north toward the U.S. border, according to four officials with knowledge of the meeting, two of whom were present.
Yes, Mr. Garduño answered.
As Mr. Alcalde scolded him, Mr. Garduño looked down at his knees and remained silent, officials with knowledge of the encounter said.
She then announced to the room that Mr. Garduño was being stripped of his authority to issue new immigration permits without approval from other government departments.
Mr. Alcalde did not respond to a request for comment.
As soon as immigration permits were suspended, thousands of asylum seekers in Mexico found themselves in a legal limbo.
Dana Graber Ladek, Mexico representative for the International Organization for Migration, said the move “makes them easy prey for criminal groups.” “Immigrants are basically left with no option to work legally in the country,” she added.
Eventually, Mexico began issuing immigration permits again, but today only at a fraction of the number before. Only about 3,500 permits were issued last year, compared to nearly 130,000 in 2023.
After the meeting, Mr. Garduño moved quickly to show that his agency could control the flow of migrants, the official said.
His agents made it more difficult for immigrants to reach the U.S. border and increased security on the trains many use to travel north. The number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border fell nearly 13% from September to November, according to November 2023 statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
But with numbers falling, the leak prompted senior officials to call another emergency migration meeting in Mexico.
Mexico’s finance minister temporarily suspended funding to parts of the government, including Mr. Garduño’s agency, in November 2023 due to budget constraints. But instead of lobbying the Treasury to release the funds like other officials, Mr. Garduño actively shut down the agency’s operations.
On Dec. 1, he sent a memo ordering his agency to stop deportation flights carrying undocumented immigrants, withdraw staff from checkpoints and end a bus program that has eased pressure on the northern border.
The memo was quickly leaked and made public.
The migrants rushed to the U.S. border without interference from Mexican immigration agents. That December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded the highest number of migrants encountered at the border in history. Nearly 250,000 migrants.
Overwhelmed U.S. Border Patrol agents closed land border crossings in Lukeville, Arizona, and San Diego. U.S. Border Protection has shut down several railroad crossings in Texas.
The Mexican government, trying to contain the fallout, has publicly promised more funding for the immigration agency. Mr. Blinken returned to Mexico City on December 27 with a much larger delegation.
The following month, January 2024, migrant flows to the U.S. border were cut in half after Mexico and the United States worked together to implement stricter measures.
Pressure from Washington has continued to apply. Illegal border crossings have decreased. In June, President Biden issued an executive order essentially blocking undocumented immigrants from receiving asylum at the border.
Mexico has deployed National Guard troops at immigration checkpoints and has exhausted efforts to force migrants further south to head north. Authorities also dismantled migrant caravans so they could no longer reach the U.S. border.
In October, Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as President of Mexico. Although she named a new immigration director, Ms. Garduño said she would continue to advise the administration to make “serious changes” to immigration agencies and weather the storm even after Mr. Trump takes office on January 20.
Mr. Garduño still faces criminal charges stemming from the immigration center fire. Several Mexican and U.S. officials said they thought he would resign after the tragedy. But he has been a close friend of Mr. López Obrador for decades.
Mr. Garduño has not been arrested, but must meet his arraignment judge every two weeks.
Emiliano Rodriguez Mega and Paulina Villegas contributed to the report.
