Mexico

The United Mexican States (Mexico) is the second largest economy in Latin America and one of the world’s top 15 by GDP. With a population exceeding 131 million in 2025 and nearly 12 million residing abroad in the United States of America, Mexico is a vast federal republic comprising 32 states. The nation’s constitutional government is based on the separation of powers: executive, judicial, and a bicameral legislature. It plays a key geopolitical role in North America as the largest trading partner of the United States of America. 

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020, formalizing a continental trade block that encompasses digital trade, labour, environment, and the auto industry, while maintaining duty-free access for most goods. Though the USMCA is under scheduled review in 2026, current tariffs and political signalling from the U.S. government raise uncertainty about the durability of the agreement, raising concerns about economic stability across all three nations.

Intersecting factors such as gender, race, class, indigeneity, and geography shape Mexico’s human-rights and socioeconomic conditions. Though Mexico maintains democratic institutions and an active civil society, some researchers have signalled a democratic backsliding; it faces persistent challenges involving corruption and human-rights violations linked to organized crime and structural weaknesses in the justice system.

The country spans from the Chihuahuan Desert and the Rio Grande in the north (with a 3,145km-long border along four U.S. states), with three stretches of the rugged Sierra Madre mountains running through the center, to the tropical Caribbean jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula bordering Guatemala and Belize in the south. Mexico’s coastline, at 9,330km long, touches the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, making the country a crucial participant in global manufacturing and logistics chains. 

Mexico is also one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the Americas – home to 68 distinct communities of Indigenous Peoples, collectively speaking 364 Indigenous language variants. According to the 2020 Census, approximately 15% of the population identifies as Indigenous, while 6% report speaking an Indigenous language, with Nahuatl and Maya being the most widely spoken. Additionally, around 2% of the population identifies as Afro-Mexican.

Mexico’s privileged geography has a history of human migration and trade predating the creation of the country’s borders. Since time immemorial, Indigenous Peoples have migrated and travelled overland and seasonally throughout this region; Mexico today is both a country of origin and a primary transit corridor of one of the world’s largest international migration flows, involving not only people from North, Central, and South America, but also the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports that in 2025, U.S. authorities had approximately 443,700 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexican nationals accounted for approximately 40% of all encounters, a proportion that rose to 75% between February and September 2025, reflecting increasingly restrictive U.S. asylum policies that not only disproportionately block Mexican migrants but also impact all overland migration across the border. 

Mexico’s many Pacific and Gulf ports also serve as maritime entry points for chemicals to produce synthetic drugs in the country; criminal organizations then export these drugs overland or by sea. These organized crime networks or cartels, engaging in human trafficking, drug trafficking, and drug production, contribute significantly to Mexico having one of the highest homicide rates in the world. In 2024, there were 33,241 homicide deaths, corresponding to 25.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, with 71.8% involving firearms (via INEGI, in Spanish). 

While the homicide rate decreased in 2025, the rate of disappearances has dramatically surged. According to the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons maintained by the National Search Commission, as of September 2025, the registry listed 133,632 persons recorded as disappeared and not located, supporting the understanding that citizens feel insecure in their cities and regions. The territorial conflicts and recruitment practices of drug cartels have generated widespread violence and disappearances since the 2007 militarized “war on drugs,” exacerbated by the “hugs, not bullets” policy of the former Mexican federal administration (2018-2024). 

In addition to organized crime violence, it is widely documented that government powers also perpetrate violence against the Mexican people, including inflicting torture and arbitrary detention. According to the Global Torture Index: 

“42% of incarcerated individuals reported being beaten or ill-treated at the public prosecutor’s office to incriminate themselves or admit to false claims, while 22% said they were coerced into incriminating others. Additionally, 20% stated they pleaded guilty following physical assault.” 

Furthermore, Mexico applies mandatory pretrial detention and preventive custody in ways that contravene international human-rights law.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Mexico’s justice system is characterized by compromised investigation, prosecution, and judicial accountability. The report notes that most crimes—including homicide, disappearances, and security force abuses—are not effectively investigated. This limits access to justice for victims and contributes to low reporting rates. 

Mexican civil society groups and Amnesty International Mexico argue that the militarization of public security has weakened local police reform and judicial oversight, while the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights similarly urged the government to adopt a progressive demilitarization plan and return the National Guard to civilian control by 2028. 

Indigenous Peoples face disproportionate exposure to arbitrary detention, prolonged pretrial incarceration, and criminalization, often without access to legal interpretation or due process. The United Nations and civil society report the frequent use of fabricated charges, coerced confessions, and excessively long sentences against Indigenous  People, particularly those involved in land defence or community leadership. These structural conditions link ethnic identity with heightened vulnerability to state violence, reinforcing broader patterns of inequality within Mexico’s justice and security systems.

Mexican immigration to Canada has changed substantially since the federal government lifted the visa requirement for Mexican visitors in December 2016. More than 2.3 million Mexicans have travelled to Canada since then, making Mexico the largest source of visitors from Latin America. 

Mexican migration to Canada is largely structured through temporary and conditional legal statuses rather than durable pathways to protection or settlement. Migration has increased sharply in the last decade through asylum claims and temporary labour programs. In 2023, Mexican citizens accounted for 17% of all asylum claims in Canada, rising from 260 claims in 2016 to nearly 24,000 in 2023. Approximately 60% of these claims were rejected, withdrawn, or abandoned, reflecting both systemic pressures and applicant vulnerability. 

Many Mexican applications for asylum are rejected on the “internal flight alternative” principle, a UNHCR guideline establishing that claims can be refused if the person can live safely in another part of their home country. A 2024 study in the International Journal of Refugee Law found that Canadian officials tend to apply the internal flight alternative more broadly than UNHCR guidance, even when claimants can demonstrate they may be subjected to serious harm if they return. This raises the burden on Mexican claimants to prove that no part of their country is safe.

In February 2024, Canada reinstated visa requirements for many Mexican visitors in response to increasing asylum claims, limiting eTA (electronic travel authorization) access to those holding a valid U.S. visa or a recent Canadian visa, while others must now obtain a visitor visa, leading to a shift towards a more restrictive migration control for Mexican nationals.

At the same time, tens of thousands of Mexicans enter Canada each year through temporary work visas, particularly the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), which sent 26,000 workers in 2023 alone. While SAWP is often cited as a model of orderly migration, Mexican temporary workers remain exposed to risks associated with employer-tied permits such as limited labour mobility, housing insecurity, and barriers to reporting abuse and exploitation. 

Thank you to Luis G. Aguirre, executive director of VIRCS, for contributing to this country profile.