On October 1st, Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in as the first female president in Mexico’s history. As president, Sheinbaum will have to address pressing issues that require domestic, bilateral, and regional cooperation, among them transit migration. Since taking office in 2018, Mexico’s current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has promised to adopt a human rights approach to address transit migration, but throughout his presidency he has continued to implement policies that have further militarised migration routes and criminalised migrants seeking to reach the US, pushing many to take more dangerous routes. In 2023, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) found the US-Mexico border to be the world’s deadliest migration land route for migrants. Given the unprecedented levels of …

Joe Biden’s presidential victory has brought temporary relief for many undocumented and mixed-status families in the US. Biden promised to reverse several of Trump’s executive orders on immigration and refugee policy within his first 100 days in office including reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ending the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) also known as “Remain in Mexico,” and creating a “road map” to citizenship for the approximate 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the US. While Biden’s immigration agenda contains federal and local level priorities, little emphasis has yet been placed on the bilateral scale with the US’s southern neighbour, Mexico. Yet, bilateral immigration negotiations should be a priority for administrations on both sides of the border. In …