Organised Crime and Migration: Criminal Groups, Corruption and the Displacement Crisis in Central America and Mexico, Victorie Knox, 2026, University of London Press
The least well understood aspect of debates about Central American migration through Mexico to the US is the nefarious role played by criminal violence.
While displacement in the northern triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) has been attributed to many factors, from gang violence and climate change to entrenched inequality, organised crime is arguably primus inter pares among causal factors.
That is because local mafias—and corrupt state officials and politicians, especially in Mexico—play a role at every stage of this tragic phenomenon.
Organised crime initiates displacement from northern Central America in the first place, and then criminal syndicates abuse the same migrants once in transit while controlling the people-smuggling networks they are dependent upon.
It is therefore of critical importance to situate organised crime centre stage within this phenomenon, as doing so strengthens the argument that those enmeshed in this criminal nexus are victims and hence refugees deserving of asylum, not mere economic migrants.
This is an important distinction, because it sat at the heart of the policy shift undertaken by Mexico in 2014 at the height of the US border crisis as a result of intense pressure from Washington to stem the tide.
Migration policy here can be seen as a good example of ways in which US policy externalisation have detrimental effects on a target state—with contemporary relevance in other policy areas, such as Trump’s pressure on Mexico to take armed action against cartels.
This is no trivial observation, reinforcing the broader thesis that the direct drivers of corruption among state officials in vulnerable states include the imposition of external policy priorities that may not serve these states’ immediate interests.
Organised Crime and Migration by Victorie Knox provides valuable research into what happened during 2013-14 and in particular, the novel nature of the Central American displacement crisis that occurred.
As the author points out, while displacement and out-migration were by no means new phenomena, the dynamic had changed and indications were growing that criminal violence and gang activity were now key reasons for a mass exodus from the northern triangle.
After 2011, a growing number of unaccompanied minors and family groups arrived at the US–Mexico border and in June 2014, after more than 68,000 unaccompanied Central American minors were held there in one year, the then US President Barack Obama declared an “urgent humanitarian situation”.
By 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had determined both that the number of people fleeing violence from Central America had reached levels not seen since the civil wars of the 1970 and 80s, and that the principal cause was pervasive violence and persecution by criminal actors.
US pressure on Mexico to act grew intense, and directly in response to Obama’s proclamation—and sweetened with financial incentives—Mexico announced new in-country migration controls known as the Plan Frontera Sur.
This move was widely understood to be the outsourcing of US migration controls in a move which, above all, was designed to treat the situation as an issue of migration rather than one involving refugees.
This of course enabled the US to avoid direct responsibility for the safety and welfare of the thousands of families languishing at their borders, and hence to dodge the potential implications that they had a right to asylum.
In the longer term, however, it set the tone for the subsequent ascent within the US of Donald Trump and his populist backlash against immigration in which, as we have repeatedly seen, migrants have since been all but stripped of their human and legal rights.
Nonetheless, Knox examines how the externalisation of migration controls to Mexico in this way actually conflicted with the country’s obligations towards those with the potential need for protection under international human rights law.
It also increased the risk and harm to the migrants themselves—the “collateral damage” of this policy—by catalysing the deeper involvement of organised criminal groups in their exploitation and aggravating corruption related to people-smuggling.
Plan Frontera Sur was announced by Mexico’s then President Enrique Peña Nieto on 7 July 2014 as one of several US-funded activities seen as instruments to externalise American migration policy following a meeting between the presidents of the US, Mexico and Guatemala.
It manifested on the ground as the application of restrictive migration controls, an increase in the number of operations and checkpoints, and the apprehension, detention and deportation from Mexico of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans.
Knox argues that the programme subsequently affected all three aspects of organised crime’s involvement with migration, in different ways and in combination with other factors, to adversely impact human rights overall.
As she points out, while it purported to safeguard the rights of migrants transiting Mexico, no detailed strategy was published and there was a complete lack of transparency about its activities, objectives and infrastructure.
She writes: “Experts that I spoke with were unanimous that the policy represented the externalisation of US migration controls, with a few also expressing that it imparted responsibility on Mexico to do the US’s ‘dirty work’, particularly with regard to the deportation of minors and deportations without appropriate screening …
“… there was rhetoric about human rights and security for migrants but, in practice, there were increased deportations and abuse—a situation one expert described as ‘doublespeak’.”
Not only did using such measures to reduce the number of arrivals at the US border diminish the sense of urgency and political will to tackle the root causes of displacement, they also actively damaged human rights.
Significant numbers of deportations violated international norms on legal protection for minors; abuse by Mexican officials and private security staff increased; and the security situation for migrants deteriorated significantly, with an increase in criminal attacks in southern Mexico during transit.
Indeed, the author points out that following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, there was a substantial increase in crime reports and reported human rights violations and extortions perpetrated by state agents and private security.
Moreover, the role of state actors in people-smuggling activities grew as corruption spread— and involved more state actors, higher-level officials, and frontline agents on transit routes—as a direct result of the changes that followed the plan’s implementation,
Students of Latin America will be familiar with many examples of how US policy externalisation—the extra-territorialisation of one society’s political preferences on others—have had adverse consequences.
Organised Crime and Migration adds to this picture with hard evidence gathered in the field, raising troubling questions about how the Mexican state under its then PRI president washed its hands of the consequences for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
For all its rhetoric about sovereignty, there is little doubt that the Mexican state—at least under Peña Nieto—absolved itself both of the sovereign right to control its borders, thereby weakening state integrity, but also of upholding Mexico’s fabled international commitments.
As Knox writes: “In this scenario, organised crime becomes a more effective controller of territory and a more powerful geopolitical force than states in terms of enforcing migration control.”
But perhaps the most damaging effect of Mexico’s choices—beyond the further empowerment of organised crime and the turbo-charging of state corruption—was to nurture the complicity of its politicians in an inhumane and ultimately racist US assault on minorities.
This will have enduring consequences for both countries.
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Categories: Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, North America, United States