Immigrant raids hit Mexico City ahead of the World Cup

A young Venezuelan woman was bringing food downstairs for her husband when she saw the police officers, the Marine, transit officials, and immigration officers knocking on her building door. The young woman (her identity cannot be disclosed due to the nature of her situatuon) felt a panic attack paralysing her: her whole family, including their 15-year-old daughter, standing next to her, came to Mexico City originally from Venezuela, and their immigration status is still pending. Her Mexican neighbour warned her about the police, thinking officers were coming about parked vehicles, until she realized they were taking people, not bikes, and hid them in her room. They stayed there for two hours, while officers told the neighbour they were raiding the residential building looking for undocumented immigrants for 'security reasons'. In the meantime, in several neighbourhoods, similar official operations were under way, with no warning of what would happen next.

This May, civil society organisations in Mexico have documented immigration control raids by the National Immigration Institute (INM) in Mexico City, where nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Honduras, as well as several Africans countries, have been detained, many of them with ongoing cases before the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR). The immigrants are being dropped off in border cities next to Guatemala, allegedly to scare them into leaving the country, as the World Cup hits three major cities in Mexico, and the tourist inflow has pushed Mexican authorities to make several aggressive changes in the cities’ public structure.

July Rodriguez, from the NGO Apoyo a Migrantes Venezolanos (Support for Venezuelan Migrants), has accompanied over 60 people since the raids started. She told FairPlanet that these raids are also being carried out in Monterrey, with the intention of emptying the cities hosting the FIFA World Cup in June. 

The raids have been taking place in migrant-led neighbourhoods across the metropolitan area of the capital and have involved immigration officers, investigative police, the National Guard, the Navy, and the Army. The first reports emerged on 30 April, when videos of immigration agents carrying out an operation against people working as delivery drivers for digital platforms near the Miyana shopping center in Polanco spread on social media. The Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI) told FairPlanet the detainees were 20 Venezuelans, 5 Hondurans, and 3 Salvadorans. 

Raids have taken place in houses, apartment buildings, and hotels in the city center. They have also been carried out in public spaces where delivery workers gather, including outside shopping malls, reported France24. 

Rodriguez told FairPlanet that detainees are only held in the city for a couple of hours before being sent to border cities in Chiapas and Tabasco, and even in remote places like Veracruz, without explanation. They’re released in the middle of nowhere, late at night, and by themselves. Some of them have been able to communicate with their families, but many detainees remain missing. 

Families violently torn apart

Conexión Migrante reported that migrants were caught by surprise while working and were met with beatings; Noticias Telemundo reported witnesses seeing several detainees being beaten and mistreated. Rodriguez emphasized that the majority of the detainees are Venezuelan. IMUMI told FairPlanet that the criteria for stopping people are entirely based on appearance, and also compounded by the fact that a large number of migrants work on delivery apps. Civil society organisation Ni Un Repartidor Menos documented that three out of ten delivery workers are foreigners. 

Between May 2 and 3, organisations documented similar actions in the Tepito and La Merced areas, consisting of 'street checks and the interception of individuals based on their physical appearance,'  IMUMI told FairPlanet. They also said that on May 4th, there were inspections of houses and tenement buildings in the Buenavista neighbourhood, with up to 15 officers entering a residential building without a warrant or proper documentation.

Alexis, a Mexican citizen, reported that federal agents detained his Cuban wife along with 10 other people without a judicial warrant. Immigration officers refused to tell him why she was being taken. After many hours, he learned she had been taken to an immigration centre in the south of the city and later transferred to Veracruz, 400km away. 

'This means the raids are also affecting Mexican nationals. Federal agents are trespassing on their homes and businesses,' Rodriguez told FairPlanet. 

On 10th May, Apoyo a Migrantes Venezolanos, the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic at Universidad Iberoamericana, IMUMI, among others, filed a complaint before the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), requesting an investigation and precautionary measures.

The National Immigration Institute released a statement on 6 May claiming it had not carried out any detentions or raids and that Mexico City authorities had requested support to prevent further criminal activity. In a public statement on 18th December 2025, Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada described the capital as a sanctuary city for immigrants.

Immigration enforcement is being militarised

An anonymous testimony quoted in the complaint states that the detainee was taken by immigration officers from the street despite showing them his migrant registry issued by Mexico City authorities. He was stripped of his personal belongings, put into a truck, and driven to an immigration station, where officials took his fingerprints and photographs and made him 'sign documents without reading them.' After being taken out of the state, he said he was released in the middle of a highway in Villahermosa, Tabasco.

Civil society organisations IMUMI and Apoyo a Migrantes Venezolanos told FairPlanet they are alarmed by the deployment of security forces during these raids, as well as by irregularities in the operations. Asylum seekers are protected by several legal mechanisms in Mexico and internationally, even when their status is still pending, and are covered by the principle of non-refoulement, meaning they cannot be removed from the country once they have applied for refugee status.

Laura Isabel Cortés from the NGO Caminantas Red told FairPlanet that the National Immigration Institute has become increasingly restrictive in recent years, especially since 2025. 'The climate of securitisation is growing fast,' she said. 'Migration started to be considered a threat,' she added. The NGO believes this is directly related to current US immigration policies. 'It used to be that irregularities were documented in border cities, but now it’s happening in major cities across the country.'

The World Cup effect

Some organisations like IMUMI and Apoyo a Migrantes Venezolanos said the raids could be related to the upcoming FIFA World Cup, calling it a 'social cleanse' and comparing it to the ICE raids happening in the United States. 

'The authorities don’t want tourists to see immigrants sleeping in the streets,' claims Rodríguez. Her organisation was told the Secretariat of Citizen Security of Mexico City is pushing the raids, claiming it’s for 'keeping dangerous criminals away.' Human Rights Watch reports that many of these immigrants were previously deported from the United States. 

However, IMUMI told FairPlanet that none of the detainees have been taken to start their criminal process. IMUMi also said that in many cases, officers have demanded money from detainees in exchange for release. 'There is no clear or documented reason for the raids, and immigrants are now too scared to leave their homes.' 

Experts noted that, even without immigration documents, foreign nationals have rights recognized by Mexican law and international treaties. These include access to consular assistance, legal representation, free translation services, information about the reason for detention, and the ability to file complaints regarding abuses or arbitrary detentions.

On 9th June, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and eight other civil society organisations protested human rights violations just two days before the World Cup kick-off, hanging a large banner from the Estela de Luz monument in Mexico City with demands to stop racism and violence against immigrants. organisations like Casa Refugiados are offering legal counselling and accompanying detainees and their family members. They released a statement urging the public to avoid victimising statements against people in mobility. 

The unfolding raids and detentions are part of a broader pattern of global violence where migrants, often fleeing violence and hardship, find themselves in deeper and more complex levels of vulnerability when seeking refuge. Framed under securitisation narratives, discrimination is presented as a public service and exercised through intimidation. While international attention focuses on Mexico and its communities, the authorities' humanitarian commitments are being held against them by their own people.