It’s a job AMLO is loath to acknowledge. He describes his government as “humanist”, attacking US Republicans for pushing anti-immigration laws. “They’re forgetting the Bible speaks of treating the stranger well and showing love for the other,” he said. “They’re hypocrites.”

Yet he largely dismisses stories of atrocities committed against migrants in Mexico — such as the kidnapping of 19 migrants, who were pulled from buses by drug cartel thugs near the Texas border — as media exaggerations. He also hasn’t fired immigration commissioner Francisco Garduño after a 2023 fire killed 40 migrants in a Ciudad Juárez detention facility. (Garduño faces charges for the fire.)

But AMLO, like his predecessors, can be convinced or coerced into assuming an enforcement role. Former president Donald Trump threatened escalating tariffs in 2019, prompting AMLO to send the newly formed National Guard to the northern and southern borders — the force’s first deployment.

Biden has convinced AMLO to take action, too. But nobody knows the arrangement. The recent rise in migrant enforcement commenced after a December visit from US officials led by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to the National Palace in Mexico City. Details of the post-Christmas visit are scant, but a joint statement offered boilerplate commitments to promoting more orderly migration, addressing the root causes and disrupting human trafficking organisations.

The US version of the statement also spoke of arresting “democratic decline” as part of the root causes. AMLO omitted the statement, which would have embarrassed the migrant-expelling regimes of Cuba and Venezuela that he defends. The US, following AMLO’s lead, removed the reference to “democratic decline” the following day.

The redactions demonstrated a pattern of the Biden administration appeasing AMLO, who assumes an immigration enforcement role in exchange for US silence on everything from the President’s attacks on Mexico’s autonomous institutions – including the courts, electoral institute and transparency institute — to his feet-dragging on fentanyl interdiction and slow-rolling trade disputes on clean energy investments.

AMLO’s replacement Claudia Sheinbaum, who won the Mexican elections overwhelmingly in June, has said little on migration — generally a non-issue in Mexican elections — other than speaking of addressing “root causes” and pledging increased protection for Mexicans living in the United States. She’s also unlikely to allow a restoration of Remain in Mexico — the scheme in which asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are heard in US courts — should Trump win the November election.

But she’s likely to play ball on immigration enforcement, just like her predecessors. “This government is going to do what it can to avoid confrontations with the United States,” said Javier Urbano, migration policy expert at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “And migration is one of the big issues that generates tensions.”

Sheinbaum has promoted nearshoring — in which companies move supply chains from China to North America — as an economic engine of her administration, giving her ample reason to get along with the United States. The USMCA trade agreement is also up for review in 2026 and is important for Mexico, which sends 80% of its exports to the United States.

But AMLO has set the example for her to follow should she want to extract more for assuming the migration-enforcer role.