Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico is seeking civil and criminal investigations in the United States over the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals during immigration enforcement operations or at detention centers. The demand lands after another death in ICE custody and in ICE hands, with a family in Texas left disputing the agency’s account of how Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed last week.
The Mexican government said the investigations aim to “protect the human rights of Mexicans in the United States.” That’s the language of a government trying to force another government’s machinery to answer for what happened inside its own enforcement system. The people at the bottom are the ones who die. The institutions at the top trade statements.
Who Pays for Border Power
ICE officials said agents shot Salgado Araujo, whom they said was in the United States illegally, after he rammed a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow verbal commands during a traffic stop. His family told CNN a different story. They said the 52-year-old father of three would have stopped if he had known the car that followed him belonged to law enforcement.
That split matters. One version comes from the armed agency that fired the shots. The other comes from the family of the dead man, who had to watch the state define him after killing him. The agency’s account turns a traffic stop into a justification. The family’s account leaves a father of three dead and a household shattered.
At her press conference announcing the request for criminal investigations, Sheinbaum also called for petitions to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The appeal reaches beyond one border, but it still moves through institutions built to process suffering, not end the systems that produce it.
Asked about Sheinbaum’s comments, the US Department of Homeland Security defended ICE’s actions. “ICE agents are trained to use the minimum necessary force to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers,” the agency said. The same agency also said detainees in ICE custody “receive full due process, are provided with adequate food, water, and medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their families and attorneys.”
What the Agencies Say
Those are the official words. Clean, rehearsed, and familiar. Minimum force. Due process. Adequate food, water, and medical treatment. The apparatus always speaks in the language of order when people are dying inside it.
Analysts who spoke with CNN said Salgado’s death and Mexico’s response may signal a major rift between Mexican and US authorities. José Luis Valdés Ugalde, an academic at the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said, “This is no minor incident. It affects the bilateral relationship and the pending issues that Mexico and the United States have before them,” including “security, migration, and trade.”
International affairs expert and newspaper columnist Fausto Pretelin said the relationship between Mexico and the United States was at “its worst moment” after the killing of Salgado Araujo. He said Sheinbaum’s actions would damage relations further for little more than political points gained within Mexico. “It’s a performance,” Pretelin said of Sheinbaum’s announcement. “The opportunity to take these issues seriously is lost. And when I say seriously, I mean that diplomatic channels should be used.”
Mexico’s government has already issued 11 diplomatic notes of protest to the United States over the deaths of its citizens, Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco told reporters. He said the country now had to go “beyond the diplomatic realm.” That’s the familiar dead end of statecraft: notes, protests, channels, and more channels, while the bodies keep piling up under enforcement regimes that answer to no one they harm.
Tomás Milton Muñoz Bravo, professor of international relations at UNAM, said this type of response should have come much earlier. “It’s incredible that 17 deaths had to occur for Mexican authorities to finally announce a strategy that goes beyond the merely diplomatic to the judicial,” he said. “Of course, the announcement has been made, but I still want to see the actions that have been stated actually develop.”
The Election Trap and the Waiting Game
Valdés Ugalde said the United States shows no signs of caring about Mexican criticisms of its immigration policy, and said Mexico has not known how to defend the migrant community and has made what he described as “mistakes” in its foreign policy. He said one of those mistakes was rejecting extradition requests for politicians allegedly linked to drug trafficking on the grounds of national sovereignty, giving the Trump administration an opening to retaliate in other areas, such as the renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which protects many Mexican exports from American tariffs.
“There are no signs of rebuilding the relationship; the relationship is very damaged by the attitudes of both governments and by Mexico’s defensive stance,” Valdés Ugalde said. Muñoz Bravo said the November midterm elections in the United States could open an opportunity for Mexico if Republicans lose control of Congress. “What we’re going to see in November is extremely important,” he said. If Trump “does not have a majority in the chambers, there will be checks and balances that will even allow for room to negotiate with other actors in the United States.”
That’s the reformist horizon on offer: wait for the right balance of seats, hope for checks and balances, and trust that another set of rulers might bargain a little differently. Meanwhile, the border machine keeps running, detention centers keep operating, and any further deaths of Mexican migrants threaten to deepen the rift.
Until then, the people caught in the gears remain the ones paying the price.