Mexicans Share Americans’ Concerns Over Open Borders

FAIR Take | December 2024

Geography dictates that the Mexican government will always be influential in U.S. immigration policy. Mexico shares a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, and it is the only country situated between the U.S. and the rest of the Western Hemisphere (excluding Canada).

Mexicans, like Americans, are not blind to the effects of mass migration. Mexican law gives significant rights to migrants, but in recent months, the Mexican government has cracked down with broad public support. In 2024, a clear majority of Mexicans (58 percent) support the government’s ongoing efforts to deport illegal migrants, and 54.6 percent say their lives have been affected directly by the migrant wave.

This support for immigration enforcement among Mexicans is not new. In 2018, when “caravans” from Central America were coming through Mexico to the U.S. border, many Mexicans were outraged. Hundreds of Mexicans took to the streets in the border city of Tijuana with the cry of, “We don’t want them here!” Surveys taken in 2018 showed that one-third of Mexicans thought migrants were hurting job prospects and increasing insecurity in Mexico.

Another Washington Post survey from 2019 found that 55 percent of Mexicans wanted Central Americans deported entirely, with another third supporting the Migrant Protection Protocols. That same study found a 64 percent near-supermajority of Mexicans believed that migrants were a burden on Mexico who took jobs and benefits. This strong sentiment was when migrant flows (which seemed large at the time) were a fraction of the size seen under the Biden-Harris administration. Mexican government data show that in 2018, only 130,000 illegal aliens were caught by Mexican authorities, a drop in the ocean compared to more recent figures.

Mexico’s own illegal immigration crisis has only grown worse since then, as the Biden-Harris administration’s policies attracted migrants from across the world. FAIR has documented the stunning rise of the Darién Gap in Panama as a “superhighway” for millions of illegal migrants. Virtually all of these migrants then travel through Mexico, causing significant social and economic issues in the Mexican communities they pass through. In just the first eight months of 2024, Mexican authorities registered more than 925,000 illegal aliens passing through their territory, a stunning 611 percent increase from just 6 years earlier. Mexico, in fact, apprehended more illegal migrants than the U.S. in the same period.

Although America is the ultimate destination for most of these illegal migrants, Mexico, and ordinary Mexicans still suffer. Mexican media has documented migrant encampments in major Mexican cities, with streets and parks covered in trash and unsafe conditions for children and adults. This mirrors the conditions of migrant homeless camps seen in American cities like Denver and New York City. Many of these migrants come through Mexico from far-flung countries on other continents and cannot easily return home or be deported. As one reporter found, if these migrants cannot enter the U.S., many plan to stay in Mexico regardless of Mexican law.

The large-scale presence of migrants on their way to the U.S. creates tension and pressure that ordinary Mexicans rightly resent. The impacts of open borders have led Mexican citizens to complain about everything from aggressive begging by migrants to violent crime. This has included the increasing footprint of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has followed large numbers of U.S.-bound Venezuelans into Mexico. The gang has been implicated in forced prostitution rings in Mexico City. The gang has posed a serious challenge to Mexican authorities and Mexico is a country that is already struggling to reign in home-grown gangs and cartels. The importation of foreign gangs via mass migration is the last thing ordinary Mexicans need.

Mexican politicians may talk tough with the U.S. to score political points, but they are also rational actors, ultimately answerable to their voters. Their voters, like American voters, have seen the impacts of illegal migration and are fed up. Sovereignty is (rightfully) important to Mexicans, and President Sheinbaum’s diplomatic tone with the U.S. on immigration acknowledges that illegal migration undermines the sovereignty of every country and creates public concern that elected officials have a duty to resolve.