A ruling from Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN) is poised to transform the the country’s immigration policies. The court granted an injunction filed by the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic, meaning immigration laws must be reformed to establish a public registry of detained migrants. This platform must be accessible to the public and function like the current national detention register, indicating the time, date, location and responsible authority of each arrest, as well as the immigration station where detainees are transferred. This year alone, 925,000 migrants have been arrested crossing into Mexico, where they face isolation and difficulty accessing legal representation.

For migrants fleeing violence, persecution or poverty, Mexico has become one of the most popular countries. dangerous parts of their journey. Often crossing multiple countries and the dangerous Darien jungle, migrants describe Mexico as “the worst part” of their ordeal. In Mexico, migrants have become easy prey for organized crime and corrupt authorities. They risk being kidnapped and imprisoned at the southern border, extorted and murdered by the National Guard, or burned alive in immigration centers on the northern border. Given the growing risks of travel, the move is seen as a victory.

A 2021 report from the Jesuit Migrant Assistance Service documented 1,280 migrant disappearances between 2007 and 2021, 75% of which occurred in migrant detention centers. These centers, run by the National Migration Institute, use euphemisms like “insurance” or “encounter” to refer to what is actually detention. The United Nations has established that any place where people cannot leave voluntarily is a place of detention.

Arbitrariness has long dominated the operation of Mexico’s immigration detention centers. Human rights organizations report that migrants are randomly granted or denied the opportunity to contact their families, while others are charged exorbitant fees of 100 pesos (about $5) for a simple telephone call from three minutes. As a result, many migrants remain incommunicado for days or even weeks, disappearing from the lives of their families.

This lack of communication, explains Luis Xavier Carrancá, lawyer at the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic, paves the way for inhumane treatmentincluding torture and enforced disappearances. “The lack of a proper registry also makes it difficult for migrants to access legal representation,” explains Carrancá. “It also facilitates the indefinite extension of their detention, because by not registering upon their arrival, Immigration has found the perfect formula to circumvent the legal deadlines within which they should be released.”

In 2019, Mexico amended Article 16 of its Constitution to create a national detention registry. The argument was that an updated and comprehensive register was necessary to “prevent the violation of the human rights of detained persons, acts of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or enforced disappearances”. However, as lawyer Luis Xavier Carrancá points out, migrant detention was “explicitly” excluded from these protections.

The National Detention Registry Act included an eighth transitional article, mandating Congress to amend the Migration Act within 180 days to create “a registry of detained migrants with equal procedural, protective, and security than those provided for in this law. » Yet five years have passed without any progress.

“This omission was the first step towards depriving detained migrants of protection,” explains Carrancá. “This left them outside of all constitutional and legal guarantees, because it allowed them to be hidden (from the registry).”

In response to this ongoing problem, the Jesuit Refugee Service, in collaboration with the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic at the Iberoamerican University, launched a legal strategy to address the lack of protection for detained migrants. In October 2022, they filed an appeal to reform the migration law and establish the mandatory register.

A few months later, a judge at Mexico City’s 15th Administrative Court ruled in their favor, finding that the lack of a register violated the migrants’ right to legal defense. However, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies appealed the decision and the case dragged on before a collegiate court for 15 months. Finally, in June 2024, the 19th Administrative Court of the First Circuit appealed to the Supreme Court.

Last week, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court voted on a draft prepared by Judge Alberto Pérez Dayán, who upheld the district judge’s decision and declared that Congress had committed a “legislative omission” by not respecting the national law on the register of detentions. The decision was adopted with the support of judges Luis María Aguilar, Javier Laynez and Dayán, while judges Lenia Batres and Yasmín Esquivel, both closely linked to the ruling party, dissented.

Although the decision mandates Congress to reform the law and establish the registry, there is still a long way to go. The draft must now be finalized to incorporate ministerial input, after which it will return to the high court for enforcement. The court will then order Congress to enact the necessary reforms. According to lawyer Carrancá, this process could take up to a year to fully materialize.

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