Mexico’s Immigration Chief Accused of Lying to His Own Government, Corruption

With less than a week to go in the Biden administration there’s a now it can be told vibe to this story published today about Mexico’s immigration chief, Francisco Garduño Yáñez. 

It turns out Garduno may have played a significant role in the border crisis over the past couple years and ultimately in the 2024 election. He’s been accused of lying about the nation’s immigration problems and systematically misleading former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other government officials about the depth of the crisis. In October 2023 this led to him being shouted out by Mexico’s defense secretary during an emergency meeting.

“You fooled me,” the defense secretary, Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, yelled at Mr. Garduño, according to two people familiar with the incident…

“You hid information from me, making me lie to the president,” the defense secretary lashed out.

Why would Mexico’s immigration chief lie to his own president? Here things get a little less clear but the story notes that Garduno has been accused of corruption.

Mr. Garduño’s agency has also been accused of essentially waving migrants through to the northern border for bribes. In interviews, migrants said they had to pay Mexican migration agents to travel through the country to reach the United States.

In 2022, the British Embassy also commissioned a classified report on Mexico’s migration system, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. It found systemic corruption in the government’s handling of migrants, including extortion, sexual abuse and collusion with criminal organizations to kidnap migrants for ransom.

So his agency was in a position to profit from the slew of migrants making their way north to the US border and they (allegedly) did. The more migrants, the better their take. Meanwhile, the Biden administration had belatedly realized the border was a political problem and was pushing President AMLO to clamp down on the surge. It sounds like Garduno decided he could have the best of both worlds by keeping the the number of migrants high and then lying about it for official reports. As a result his numbers were often different than what Mexico’s president was hearing from the US.

In 2023, asylum permits given out by Garduno’s agency were causing a surge of people to Mexico’s southern border. Once the migrants had the permits they were free to work but were supposed to remain in place to apply for asylum in Mexico. What most actually did was used the permits as semi-legal passes to move north to the US border. Garduno was confronted on his agency’s distribution of permits by Mexico’s Interior Secretary, Luisa María Alcalde Luján.

She grilled Mr. Garduño about whether his agency was handing out the permits but allowing asylum seekers to head north toward the U.S. border, according to four officials with knowledge of the meeting, two in attendance.

Yes, Mr. Garduño replied.

After being shouted at by the Interior Minister, Garduno cracked down on immigration and it worked. For about two months in late 2023 the numbers dropped somewhat. But in November Mexico’s Treasury Secretary cut funding for a number of agencies, including Garduno’s, because of budget issues. 

Most agency heads went to the Treasury and fought for their share of funds. Garduno did not. He simply halted his operations trying to hold back the surge of migrants. Deportation flights stopped and personnel at checkpoints disappeared. It was a green light to every migrant who wanted to make a dash to the US border. 

And that’s how we wound up setting a historical record for the number of migrants arriving at the US border in December 2023. You probably remember it because that record became national news and really solidified the impression that President Biden (and VP Harris) had failed to manage the border crisis. So it really isn’t an exaggeration to say Garduno single-handedly had a big impact on the 2024 election.

He has now been removed as the immigration chief and is facing charges over a fire at a detention center that killed 40 migrants. However, he is still expected to play a role in negotiations over immigration with the incoming Trump administration.