While the Mexican and US governments continue to debate which tariffs the Trump administration will apply to goods from its southern neighbour, one policy already has Mexico’s full cooperation.

As threatened throughout his campaign to be reelected president, Donald Trump has ordered the mass deportation of migrants in the US found to be without official residency papers.

It is Mexican migrants in particular who Trump has made an example of, featuring as heavily in his campaign speeches in 2015 as in 2024, with claims they’re responsible for the illegal drugs epidemic killing tens of thousands of people per year in the US.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in February that Mexico had already received around 8,500 nationals deported from the US since Trump took office on January 20.

Overall, according to Reuters , at least 37,660 people were deported from the US to their home country, or to a third country such as Panama or Costa Rica, during Trump’s first month in office. In mid-February, an average of 600 people a day were being forced out of the US, with some migrants rounded up by immigration enforcement being sent to Guantánamo Bay.

But despite the big talk, the current deportation operation to Mexico is more of a continuation of Biden’s policy than a break with it. For example, the figure of 37,660 people deported in January is considerably less than the 57,000 monthly average in the last year of the Biden administration.

While Sheinbaum is also regularly appearing in the media to proclaim Mexico’s resistance to Trump policy, it has closely cooperated with the US over the past 15 years when it comes to keeping migrants from entering America via the US-Mexico land border.

Mexico has gone from “opposing the wall, to becoming it”, as Mexican political scientist Luicy Pedroza has observed. As such, the mass deportation proposed by Trump has been well underway for some time, including under the Obama and Biden administrations.

Coping with deportation and a campaign to ‘self-deport’

In mid-February, an online Facebook Live meeting convened by Mexico-based non-government organisation Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA) brought around 900 people together from both sides of the border to share information about what it’s like to return to Mexico from the US.

If they arrived in the US as children and/or have been living northside for many years, people deported back to Mexico can struggle to navigate a homeland they may barely know. Disruptions to schooling, learning Spanish and finding jobs are common themes for people who have to return suddenly.

As it currently stands, “Mexico’s immigration agency compels deportees to go straight to the federal government’s new shelters under the México te abraza [Mexico embraces you] initiative,” explains Meghan Zavala, data and policy analyst with Al Otro Lado, an NGO that works with migrants on the US-Mexico border.

“The Mexican government is urging people to return to their home state to receive employment assistance and other support; however, many deportees no longer have ties to their home state and may prefer to settle in northern Mexico”, she observed.

“I couldn’t read or write in Spanish and my parents had to ask for extra help in school”, Miriam Álvarez Pérez, who returned to Mexico from Florida with her mother 15 years ago, shared at the ODA Facebook Live in February.

María Jiménez, who was deported from Colorado to Mexico in 2017, also shared her experience at the meeting. Jiménez was eventually able to return to Colorado. She says many in the Mexican community in the US are considering returning to their home country regardless of the threat of deportation, a sentiment also expressed by participants sending questions and messages during the live meeting.

“There’s all the shootings in the schools, and hatred, racism, fascism is growing here,” she says.

Meanwhile, the US government is running a campaign demanding that “illegal aliens self-deport and stay out”.

The fake news about fentanyl

Trump has repeatedly claimed that continuing deportations — along with tariffs and categorising drug trafficking outfits as terrorist organisations — are necessary to force Mexico to crack down harder on the supply of fentanyl to the US.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration reported in December that 70% of the 107,000 people who died from a drug overdose in 2023 had taken “opioids such as fentanyl”, and that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall figure represented a 14.5% decrease in overdose deaths between June 2023 and June 2024.

The Trump administration blames Mexico for the high percentage of fentanyl-related deaths, saying Americans are buying and overdosing on fentanyl trafficked over the border by Mexican drug cartels.

However, while Mexican drug trafficking organisations do manufacture fentanyl, it tends to be US citizens who bring it from Mexico to the US.

“Data show that the great majority of fentanyl enters the US via ports of entry”, not through illegal border crossings, explains Meghan Zavala. “In 2024, over 86% of fentanyl seizures occurred at ports of entry,” she continues, referencing the US Customs and Border Protection drug seizure statistics .

“Other data and reporting indicate that US citizens predominantly are the ones trafficking fentanyl across the border.

“The show of force of sending US troops or Mexican troops to the border right now is simply just that — a show of force”, concludes Zhavala. “A better policy would look to stem the flow of illegal weapons south from the US into Mexico which is arming cartels and illicit traffickers.”

Increasing militarisation, increased migrant deaths

Jaime Arredondo, Canada research chair in substance use and health policy research at the University of Victoria, notes the ‘Mexico te abraza’ program is — like an increasing number of civil and infrastructure projects throughout the country — run by the Mexican National Guard, which is a part of the nation’s armed forces.

This marks a new reality for people returned to Mexico under Trump and Sheinbaum, he notes. Those returning to Mexico are “being received back home by army officers in military fatigues, not civil society organisations”.

Both Arrendono and Meghan Zavala observed that the military is stepping in where funding cuts to these organisations within Mexico, along with the recent USAID funding freeze, have reduced the possibility of community-based services carrying out public policy.

In the same vein, Mexico’s solution to Trump’s tariff threats has been a military one, with Sheinbaum in February sending 10,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to secure it against migration and fentanyl trafficking.

The continuing militarisation of the border from both Mexico and the US, says Arredondo, “creates more opportunity for corruption”.

Mexico has also increasingly militarised its internal immigration operations in order to appease the US, deploying its armed forces throughout the country as well as at the border. Mexican military and immigration personnel have used detentions, beatings and even murders to deter the thousands of migrants from all over the world who traverse Mexico in the hope of crossing the border into the US.

Have something to say about this article? Write to us at Your Say . We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.