4

This article describes the border regime transformations in northern Mexico related to the influence of externalization policies of migration controls, and to the elite’s strategies that tend to reinforce nationalist discourses. It analyzes the first three years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) presidency, when agreements between his government and Donald Trump’s led to the military control of the borders and a policy of blocking asylum seekers in northern Mexican cities. The health crisis has been instrumentalized by the US government to close the border and deny the right to asylum, and the continued growth in the number of migrants waiting indefinitely south of the border has led to the casualization, exclusion and victimization of this of this population perceived as “surplus”. Numerous national and international humanitarian actors came to the rescue, setting up mechanisms to both protect and assist, as well as confine or return migrants to their home countries.