Discourse: migrants as drug traffickers (1988-2001)

To outsource control of the US border to Mexico, the first discourse may be associated with the security construction of irregular migrants as a socioeconomic threat and a danger for public order, as ^{Campesi (2012)} argues. This discourse was created in the period following the approval of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which "regularized 2.3 million Mexicans and criminalized the employment of irregular migrants" (^{Durand, 2013, p.7}), and in the context of the "war on drugs" (entering from Mexico and Colombia) (^{Alba, 1999, pp. 21-22}). In this first moment, to militarize its border and externalize its border controls to Mexico, the United States used the discourse of the fight against irregular migration and the war against the drug trade.

Under the Carlos Salinas administration (1988-1994), in 1993, the first year of the NAFTA, the National Migration Institute (INM) was created to manage migration and contain irregular migration in transit. Detention and deportation mechanisms were the basis of this process, and they are the backbone of Mexican migration policy up to this day. In 1996, the Ernesto Zedillo administration (1994-2000) instrumentalized the General Population Law to allow for migratory checks in places other than those established by Article 151, that is, throughout the country. In that year, the Mexican government trained Mexican migration agents and military and security personnel to professionalize their work. "Operación Sellamiento", the equivalent of Operation Gatekeeper (1994), was launched in 1998 (^{Munguía, 2015, p.106}), deploying coordinated actions between Mexico and the United States along the Guatemalan border to detect irregular migrants (^{Cortés, 2003}). Additionally, under this operation, Mexico had the task of acting as a liaison between the United States and Central America to create coordinated actions on migration matters, which was done with the 1996 Puebla Process (^{Regional Conference on Migration, 2011}).

By the time when Vicente Fox became President (2000-2006), there was one migratory station in Mexico City and 24 provisional shelters, most of them in the south of the country (^{Casillas, 2002}). This administration's program was the "Plan Sur" (2001), whose discourse was to protect the dignity of migrants and fight corruption and impunity (^{Grayson, 2002}). In practice, it entailed operations by the National Institute of Migration (INM), the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), and the Attorney General's Office (PGR) in important crossing points for Central American migrants (^{Anguiano & Trejo, 2007, p. 50}), as well as the construction of new migratory shelters, investment in technology, and the hiring of public servants to professionalize the process of deportation of irregular migrants to their countries (^{Casillas, 2002}). By the end of the Fox administration, the INM already had 52 immigration detention centers (^{Casillas, 2008}).

Discourse: Migrants as terrorists (2001-2018)

The security discourse changed due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when migration and terrorism were associated with the security construction of migrants as a threat to national security, as argued by ^{Campesi (2012)}. In the United States, migration management was reconfigured: institutions were created (Department of Homeland Security and its different agencies) and laws were issued (like the Patriot Act, that made irregular migration a matter of national security); also emergency military orders authorized the indefinite detention of foreigners suspected of terrorism (“a manifest state of exception”, ^{Agamben, 2004, p. 6}). Additionally, the border wall with Mexico was reinforced, work place operations intensified, and the number of Border Patrol agents increased (^{Durand, 2013}).

In Mexico, bilateral and multilateral agreements and actions to control Central American migration were undertaken. The High-Level Border Security Group (Gansef) between Mexico-Guatemala (2002) and Mexico-Belize (2005) was formed to work against terrorism, organized crime, irregular migration, illicit traffic in goods, and public security on the border (^{Calleros, 2009}). The "Operativo Escudo Comunitario (2005) sought to contain the flow of Central American gangs in transit through Mexico to the United States" (^{Carreón, Herrera, & Córdova, 2009, pp. 247-248}). In 2005, the INM was recognized as a national security agency. In 2006, the governments of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the "dignified, orderly, agile, and secure repatriation of Central American migrants by land" (^{Rodríguez, 2016, p. 111}).

The Felipe Calderón administration (2006-2012) produced the Puebla-Panama Plan (2008), whose discourse was to boost infrastructure and energy investments in the Central American region and Mexico in order to reduce poverty, inequality, and violence (^{Carreón et al., 2009, pp. 247-248}). However, this plan externalized the US border with Mexico based on a regional security approach that avoided the entry of potential terrorists into the United States' southern border and, at the same time, allowed regional coordination of deportations and containment of irregular migration to the north. This plan, now called the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project, entailed the transfer of 4 529 million United States dollars to Mexico from 2008 to March 2017 (^{Amexcid, 2018}). Finally, the Mérida Initiative (2008) recognized that bilateral cooperation on security matters between the two countries was needed to achieve the goal of reducing drug violence. To that end, the United States provided equipment and training to Mexican public servants that fight criminal networks, drug and people trafficking, and control irregular migration flows (^{U.S. Embassy Mexico, 2008}). With this initiative, from 2008 to May 2017 the United States transferred $ 2 800 million to Mexico (^{Seelke & Finklea, 2017}).

In 2014, the "Programa Integral Frontera Sur" came into force during the Enrique Peña Nieto administration (2012-2018). The Program was meant as a national strategy focused on the protection of migrants' human rights, the development of border states, and the strengthening of security in the area (^{Segob, 2015}). Once again, its goal was to reaffirm Mexico's role as a dam for Central American migrants by means of aggressive operations in corridors and hotspots of migrants in Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca, and Veracruz (^{Redodem, 2015}; ^{Boggs, 2015}). For its implementation, a specific item was created in the Federation's Expenditure Budget. The funds were directed to the Coordination Agency for the Integral Attention to Migration in the Southern Border, which in 2020 still exists (^{SHCP, 2020}).

Outsourcing of the US border to Mexico has visible results. For example, the Global Detention Project stated that, from 2010 to 2016, the United States was the country with the largest increase in migrant detention, followed only by Mexico, number two in the list of 12 countries that detain more migrants (^{Global Detention Project, 2017}). This, regardless of whether the detainees are under age, since from 2013 to 2017 these two countries led a list of countries that detain migrant children (^{Global Detention Project, 2018} and ²⁰¹⁹). Thus, countries of destination like the United States have increased the number of people arrested before arriving into their territory, and they do so with the help of transit countries as Mexico.

Discourse: migratory caravans as "invasions" (2018-2019)

Mexico has been a regular route to the United States. The reasons for Central American migration, which is mostly forced, include poverty, civil war, environmental disasters and even climate change, violence of all kinds (institutional, market, family, organized crime), or family reunification desires, together with a weak rule of law and territories impregnated by organized crime (^{UNHCR, 2018}). The precarious and violent Central Amercian reality is strongly associated with the ravage caused by the longstanding armed conflicts of the region between 1960 and 1990. Despite the signing of peace agreements in Central America and the establishment of “democratic regimes”, many situations that provoked those conflicts still prevail (^{Cuevas, 2017}). The political, economic, and military oligarchies remained almost intact, and they took new directions with the support of the United States, to where an important Central American migration headed during the years of civil wars (^{UNHCR, 2008}). Some of these migrants organized themselves into criminal gangs and were deported by the George W. Bush government between 1989 and 1993. Back in the region, gangs such as Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) expanded and brought violence and death to civilian populations. Thus, generalized violence became a reality in the region, resulting in forced displacement of people (^{Andino, 2016}; ^{Santamaría, 2007}).

Since the end of 2018, migratory caravans have emerged as a new form of massive, colorful, and organized migration that provides visibility, accompaniment, and protection to migrants by social organizations, the media, and human rights organizations. They are relatively safe and inexpensive, when compared with the very high costs of people smugglers ("coyotes") (^{Colef, 2018}). Caravans have been described as a form of survival (^{Torre-Cantalapiedra, 2019}), or a new form of self-defense and transmigration, “a new form of migrant struggle” (^{Varela & McLean, 2019, p.167}). Joined by a considerable number of young people, caravans have been considered as a "mobility strategy and a space for protection, autonomy, and solidarity with Central American teenagers" (^{Glockner, 2019, p. 145}).

However, to migrate in caravans from Central America is not a novelty, since these types of movements have taken place before. For example, the Central American Mothers' Caravan has been in place since 2004. In search for lost migrant children in Mexico, these mothers walk “along the routes their children traveled, stopping at migratory stations, and looking along the train tracks. They visit Mexican prisons, brothels, and dance centers, and they look for the bodies of their children in hospitals and morgues" (^{Varela, 2015, p. 335}). Since 2011, the Viacrucis Migrante (or Migrant Way of the Cross, a simile between Christ's difficult way and the journey of migrants) represents another type of caravan that links the religious with the political and collective conflict. It is used by migrants in transit and their defenders as a way to publicize their demands (^{Vargas, 2018}; ^{Martínez Hernández-Mejía, 2018}).

The caravans that began in 2018 were novel because they were formed in territories where migrants came from (for example, Honduras), they are large-scale, they have a large presence of women, children, and young people, and they receive an important media coverage. Additionally:

[...] they involve a complex network of actors: migrants and deportees who already know the routes, human rights defenders, international agencies responsible for managing humanitarian crises, the media, and organized and fragmented experts, officials, and populations from communities through which these caravans pass ( ^{Varela & McLean, 2019, p. 175} ).

These new migratory caravans have given a new twist to the securitarian discourse of migration: they have been literally equated with "invasions" (^{Trump, 2018}), condensing the three constructions of the irregular migrant under the security lens: a threat to public order and national security, a sociocultural threat, and a socioeconomic threat (^{Campesi, 2012}).

The responses of the Mexican and American governments were immediate:

In the López Obrador administration (2018-2024), the first response -consistent with its electoral promises-was to create a "humanitarian" policy, which included the granting of visas for humanitarian reasons. In 2019, 10 571 visas were granted to nationals from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala (^{Segob, 2019}). However, the humanitarian strategy did not last long: the political alternation taking place in Mexico, the "new" human rights vision of the incoming government, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Central America had a "summons effect", and the Central American caravans continued arriving at the southern border. There happened a shift in migration policy and old strategies shared by all Mexican governments were resumed: the granting of humanitarian visas was drastically decreased, while arrests, separation from families, overcrowding in migration stations, access to health care, and violations of due process and international protection rights increased (^{Alianza las Américas, 2019}; ^{CNDH, 2019}).

By November 2019, 151 547 Central American migrants had been arrested and 115 237 deported (Segob, 2019). In other words, 76 percent of migrants from that region were deported, which demonstrates the Mexican government's "effective" approach to the migration crisis by means of detention and deportation measures. Besides, the recently-launched National Guard was used to "order" irregular migration by means of violent deployments. This is shown by its performance in the second half of 2019 and by the reception given to the migrant caravan in January 2020, in an operation very similar to those carried out by the United States border patrol (^{Pradilla, 2020a}).

At the same time, using the same rhetoric as in previous administrations, the Mexican government presented the Comprehensive Development Plan: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Spanish acronym CEPAL), so that people in the region do not have to migrate. This project revolves around four axes: 1) economic development: taxation and investment, commercial integration, energy integration, and logistics; 2) social welfare: education, health, and work; 3) environmental sustainability and risk management; and (4) comprehensive management of the migratory cycle with human security: rights, livelihoods, and people-centered security (^{CEPAL, 2019}).

Since the caravans began in October 2018, in the US the Donald Trump administration categorically called on Mexico to halt the unwanted migration and closed its asylum system for Central Americans through different policies, the most effective of which was to make of Mexico a "safe" third country through two agreements:

The first agreement foresaw the implementation, starting in January 2019, of Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also called Remain in Mexico Policy. Through these protocols, the Department of Homeland Security devolves irregular migrants and Central American asylum-seekers arriving by land to the United States to Mexico, where they wait for their immigration and asylum resolutions. This clearly undermines their chances of being granted asylum by making it difficult for them to obtain a lawyer to represent them in that country. According to figures from the Department of Homeland Security, by October 2019, 55,000 migrants had been deported to Mexico under this program (^{US Department of Homeland Security, 2019a}).

The second agreement is the "Mexico-United States Joint Declaration", signed on June 5, 2019 after a veiled media threat by President Trump. The president declared that tariffs on Mexican products would increase progressively as of June 10, 2019, if Mexico failed to act decisively to halt irregular Central American migration. By the agreement, Mexico was forced to militarize its southern border using the National Guard, in order to contain Central American migrants; to accept that migrants crossing the southern border of the United States to request asylum be returned promptly to Mexican territory, where they should await the resolution of their asylum applications; and to provide them with work opportunities and access to health care and education. The United States only committed to speed up the resolution of asylum applications and to execute deportation procedures as expeditiously as possible. Both countries reiterated their commitment to strengthen and expand bilateral cooperation and avoid forced migration via the Comprehensive Development Plan, but failed to provide data on economic contributions or other considerations (^{SRE, 2019}).

The Trump administration sealed the American asylum system for Central Americans by issuing a directive dated July 16, 2019, which states that asylum seekers in the southern border of the United States must meet the following conditions:

It should be noted that no exceptions are made when asylum-seekers are under age. If the migrants are not within one of the aforementioned exceptions, a process of rapid deportation will be initiated and they will be sent to their countries (^{Homeland Security Department and Executive Office for Immigration Review, 2019}). As Mexico is a party to the 1951 and 1984 Conventions, only people who have requested asylum in another “safe” third country through which they have traveled and have been denied such protection or have been victims of "severe" forms of human trafficking may qualify. In this way, access to asylum is blocked for the majority of Central Americans who travel through Mexico to the US in search of international protection.

The directive has been legally challenged by different civil society organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center, because it is a flagrant violation of the principle of non-refoulement, the cornerstone of the right to asylum. It also violates United States immigration and asylum laws, which only restrict a person from seeking asylum if they are "firmly settled" in another country before arriving in the United States, and there is a safe third-country agreement with the United States, and the asylum seeker have been guaranteed a "complete and fair procedure" there. (^{Human Rights First, 2019a, p.1}). In response to these legal challenges, in 2019 the Trump administration pushed for the signing of "safe third country" agreements with the countries of Central America, which were mediated -as with Mexico-by commercial threats to its realization: with Guatemala, on July 26; with El Salvador on September 20; with Honduras, on September 25 (^{US Department of Homeland Security, 2019b}). On September 11, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the first legal challenges by the board of directors, thus awarding a victory for the Trump administration. (^{US Supreme Court, 2019}). This, in spite of the incongruity of considering both Mexico and the Central American countries as "safe" countries, since it is precisely those countries that are forcibly expelling their nationals due to the generalized climate of insecurity and systematic violations of human rights that take place there.

The "Safe Third Country Agreement": a biopolitics that violates the principle of non-refoulement

The countries where asylum-seekers arrive are primarily responsible for evaluating their applications and granting such protection. However, the practice in the dominant Western countries, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has been to reduce the number of asylum-seekers in their territories by means of biopolitical methods that divert asylum-seekers to other countries and transfer their international protection responsibilities. This is the case of the figure of the "safe third country", under which asylum-seekers can be sent back to countries they have traveled en route to countries where they seek asylum, or even to countries other than transit countries, by means of a bilateral or multilateral agreement that holds these nations responsible for granting said international protection (^{UNHCR, 2001}, ²⁰¹⁸).

This practice has been made possible thanks to the instrumentality of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees in favor of the interests of destination nations, since the Convention does not include this concept, nor does it require people to be granted asylum in the countries through which they have traveled. However, the UNHCR, through its Executive Committee (Excom), introduced this figure in 1989, when migration began to take a turn towards becoming a security issue, under the arguments that what is not prohibited is allowed (^{UNHCR, 2008}) and that refugees have no unrestricted right to choose the country of asylum. The rhetoric behind this figure is that “it reduces subsequent irregular migratory movements and avoids the creation of ‘orbiting’ refugee situation ” and that it promotes international cooperation and shared responsibility (^{UNHCR, 2018}).

The UNHCR states that before asylum-seekers are transferred to another country by virtue of a "safe third country" agreement, each application must be individually evaluated, especially in the case of unaccompanied or separated children, and that the third country will meet the following requirements: it must have the capacity to (re)admit the person; to provide access to a fair and efficient procedure to determine refugee status and other international protection needs; it must allow him to remain legally in his territory while the determination is being made; and it must grant the treatment standards of the 1951 Convention and other international human rights norms, including protection against re-foulement and access to paid employment (^{UNHCR, 2018}).

However, in practice these agreements are used by countries of destination to reduce the number of asylum-seekers in their territories and transfer them to other countries, thus evading their international protection obligations and ultimately letting asylum-seekers to die. This is proved by the European regional experience:

The concept of a "safe third country" violates one of the founding principles of International Refugee Law: protection against re-foulement of a person to a territory where they are under risk of persecution, in accordance with article 33 of the 1951 Convention on Human Rights. This principle is "the cornerstone of the international protection of refugees and asylum-seekers" (^{Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2018, para. 179}), because it makes it possible to guarantee and protect the fundamental and unremovable rights of the protected person: life, liberty, security, and personal integrity. Therefore, "the transfer of asylum -seekers to a third State where their lives, safety, or freedom are at risk, or where they can be sent to another country where such risks are incurred (indirect return) is a violation of the principle of non-refoulement" (^{Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2018, para. 190}).

It is not by chance that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee have stated that the prohibition against torture³ creates a solid basis of protection against the return, deportation, or expulsion of a person to another country, or to a third nation-State that is not considered safe, when there is a well-founded presumption to believe that the asylum seeker would be in danger of being subjected to torture, or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. This is because the "principle of non-refoulement seeks to ensure the effectiveness of the prohibition of torture in all circumstances and with respect to every person, without discrimination" (^{Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2018, para. 181}; ^{Human Rights Committee, 2004, para. 9}).

Summing up, the concept of the "safe third country" contradicts the basis of the right to asylum –the principle of non-refoulement–, since it breaks with the institution's protection logic: preventing people from being persecuted when their lives, safety, or freedom are in danger. Moreover, as it is not provided for in the 1951 Convention, it lacks a legal and legitimate basis, and practice shows that, when applied, it empties the right to asylum of its foremost guarantee: not to return people to countries where they may be persecuted or their lives are at risk, or, if applicable, not to send them to other countries where such risks exist.

Mexico as a de facto "third (un) safe country": instrumentalization of the right to asylum results in an empty right and leaves people to die

In 2019 the United States once more used the discourse of securitization of migration and initiated biopolitical strategies that externalized its borders with Mexico and prevented Central American migration from settling on its territory. The most recent uses Mexico as a "safe third country" through Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) and the Joint Mexico-US Declaration -a de facto agreement of safe third-country-that diverts Central American migrants and asylum-seekers to Mexican territory. As a result of the instrumentalization of the right to asylum, this right has been denatured, since its main guarantee, the principle of non-refoulement, has been removed, and Central Americans trying to flee from persecution and death are left to die due to the following reasons:

Mexico acts as an extended border for the United States, and as a true wall for Central American migration trying to reach American soil. In fact, the Migration and Development Plan presented by Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard in December 2019 indicates that the flow of migrants arriving to the southern border of the United States went from 144 116 people in May 2019 to 42 710 in November of the same year, which indicates a decrease of 70.4 percent (^{López Obrador, 2019}). However, for these people the cost in human rights and loss of life is very high, and it will increase even more because of crimes like human trafficking, since they will be forced to take new, more dangerous and precarious routes that will endanger their lives and will substantially increase the profits of these criminal businesses, since they will invariably require their help to cross borders.