No country is more important to U.S. migration management than Mexico. The most recent evidence for this is the current reality at the U.S.-Mexico border, where unauthorized arrivals have dropped to the lowest rate in five years, in significant measure due to stepped-up Mexican enforcement. Yet bilateral collaboration that has been years in the making now appears to be on loose footing amid recent U.S. threats, paused for 30 days, to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports in response to perceived inaction on slowing the arrival of irregular migrants and fentanyl at U.S. borders.
Policymakers, migrants, and many others on both sides of the border have been intently watching for signs of what to expect next from U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, whose relationship is new and being forged in the cauldron of high-stakes negotiations over tariffs. Much of the attention has been focused on the optics and early linguistic volleys between both presidents and less on concrete negotiation demands and policy agreements. Who won and who ceded ground, for example, in Mexico’s decision to deploy 10,000 National Guard to the border in exchange for the 30-day tariff pause has preoccupied much interest.
What has been missing from much of the analysis, though, is the recognition that Mexico has new leverage compared to 2019, which was the first time the Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs—and what this changed dynamic means for this round of negotiations. Since December 2023, Mexico has conducted dramatically more migration enforcement and controls than in 2019, making it indispensable to managing migrant arrivals at the border today. And Mexico has absorbed many migrants who have stayed in Mexico rather than continuing their journey north. Finally, many of the border-related policies announced during the early days of this second Trump term in fact depend on Mexican cooperation.
To avert a tariff war that would have disastrous effects on both sides of the border, the priority for U.S. and Mexican negotiators should now be to set realistic policy commitments that match the demands of each government as closely as possible, in full recognition of their existing legal limitations and institutional capacities, so agreed actions can be sustainable and predictable over the long term.
Turmoil amid an Era of Strong Cooperation
The wild-card nature of the negotiations over tariffs, which could inflict major harm on businesses, workers, and consumers on both sides of the border, comes against a backdrop of significant cooperation on migration management developed in recent years through negotiations that weighed both countries’ interests.
Relations between former Presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador set a high-water mark for U.S.-Mexico collaboration on migration, resulting in heightened levels of Mexican controls and immigration enforcement in exchange for new U.S. legal migration pathways. In addition to implementing additional checkpoints along migrant transit routes and deploying National Guard and military units at its borders, Mexico also agreed to receive thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who were expelled under the U.S. Title 42 pandemic-era policy. When the Biden administration terminated Title 42 expulsions, Mexico agreed, for the first time, to receive non-Mexican nationals from these same countries who were formally removed from the United States.
These actions were conditioned on the expansion of U.S. humanitarian parole programs—including a process that allowed half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors to fly to the United States, as well as use of the CBP One app, which allowed nearly 1 million migrants to seek appointments at U.S. ports of entry.
This collaboration reduced irregular migrant arrivals at the shared border dramatically in 2024, to levels not seen in five years, and mostly without public threats from either government. It now remains to be seen how this collaboration will fare with new heads of state in both countries and a dramatic shift in tone in the relationship.
A Turn in the Dialogue
The Trump administration has put a strong emphasis on reducing unauthorized migration through Mexico even further and deporting millions of resident unauthorized immigrants, including Mexicans. To achieve these, plus its drug interdiction goals, Trump on February 1 announced the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada.
Given the incredibly high stakes for both countries politically and economically amid the threat of tariffs, the Sheinbaum administration has adopted a pragmatic strategy, repeatedly calling for respectful, ongoing diplomatic negotiations, setting her apart from other leaders in the Western Hemisphere who have opted for a more confrontational tone. Sheinbaum has indicated that Mexico will continue to collaborate but will not become a subordinate of the United States.
Her cool-headed approach has prioritized protecting Mexicans who live in the United States and scaling up capacity and services to receive Mexican returnees. So far, the strategy has successfully buffered tariffs and other possible conflicts with the Trump administration without explicitly articulating what new migration policies Mexico would be willing to undertake. Despite threatening tariffs, Trump so far has largely avoided direct confrontation with Sheinbaum and not engaged in personal attacks on her that could sour the relationship further.
Migration Priorities on the Negotiating Table
Both governments have already publicly declared some of their primary objectives. Many of the recent Trump executive orders are contingent on Mexico receiving migrants who are returned, repelled, or removed (each term with varying legal consequences) from the United States. For example, the Trump administration immediately reinstated the Migrant Protection Protocols, often known as Remain in Mexico, a 2019 policy to return non-Mexican asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are adjudicated in the United States. Trump also ordered his administration to identify governments willing to receive and provide protection to asylum seekers returned from the United States, as part of safe third country agreements.
Saying she considers Remain in Mexico to be a unilateral U.S. decision, Sheinbaum articulated that Mexico would receive migrants as a humanitarian response; it is unclear, however, if the program is already active. And so far, she has maintained her opposition to signing a safe third country agreement. However, since the current number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border is quite low, these measures may prove to be less politically difficult for Mexico to accept than they would have at a prior moment.
As for the Mexican government, its demands remain largely the same as under the López Obrador administration: Protecting the rights of the estimated 5.5 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants in the United States who may be subject to repatriation under new U.S. enforcement policies. Sheinbaum has stressed, in particular, the need to protect the 436,000 Mexicans who are shielded from deportation and allowed to work legally in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She also has called for the U.S. government to respect migrants’ due-process rights and for returns to be conducted humanely and under existing repatriation protocols established with the Mexican government.
Sheinbaum also has requested that the U.S. government maintain or expand lawful pathways that allow migrants to move to the United States legally, either as permanent or temporary workers. Except for commenting on the willingness to find an alternative for DACA holders, the Trump administration has not publicly acknowledged these demands.
Landscape of New Negotiations
Even as demands from both sides remain largely the same, the negotiating landscape today is far from what it was in 2019 when, under threat of tariffs, the Mexican government agreed to step up enforcement, receive non-Mexican migrants under Remain in Mexico, and increase collaboration to disrupt migrant-smuggling networks.
The difference today is that the Mexican government already has deployed drastically more migration controls and enforcement than in 2019, despite significant changes in the nationalities and composition of irregular migrants transiting through Mexico. In June 2019, the peak of Mexican enforcement that year, Mexican authorities recorded 31,000 migrant encounters. By contrast, in 2024, they achieved116,000 encounters on average each month. Mexican authorities have apprehended more migrants every month than their U.S. counterparts at the border since May 2024, with a fraction of the resources and institutional capacity.
Mexican authorities have also imposed visa restrictions on migrants from several countries and commonly used buses to relocate migrants, primarily Venezuelans, from central and northern Mexico to southern Mexico, making it increasingly hard for most unauthorized migrants to reach the U.S. border. And they have maintained a robust asylum system that each year provides tens of thousands of migrants seeking protection a chance to stay in Mexico rather than head to the U.S. border.
Mexican migration enforcement and policies to integrate migrants have become indispensable to U.S. agencies’ ability to manage daily migrant arrivals and processing capacity. Newly announced U.S. migration policies are not enough on their own to reduce irregular migration and, in fact, many depend on Mexican cooperation. In these ways, Mexico has more leverage to negotiate pragmatic collaboration than it did when tariffs were last threatened.
Recalibrating Commitments and Achieving Realistic Outcomes
The changing nature of migration flows across the region and the economic, cultural, and social ties that bind the United States and Mexico together make it nearly impossible and surely impracticable for both governments to stop collaborating on migration management and other fundamental bilateral policy interests. This means that an effective, high-level negotiation to permanently take tariffs off the table should prioritize recalibrating each government’s commitments by taking stock of migration policies and controls on both sides of the border, analyzing their outcomes, and setting realistic expectations given existing legal limitations and institutional capacities.
It is key for U.S. negotiators to recognize that Mexican migration enforcement is necessary and complementary to U.S. policy objectives. If the United States wants Mexico to receive larger numbers of Mexican and non-Mexican returnees or bolster enforcement at its borders, U.S. negotiators should consider existing limitations in Mexico’s capacity and legal framework and be respectful of the country’s sovereignty. Beyond migration controls in its territory, Mexico could also play a crucial leadership role in improving coordination with other Latin American governments, especially those (such as Venezuela and Cuba) that have limited diplomatic relations with the United States.
If Mexico agrees to continue or even increase its existing levels of migration controls, Mexican negotiators should focus on achieving commitments from the United States to assist in expanding its capacity and infrastructure to integrate migrants who want to stay in Mexico—not just detain and deport migrants. Expanding capacity to (re)integrate Mexican returnees and other migrants into Mexico’s economic and social life could also help match work supply with demand across growing industries there.
Averting a tariff war will likely continue to be a priority for U.S. and Mexican negotiators over coming months given its devastating impacts on both sides of the border. The economic dislocation resulting from tariffs could potentially fuel irregular migration to the United States and economically cripple industries and U.S. border towns that depend on Mexican trade and goods.
Negotiators should build a process that creates the stability, trust, and predictability that are necessary to collaborate on an issue as sensitive and urgent as migration management, in ways that give real weight to each country’s needs, capacities, and constraints. Jeopardizing the gains that have made U.S.-Mexico migration collaboration successful so far is simply not a smart option for either government.
Amid Tariff Threats, Migration Management Is Key to the Evolving Trump-Sheinbaum Relationship
Lee este foco analítico en español aquí.
No country is more important to U.S. migration management than Mexico. The most recent evidence for this is the current reality at the U.S.-Mexico border, where unauthorized arrivals have dropped to the lowest rate in five years, in significant measure due to stepped-up Mexican enforcement. Yet bilateral collaboration that has been years in the making now appears to be on loose footing amid recent U.S. threats, paused for 30 days, to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports in response to perceived inaction on slowing the arrival of irregular migrants and fentanyl at U.S. borders.
Policymakers, migrants, and many others on both sides of the border have been intently watching for signs of what to expect next from U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, whose relationship is new and being forged in the cauldron of high-stakes negotiations over tariffs. Much of the attention has been focused on the optics and early linguistic volleys between both presidents and less on concrete negotiation demands and policy agreements. Who won and who ceded ground, for example, in Mexico’s decision to deploy 10,000 National Guard to the border in exchange for the 30-day tariff pause has preoccupied much interest.
What has been missing from much of the analysis, though, is the recognition that Mexico has new leverage compared to 2019, which was the first time the Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs—and what this changed dynamic means for this round of negotiations. Since December 2023, Mexico has conducted dramatically more migration enforcement and controls than in 2019, making it indispensable to managing migrant arrivals at the border today. And Mexico has absorbed many migrants who have stayed in Mexico rather than continuing their journey north. Finally, many of the border-related policies announced during the early days of this second Trump term in fact depend on Mexican cooperation.
To avert a tariff war that would have disastrous effects on both sides of the border, the priority for U.S. and Mexican negotiators should now be to set realistic policy commitments that match the demands of each government as closely as possible, in full recognition of their existing legal limitations and institutional capacities, so agreed actions can be sustainable and predictable over the long term.
Turmoil amid an Era of Strong Cooperation
The wild-card nature of the negotiations over tariffs, which could inflict major harm on businesses, workers, and consumers on both sides of the border, comes against a backdrop of significant cooperation on migration management developed in recent years through negotiations that weighed both countries’ interests.
Relations between former Presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador set a high-water mark for U.S.-Mexico collaboration on migration, resulting in heightened levels of Mexican controls and immigration enforcement in exchange for new U.S. legal migration pathways. In addition to implementing additional checkpoints along migrant transit routes and deploying National Guard and military units at its borders, Mexico also agreed to receive thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who were expelled under the U.S. Title 42 pandemic-era policy. When the Biden administration terminated Title 42 expulsions, Mexico agreed, for the first time, to receive non-Mexican nationals from these same countries who were formally removed from the United States.
These actions were conditioned on the expansion of U.S. humanitarian parole programs—including a process that allowed half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors to fly to the United States, as well as use of the CBP One app, which allowed nearly 1 million migrants to seek appointments at U.S. ports of entry.
This collaboration reduced irregular migrant arrivals at the shared border dramatically in 2024, to levels not seen in five years, and mostly without public threats from either government. It now remains to be seen how this collaboration will fare with new heads of state in both countries and a dramatic shift in tone in the relationship.
A Turn in the Dialogue
The Trump administration has put a strong emphasis on reducing unauthorized migration through Mexico even further and deporting millions of resident unauthorized immigrants, including Mexicans. To achieve these, plus its drug interdiction goals, Trump on February 1 announced the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada.
Given the incredibly high stakes for both countries politically and economically amid the threat of tariffs, the Sheinbaum administration has adopted a pragmatic strategy, repeatedly calling for respectful, ongoing diplomatic negotiations, setting her apart from other leaders in the Western Hemisphere who have opted for a more confrontational tone. Sheinbaum has indicated that Mexico will continue to collaborate but will not become a subordinate of the United States.
Her cool-headed approach has prioritized protecting Mexicans who live in the United States and scaling up capacity and services to receive Mexican returnees. So far, the strategy has successfully buffered tariffs and other possible conflicts with the Trump administration without explicitly articulating what new migration policies Mexico would be willing to undertake. Despite threatening tariffs, Trump so far has largely avoided direct confrontation with Sheinbaum and not engaged in personal attacks on her that could sour the relationship further.
Migration Priorities on the Negotiating Table
Both governments have already publicly declared some of their primary objectives. Many of the recent Trump executive orders are contingent on Mexico receiving migrants who are returned, repelled, or removed (each term with varying legal consequences) from the United States. For example, the Trump administration immediately reinstated the Migrant Protection Protocols, often known as Remain in Mexico, a 2019 policy to return non-Mexican asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are adjudicated in the United States. Trump also ordered his administration to identify governments willing to receive and provide protection to asylum seekers returned from the United States, as part of safe third country agreements.
Saying she considers Remain in Mexico to be a unilateral U.S. decision, Sheinbaum articulated that Mexico would receive migrants as a humanitarian response; it is unclear, however, if the program is already active. And so far, she has maintained her opposition to signing a safe third country agreement. However, since the current number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border is quite low, these measures may prove to be less politically difficult for Mexico to accept than they would have at a prior moment.
As for the Mexican government, its demands remain largely the same as under the López Obrador administration: Protecting the rights of the estimated 5.5 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants in the United States who may be subject to repatriation under new U.S. enforcement policies. Sheinbaum has stressed, in particular, the need to protect the 436,000 Mexicans who are shielded from deportation and allowed to work legally in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She also has called for the U.S. government to respect migrants’ due-process rights and for returns to be conducted humanely and under existing repatriation protocols established with the Mexican government.
Sheinbaum also has requested that the U.S. government maintain or expand lawful pathways that allow migrants to move to the United States legally, either as permanent or temporary workers. Except for commenting on the willingness to find an alternative for DACA holders, the Trump administration has not publicly acknowledged these demands.
Landscape of New Negotiations
Even as demands from both sides remain largely the same, the negotiating landscape today is far from what it was in 2019 when, under threat of tariffs, the Mexican government agreed to step up enforcement, receive non-Mexican migrants under Remain in Mexico, and increase collaboration to disrupt migrant-smuggling networks.
The difference today is that the Mexican government already has deployed drastically more migration controls and enforcement than in 2019, despite significant changes in the nationalities and composition of irregular migrants transiting through Mexico. In June 2019, the peak of Mexican enforcement that year, Mexican authorities recorded 31,000 migrant encounters. By contrast, in 2024, they achieved116,000 encounters on average each month. Mexican authorities have apprehended more migrants every month than their U.S. counterparts at the border since May 2024, with a fraction of the resources and institutional capacity.
Mexican authorities have also imposed visa restrictions on migrants from several countries and commonly used buses to relocate migrants, primarily Venezuelans, from central and northern Mexico to southern Mexico, making it increasingly hard for most unauthorized migrants to reach the U.S. border. And they have maintained a robust asylum system that each year provides tens of thousands of migrants seeking protection a chance to stay in Mexico rather than head to the U.S. border.
Mexican migration enforcement and policies to integrate migrants have become indispensable to U.S. agencies’ ability to manage daily migrant arrivals and processing capacity. Newly announced U.S. migration policies are not enough on their own to reduce irregular migration and, in fact, many depend on Mexican cooperation. In these ways, Mexico has more leverage to negotiate pragmatic collaboration than it did when tariffs were last threatened.
Recalibrating Commitments and Achieving Realistic Outcomes
The changing nature of migration flows across the region and the economic, cultural, and social ties that bind the United States and Mexico together make it nearly impossible and surely impracticable for both governments to stop collaborating on migration management and other fundamental bilateral policy interests. This means that an effective, high-level negotiation to permanently take tariffs off the table should prioritize recalibrating each government’s commitments by taking stock of migration policies and controls on both sides of the border, analyzing their outcomes, and setting realistic expectations given existing legal limitations and institutional capacities.
It is key for U.S. negotiators to recognize that Mexican migration enforcement is necessary and complementary to U.S. policy objectives. If the United States wants Mexico to receive larger numbers of Mexican and non-Mexican returnees or bolster enforcement at its borders, U.S. negotiators should consider existing limitations in Mexico’s capacity and legal framework and be respectful of the country’s sovereignty. Beyond migration controls in its territory, Mexico could also play a crucial leadership role in improving coordination with other Latin American governments, especially those (such as Venezuela and Cuba) that have limited diplomatic relations with the United States.
If Mexico agrees to continue or even increase its existing levels of migration controls, Mexican negotiators should focus on achieving commitments from the United States to assist in expanding its capacity and infrastructure to integrate migrants who want to stay in Mexico—not just detain and deport migrants. Expanding capacity to (re)integrate Mexican returnees and other migrants into Mexico’s economic and social life could also help match work supply with demand across growing industries there.
Averting a tariff war will likely continue to be a priority for U.S. and Mexican negotiators over coming months given its devastating impacts on both sides of the border. The economic dislocation resulting from tariffs could potentially fuel irregular migration to the United States and economically cripple industries and U.S. border towns that depend on Mexican trade and goods.
Negotiators should build a process that creates the stability, trust, and predictability that are necessary to collaborate on an issue as sensitive and urgent as migration management, in ways that give real weight to each country’s needs, capacities, and constraints. Jeopardizing the gains that have made U.S.-Mexico migration collaboration successful so far is simply not a smart option for either government.