Mexico’s Senate.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday (September 11, 2024) to overhaul the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.

The approval came in two votes after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday (September 10, 2024), interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the governing party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.

The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. Approval by the Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.

One came Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul took leave for medical reasons and his father, a former governor, suggested he would vote for the proposal. The lawmaker ended up returning to his seat to give the proposal the last vote it needed.

Both of the Senate votes were 86-41, with the second result coming around 4 a.m. The chamber erupted into cheers and chants of “Yes, we could!”

The legislation must now be ratified by the legislatures of at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 States. The governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major gains in recent elections. Oaxaca’s legislature became the first to ratify it just hours after the Senate’s approval.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers on passing the overhaul.

The election of judges “will strengthen the delivery of justice in our country,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote on the social media platform X. “The regime of corruption and privileges each day is being left farther in the past and a true democracy and true rule of law are being built.”

On Tuesday evening, just hours after the governing party appeared to have wrangled the votes it needed, protesters with pipes and chains broke into the Senate chamber. At least one person fainted.

The protesters said lawmakers were not listening to their demands.

“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs opposing the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.

Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said that people like him working in the courts “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.

“They have decided to sell out the nation and sell out for political capital they were offered. We felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”

But a short time later the Senate reconvened in another location and resumed debate on the proposal. An initial vote in favor came shortly after midnight.

The approval came after weeks of protests by judicial employees and law students.

Critics and observers say the plan, under which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.

López Obrador, a populist long averse to independent regulatory bodies who has ignored courts and attacked judges, says the plan would crack down on corruption by making it easier to punish judges. Critics say it would handicap the judiciary, stack courts with judges favoring the president’s party, allow anyone with a law degree to become a judge and even make it easier for politicians and criminals to influence courts.

It has spooked investors and prompted U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to call it a “risk” to democracy and an economic threat.

Mexico City:

Crowds of protesters invaded Mexico’s Senate on Tuesday, forcing lawmakers to suspend a debate on controversial proposals by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to allow voters to elect judges.

The judicial reform plan, which experts say would make Mexico the world’s only country to elect all judges, has sparked mass demonstrations, diplomatic tensions and investor jitters.

Senate president Gerardo Fernandez Norona declared an “indefinite recess” because demonstrators had entered the building, as television images showed crowds of protesters inside the upper house chamber.

Upper house lawmakers began discussing the proposals Tuesday ahead of a vote that had been expected to be held later in the day or Wednesday.

Lopez Obrador, who wants the bill to be passed before he is replaced by close ally Claudia Sheinbaum on October 1, argues that in the current system the courts serve the interests of the political and economic elite, calling the judiciary “rotten,” corrupt and rife with nepotism.

“What most worries those who are against this reform is that they will lose their privileges, because the judiciary is at the service of the powerful, at the service of white-collar crime,” the leftist leader said at a news conference.

Opponents, including court employees and law students, have held a series of protests against the plan, under which even Supreme Court and other high-level judges, as well as those at the local level, would be chosen by popular vote.

Serving judges would have to stand for election in 2025 or 2027.

“This does not exist in any other country,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.

“In some countries, such as the US, some state judges are elected, and in others, such as in Bolivia, high-level judges are elected. If this reform passes, it will place Mexico in a unique position in terms of its method for judicial selection,” she told AFP.

– ‘Demolition of judiciary’ –
In an unusual public warning, Supreme Court chief justice Norma Pina said that elected judges could be more vulnerable to pressure from criminals, in a country where powerful drug cartels regularly use bribery and intimidation to influence officials.

“The demolition of the judiciary is not the way forward,” she said in a video released on Sunday.

Pina said last week that the top court would discuss whether it has jurisdiction to halt the reforms, though Lopez Obrador has said there is no legal basis for it to do so.

The reforms were passed last week in the lower house by ruling party lawmakers and their allies, who were forced to gather in a sports center because access to Congress was blocked by protesters.

In the upper house, the ruling coalition is one seat short of 86 votes for a two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution.

In a move that could potentially tip the balance in favor of the ruling coalition, one opposition senator was allowed to be excused for health reasons and be replaced by his father, prompting cries of “traitor” in the chamber.

– ‘Dangerous proposals’ –
The United States, Mexico’s main trading partner, has warned that the reforms would threaten a relationship that relies on investor confidence in the Mexican legal framework.

The changes could pose “a major risk” to Mexican democracy and enable criminals to exploit “politically motivated and inexperienced judges,” US Ambassador Ken Salazar said last month.

Satterthwaite has also voiced “deep concerns” about the plan, calling access to an independent and impartial judiciary “a human right essential for protecting rights and checking power abuses.”

“Without strong safeguards to guard against the infiltration of organized crime (in the judicial selection process), an election system may become vulnerable to such powerful forces,” she warned.

Human Rights Watch has urged lawmakers to reject what it called the “dangerous proposals,” saying they would “seriously undermine judicial independence and contravene international human rights standards.”

Financial market analysts say investor concerns about the reforms have contributed to a sharp fall in the value of the Mexican currency, the peso, which has hit a two-year low against the dollar.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Thousands of migrants have crossed into the United States in recent days, from California to Texas, with many more still arriving by bus and cargo trains to Mexican border towns on the heels of record migration flows further south.

The dramatic increase along the border— notably in San Diego, California, and the Texan cities of El Paso and Eagle Pass— marks a turning point after numbers had plummeted in recent months, and could create fresh political challenges for U.S. President Joe Biden heading into election season.

Mr. Biden in May rolled out a new policy to deter illegal crossings, including deporting migrants and banning re-entry for five years, as his administration grappled with migration at record highs.

Within a month the tougher measures drove the border-crossing rate down some 70%.

But a recent uptick in arrivals at the border, combined with vastly higher numbers of people on their way north across Central and South America and riding dangerous cargo trains through Mexico, suggest the early deterrent effect is wearing off.

Experts say the U.S. lacks the capacity to detain and process migrants at the border, often making it impossible for the administration to carry out the harsh penalties it announced in May.

As a result, some asylum seekers who cross illegally are being released into the U.S. with a future court date, rather than being deported – becoming success stories repeated back to migrants still en route.

“The (Biden administration) hit on a smart strategy, but they don’t have the resources or capacity to implement it,” said Andrew Selee, head of the Migration Policy Institute.

In response to questions from Reuters, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was “safely and efficiently” processing migrants, and would impose consequences, including deportation, on migrants without a legal basis to stay in the country.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on September 21 derided the lack of an international plan to help countries lift their citizens out of poverty and thus avoid a key migration driver. He praised Biden for creating legal pathways for migrants but said they needed to be expanded.

“We have to do something”

In Tijuana on September 20 evening, on the other side of the border from San Diego, several dozen people prepared to spend the night sleeping on the ground at a border entry point ahead of appointments early the next day, secured through a mobile app called CBP One, to enter the U.S. and request asylum.

But not everyone wants to wait.

“My wife’s family, and other people who came to Mexico with us, say they crossed (without an appointment) and nothing happened,” said Venezuelan migrant Oscar Suarez, 27, sitting in a Tijuana plaza near the border with his pregnant wife, 2-year-old son and two brothers.

He said he preferred to try the same strategy rather than wait on CBP One to obtain an appointment. Demand for appointments far outweighs the 1,450-time slots available borderwide per day, and Mr. Suarez said he worried that his family would not survive a long wait.

“Our money ran out, and we don’t have anything to eat,” he said. “All the shelters in Tijuana are full. We have to do something.”

Enrique Lucero, Tijuana’s Director of Migrant Affairs, said migration slowed after the U.S. policy change in May, but over the last several weeks has been picking up. Officials have tallied 65 nationalities of people in the city, he said.

Hundreds of migrants who crossed without appointments have been forced to wait between two border walls.

Within the last eight days, CBP had processed more than 5,000 migrants in the San Diego area, a San Diego official said on September 21.

In Ciudad Juarez, opposite El Paso, hundreds of migrants squeezed past barbed wire to cross the Rio Grande river into the U.S., forming a line next to the border while awaiting processing by U.S. officials.

CBP has logged more than 1,000 migrant encounters daily in the El Paso area in the last several days, according to data published by the city of El Paso.

Migrants are also crossing the river at the Texas city of Eagle Pass, where officials signed an emergency declaration on Tuesday to seek funding for additional services, and railroad operator Union Pacific said it was forced to shut service to Mexico.

Groups of migrants have been as large as 1,000 or 2,000 people, including several hundred migrants who braved a hailstorm to wade through the river.

Mexican railroad operator Ferromex this week suspended service on 60 trains to discourage migrants, who perilously ride north on cargo wagons.

Long journeys

A record of about 82,000 people last month entered Panama overland from South America, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), crossing the dangerous Darien Gap jungle that has transformed in recent years from a nearly impassable barrier to a migration thoroughfare.

As many as half a million people could end up crossing by year-end, double the number of 2022, said Giuseppe Loprete, head of IOM in Panama.

Most people crossing the Darien Gap left their home countries due to lack of employment, according to a July U.N. survey.

An unprecedented number of migrants entering Mexico hail from other continents, as the trek to the U.S. southern border increasingly becomes a global migration route.

“Unfortunately, the picture is that many countries are becoming countries of expulsion,” said Giovanni Lepri, representative of the U.N. refugee agency in Mexico.

He said violence, economic distress and the growing impacts of climate change were driving mass displacement across the Americas and beyond.

The number of African migrants registered by Mexican authorities so far this year is already three times as high as during all 2022.

“It’s a structural, deeper problem. There’s an exacerbated crisis globally, in many countries. People don’t leave their countries because they want to – they do it out of need,” Lopez Obrador told reporters on September 21.