On July 9, 2026, Mexican Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco announced that Mexico would stop confining its objections to diplomacy and instead seek criminal charges in American courts over the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration enforcement.
“We are going to move beyond the diplomatic realm and go directly to the US prosecutors' offices to file complaints about these events, requesting a criminal investigation into what happened,” Velasco said. Seventeen Mexicans have died in immigration operations during Trump's second term, according to the foreign ministry: fourteen in ICE custody, and three during operations the agency carried out.
Mexico will also send cease-and-desist letters to the private companies that run the U.S. detention centers where Mexicans have died, which Velasco described as “a legal mechanism through which a civil action is initiated.” The government had already sent eleven diplomatic notes of protest; the United States responded that investigations were underway.
The Department of Homeland Security told CNN that all detainees receive full due process and proper care, and that ICE officers are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary.” The most recent of the seventeen was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Houston homebuilder an ICE officer shot during a traffic stop on July 7 (see ICE Agents Shot and Killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston Father of Three Driving to a Construction Job After 35 Years in the Country and At Least 60 People Have Died in ICE Custody Since Trump's Second Term Began, at a Death Rate Far Above Recent Years).