Mexico Can Do More for Migrants

Though constrained by U.S. threats, Mexico’s history demonstrates it can—and must—do more to protect the dignity of migrants at home and abroad.

On July 10, 2025, immigration officers conducted a violent raid at a cannabis greenhouse in Camarillo, California. Workers fled in horror. Outside, behind rows of police officers, families and community members fought to reach workers amidst clouds of tear gas and flashbang bursts. By nightfall, immigration agents had detained over 200 laborers, and Jaime Alanís, a 57-year-old migrant from Huajúmbaro, Michoacán, lay in an intensive care unit. During the raid, he fell thirty feet from the greenhouse ceiling while trying to flee. He died a day later, leaving behind his community, wife, and daughter.

Days after his death, on July 16, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced her administration would consider legal action over Alanís’s death. Her words, and a pending legal response, raise a key question: As the United States government expands its assault on immigrants—many of them Mexican—what role should the Mexican state play in defending their dignity?

Recent raids have upended communities by removing people who were long anchored in them. Through mid-July, over half of the Mexicans detained in this year’s raids in Los Angeles had been living in the city for over a decade. More than one-third had lived in the United States for over twenty years. Family members and neighbors—torn away and warehoused in deplorable conditions. The Mexican state can help repair these wounds by fortifying its consular efforts, supporting the work of advocacy organizations, and modeling a politics of migrant dignity.

While navigating tariff threats and pressures over narco-trafficking and violence, the Mexican government can still do more to push a politics of migrant dignity, in the United States and at home. It has before. Indeed, the Mexican state can play an essential role in hemispheric immigration politics because it has for over 100 years.