Each year, tens of thousands of travelers are refused entry at Mexico’s airports; many of them, according to civil society organizations, are asylum-seekers intending to seek refugee protection in Mexico. In 2024, a clinic team filed an amicus brief to the Mexican Supreme Court in the case of one Venezuelan asylum-seeker who was refused entry, held incommunicado for several days inside an airport; and later sent to immigration detention.
The brief, presented on behalf of several former UN-mandated independent experts on the rights of migrants, addresses Mexico’s international law obligations to ensure access to asylum proceedings at borders. The brief asks the court to uphold Mexico’s human rights treaty obligations –which have the same legal status as the Constitution– and grant reparation in this case.
Read the Amicus Brief on Airport Returns of Asylum Seekers in English and in Spanish.