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MEXICO CITY — As increasing numbers of migrants perish during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has vowed to ramp up pressure on U.S. authorities to investigate the deaths.
“There are too many cases,” Sheinbaum told reporters last week, referring to 17 Mexican citizens who have died while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody or during ICE operations. “Our obligation is to always defend Mexicans who are in the United States or whatever part of the world.”
The growing toll prompted Sheinbaum last month to direct Mexican diplomats to file complaints with state attorneys general and district attorneys across the United States, demanding that prosecutors investigate deaths that occurred in their jurisdictions.
“We cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died,” Sheinbaum said following the most recent fatal incident — the ICE shooting in Houston last month of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a construction contractor from Mexico who had lived in the United States for three decades.
Mexico’s new strategy represents an escalation from the country’s traditional policy of filing protests through diplomatic channels while assisting families with legal advice, paperwork and shipping remains back to Mexico.
However, to date, Mexico’s stepped-up efforts have yielded few results.
There is no public confirmation of prosecutions in any of the 17 cases, despite the entreaties of the Mexican government to the U.S. Department of Justice, eight attorneys general and 12 district attorney’s offices.
“The Americans don’t seem to be paying much attention,” said Víctor Clark, a long-time human rights advocate in Tijuana. “What Mexico is doing is basically a bureaucratic step with no real response.”
From a legal standpoint, Mexico faces an uphill battle. Mexican authorities use the word denuncias (complaints) for their actions, but Mexico cannot directly file complaints in U.S. courts in these cases. U.S. prosecutors have no mandate to respond to Mexican inquiries.
“The reality of the matter is that the Mexican government has very little standing to file complaints in the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “A request for investigation from the Mexican government probably has a little more of an impact than a request from a random private citizen.”
At least 52 migrants — including 14 Mexican citizens — have died while in ICE custody since the beginning of the second Trump administration, according to a report in June from Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.
In addition, at least nine people have died during reported agency operations since 2025.
ICE says it thoroughly investigates all deaths of individuals in its custody or during agency actions. Critics charge that the Trump administration fails to pursue such cases adequately.
