In a major escalation of the ongoing war of words between the United States and Mexico, the Mexican government recently filed several criminal complaints with prosecutors in U.S. states over the deaths of 17 Mexican citizens while in the custody of ICE and other American agencies. This week saw cease-and-desist letters sent by President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government to multiple immigration detention centers, where Mexico alleges improper care and ill treatment of detainees.
“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” President Sheinbaum said on Monday. Her administration, which continues to face accusations of corruption and insider dealing with Mexico’s many powerful drug cartels, has made a nationalist rallying cry out of President Donald Trump’s immigration laws, arguing that the fate of millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States is of vital importance to Mexicans on the other side of the border.
Besides individual states, Mexico’s lawfare also includes the United Nations. This week, the Sheinbaum administration petitioned the UN to investigate U.S. immigration and detention policies.
A Pew Research Center report released in 2023 claimed that 37.2 million self-reported Hispanics of Mexican origin lived in the United States as of 2021. This number means that Mexicans living in the U.S. account for a full 60 percent of America’s overall Hispanic population. These numbers are worth questioning, as a large percentage of Mexicans living in the United States are illegal immigrants and are thus unlikely to answer surveys. The true number of foreign-born and first-generation Mexicans in the U.S. is likely to be double the reported number.
The issue of remittances is also a major concern for President Sheinbaum’s administration. Last year, remittances from Mexicans living in the U.S. to family members back in Mexico fell by 4.6 percent, representing a loss of millions suffered by Mexico City. Yet President Sheinbaum’s government still took in a whopping $62 billion from remittances last year. As of 2024, remittances made up 3.6 percent of Mexico’s overall GDP. Mexico is the world’s second-largest recipient of remittances; therefore, keeping migration numbers to the U.S. high is of utmost importance to the Sheinbaum administration and Mexico’s weak economy.
As covered this week on Debateless, for Americans, illegal immigration from Mexico and other nations has resulted in an increase in traffic fatalities, drug overdoses, sexual assaults, and other crimes. The deaths of 17 Mexican citizens in American custody may be tragic, but they pale in comparison to the 70,000 drug overdose deaths suffered by American citizens in 2025 alone. Most of those fatal overdoses stemmed from drugs trafficked across the Mexican border by Mexican drug cartels. These same cartels are also at the forefront of human trafficking operations in both the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is considered a tier-2 nation by the U.S. State Department, meaning that Mexico’s government does not meet the minimum standards for combating human trafficking offenses.
