On June 14th, three years after the deployment of the National Guard (GN) on the northern and southern borders of Mexico for migration control purposes, the Miguel Agustin Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, the Human Rights Observation and Monitoring Collective in the Mexican Southeast and the Citizen Security and Migration Affairs Programs of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, presented an amicus curiae to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) for Unconstitutionality Action 62/2019, stating that the legal powers of migratory control and verification of the National Guard are contrary to the human rights of migrants and subjects of international protection.
It should be remembered that the Unconstitutionality Action 62/2019 was promoted since July 2019 by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), pointing out that various provisions of the Law to start the GN are contrary to human rights; however, after three years, the SCJN continues without resolving it.
The amicus curiae documents human rights abuses and violations of migrants and subjects of international protection committed by the GN, which “are the result of the nature and composition of the GN as a militarized body, with more than 80% of its elements coming from the military sector, as well as in structure, training and command.”
It also clarifies that in February 2022, “of 99,946 elements deployed in Mexico, 15,822 were located in the border states with the United States and 9,298 elements in southern border states.” This is without counting the members of the GN deployed to the interior of the country to carry out migration control and verification tasks at checkpoints, bus stations and airports; “in addition to having been assigned the protection of the country’s Immigration Stations.”
They finally denounced the “recurring human rights violations of migrants and applicants for international protection on the southern border, including aggression, abuse of force, encapsulation and dispersion of migrants in transit; use of firearms that caused the extrajudicial execution of a migrant, as well as cases of torture in immigration stations.”
Given all this, the organizations concluded that “judicial scrutiny of the legal framework that empowers said institution in matters of migratory control and review is essential, which should imply the declaration of unconstitutionality of the referred provisions.”
For more information in Spanish:
Organizaciones piden a la Suprema Corte revocar intervención de la Guardia Nacional en tareas migratorias (Animal Político, 15 de junio de 2022)
Presentan ‘Amicus Curiae’ ante la Corte sobre riesgos de militarizar la política migratoria (Milenio, 14 de junio de 2022)
Presentan ante la SCJN «amicus curiae» sobre los riesgos de militarizar la política migratoria (Chiapas Paralelo, 14 de junio de 2022)
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