MEXICO PERSPECTIVE

Mexico, July 16, 2026. The reversal by President Donald Trump on the suspension of ICE road checks is having a significant impact in the Mexican capital, where the death toll has been rising over the past week. On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, was shot by an ICE agent during a car chase in Houston. His brother Víctor, a direct witness, was left handcuffed on the ground while emergency services took nearly thirty minutes to arrive, according to the account given to his lawyer Ruby Powers. Víctor remains detained by immigration authorities today. "If they were really interested in justice, why are they detaining one of the few direct witnesses to what happened?" Powers asks, contacted by the Mexican consulate in Houston to assist the family. This case adds to a growing list: according to an editorial in El Financiero, 17 Mexicans have died in the United States during immigration operations or in detention since the start of Trump's term. The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has condemned these deaths and called for "rapid, impartial, independent, and transparent investigations," recalling that the protection of migrants' human rights is an international obligation independent of their immigration status. President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced her intention to take legal action in US courts to seek justice - a decision that the Mexican press considers "correct, but late." While the US suspended and then reinstated its road checks, ICE simultaneously set a record: 238 arrests in a single day in the Rio Grande Valley, on the border with Mexico, including some targeting, according to activists, migrants with no prior records. For editorialist Alejo Sánchez Cano, the responsibility of the Mexican state "goes far beyond protesting the excesses of US authorities": it must also confront the structural causes that drive thousands of citizens to attempt the crossing.