On 1 October, two adult brothers and former pupils attacked Secondary School No. 13 in Torreón, Coahuila, prompting Mexico’s government to draft a decree requiring digital platforms to detect, report and remove content that directly incites violence. Officials haven’t published the draft, defined what qualifies as direct incitement, identified possible sanctions or named the authority responsible for enforcing the rules. For now, the proposed duties apply to platforms, not individual users.
In two recent attacks, school staff or local residents restrained the attackers before police arrived, limiting the harm. Those immediate acts of restraint came as the government prepared a new monitoring and removal mechanism, while existing support programmes haven’t prevented attacks.
The count—and its limits
A review by the Mexican newspaper Reforma counted 25 attacks inside schools over 12 years, leaving 16 people dead, including two attackers. Vanguardia republished the count on Saturday, 3 October 2026. Most attacks targeted teachers or school heads, rather than pupils.
That count isn’t an official government figure. The published version doesn’t list every case or explain its exact criteria, so independent checks aren’t possible; it’s also unclear whether incidents just outside school gates were included. A narrower list from El Universal, republished by Vanguardia on 1 October, identified at least five deadly attacks since 2017, with eight deaths in total.
Reforma compiled its broader total after two adult brothers and former pupils attacked Secondary School No. 13 in Torreón, Coahuila, on 1 October. A member of the school’s leadership died and four people suffered injuries, Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said. It was the fourth attack inside a Mexican school in 2026. Across the 12-year period, attackers used weapons ranging from assault rifles to knives, machetes and homemade explosives.
On 30 September, a 13-year-old wounded four people with two knives at a secondary school in Querétaro. Staff restrained him, and Vanguardia reported that all four injured people were out of danger. Querétaro’s chief prosecutor, Víctor Antonio De Jesús, said he would seek an attempted-murder charge, El País reported. On 1 October, police found a gun and cartridges among a 13-year-old pupil’s belongings in Hidalgo state.
The decree gives platforms a new duty
President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the working group on 2 October. The presidency’s legal counsel, the Consejería Jurídica, leads the group, which includes the Security Ministry, the Education Ministry (SEP), the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), and the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications. Sheinbaum said, “There is a part that is the responsibility of the digital platforms,” according to Contralínea.
García Harfuch said platforms should detect, report and remove content in a timely way. Education Minister Mario Delgado said officials wanted a draft ready the following week. “They have to show us that they are safe places for minors,” he said in an Education Ministry statement, asking how platforms with extensive artificial intelligence and user data could fail to identify such posts in time.
Sheinbaum said investigators had found similarities between Torreón, the Querétaro case and other attacks involving contact through social networks. She gave no further details about the Querétaro case or how the attackers had been in contact online. Experts from UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) are expected to help define which content must come down. Sheinbaum said officials should proceed without haste to avoid censorship.
Monitoring, support and unanswered questions
García Harfuch said intelligence monitoring of social networks, messaging services and forums had increased. He also stressed that viewing certain content or posting an opinion doesn’t, by itself, mean someone will commit a crime. The government says its aim is prevention, not creating a new crime.
Officials also plan to expand the “ABC of Emotions” programme through parent meetings, confidential reporting boxes in schools and guidance for teenagers. Reforma noted that the wellbeing programme had begun five months earlier, yet the Torreón attack still followed. A year after the CCH Sur attack, students said UNAM’s psychological support plan had lost momentum, the paper added. The school programme was also described as “ABC de las Emociones,” for people aged 14 to 18.
Canal N said the proposal resembles rules adopted in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. Delgado also pointed to measures abroad that limit minors’ access to platforms. But no decree has been published, and it’s unclear how far an executive decree could bind global companies without a law passed by Congress. Sheinbaum said officials would discuss broader platform regulation later in wider forums. No publication or entry-into-force date has been given, and officials haven’t explained how they’ll track school attacks in future.