Mexico’s Regime in the United States

By: Alejandrina Elms and Melissa Ford

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Executive Summary

Under the Sheinbaum Administration, MORENA has continued and expanded an organized U.S. political presence, including a nationwide organization strategy, political education efforts, public political activity, and documented interaction between its “foreign relations” apparatus and Mexico’s consular network (Astorga, 2026; Cruz, 2026; Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024). These activities raise questions about institutional reciprocity given Mexico’s emphasis on sovereignty and non-intervention and its restrictions of certain foreign official activity in Mexico (Reuters, 2021; Sarukhán, 2026). MORENA itself leaves little ambiguity about the scope of this political project: its overseas organization, MORENA en el Exterior [MORENA Abroad], describes the party as “un movimiento más allá de las fronteras” [“a movement beyond borders”] (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior, 2026).

Key Points

• MORENA’s 2024–2027 overseas strategy calls for party committees, affiliation and political education, and sustained engagement with Mexican consulates and institutions serving Mexicans abroad.
• MORENA officials have repeatedly met with Mexican consular personnel or have appeared in diplomatic facilities while organizing, recruiting, and mobilizing supporters in the United States.
• There is documented overlap between Mexico’s consular network and the partisan arm for MORENA Abroad. This warrants greater transparency and scrutiny from the U.S.
• The United States should enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA ) where statutory criteria are met and impose consequences when consular personnel, facilities, or resources are used for partisan political activity.
• U.S. policy toward Mexican diplomatic and consular activity should be governed by reciprocity, with privileges and access aligned with those Mexico affords U.S. institutions.

Background

Since 2024, MORENA has formalized an abroad strategy aimed at expanding its organizational reach, influence, and contacts among Mexicans living in the United States. Its 2024-2027 plan calls for committees throughout the United States, five regional coordinating structures, affiliation and political-education efforts, and sustained engagement with Mexican consulates and the government institutions responsible for Mexicans abroad (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024).

Mexico’s legal and diplomatic framework draws a clear line between the Mexican state and partisan political activity abroad. The Ley del Servicio Exterior Mexicano defines the Mexican Service as a permanent body of public servants representing the Mexican state, not the governing party. It expressly requires those participating in Mexican diplomatic activity to observe principles including “political neutrality,” and Article 41 requires “Members of the Foreign Service to refrain from engaging in conduct of a partisan or electoral nature incompatible with the performance of their public duties, and from making statements that compromise the country’s interests” (Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión, 2018, arts. 1, 41). This is similar to that of international law. Article 55 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations requires consular personnel to respect the laws of the receiving state; imposes a duty not to interfere in its internal affairs; and provides that consular premises may not be used in a manner incompatible with consular functions (United Nations, 1963, art. 55).

Mexico emphasizes sovereignty and non-intervention while maintaining increasingly robust legal restrictions on foreign political and security activity, while MORENA and Mexican institutions operate extensively among Mexican communities in the United States. Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Mexico enacted new restrictions and reporting requirements governing foreign security agents, including the DEA. Further, Mexican officials remained subject to reporting requirements for exchanges with foreign agents (Reuters, 2021). Mexico has recently adopted an electoral measure addressing foreign “intervention or interference” in elections, which former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, argues reflects a broader expansion of sovereignty-based restrictions on foreign involvement in Mexican political affairs (Sarukhán, 2026). Against that backdrop, the extensive activity of MORENA and Mexican state institutions among Mexican communities in the United States raises a narrower question of institutional reciprocity.

A Note on Party-State Distinction

A brief note on the conflation of party and state in Mexico: this memo distinguishes between MORENA as a political party and the Mexican state as a matter of law and institutional structure. At the same time, however, the evidence examined here frequently places party and state activities in proximity to one another. MORENA itself blurs the distinction between the party’s political project and the work of governments it controls. Party materials frequently present government programs and achievements as accomplishments of the broader “Fourth Transformation,” while MORENA’s overseas organizing plan explicitly calls for engagement with Mexican consulates and government institutions responsible for Mexicans abroad (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024). The conflation of party and state cuts both ways. MORENA incorporates government programs and accomplishments into the political project of the Fourth Transformation, while the government in turn presents major state initiatives through a partisan lens, further reducing the practical distinction between the ruling party’s identity and the state’s public policy agenda. This dynamic is particularly relevant to MORENA’s strategy abroad, which explicitly places party organization alongside engagement with Mexican consulates and other government institutions serving Mexicans abroad.

The Fourth Transformation, or 4T, is the name AMLO gave to his broader political project to fundamentally reshape Mexico’s state, economy, and political system. The 4T is framed as the fourth great transformation in Mexican history, following Mexican Independence (1810-1821), the Liberal Reform associated with Benito Juárez (1855-1861), and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) (Presidencia de la República, 2024). In practice, the 4T combines populist redistribution, economic nationalism, an expanded state role in strategic sectors, stronger executive authority, social-welfare programs, and a rejection of many institutions and policies associated with Mexico’s pre-2018 political establishment (Dresser, 2019). MORENA therefore presents it not simply as a governing agenda, but as a broader historical and ideological movement intended to remake Mexican public life.

Party-state overlap has deep roots in Mexican history, as under the long rule of the PRI for most of the 20th century, during which scholars commonly described Mexico as a competitive authoritarian system in which the ruling party benefits from attribution of state resources (Levitsky & Way, 2010).

The overlapping domains of party and state can be difficult to disentangle, making any assessment of MORENA’s overseas activity delicate and arguably all the more important as party and state attempt to further fuse together. The analysis below identifies specific instances in which party officials, government officials, consular networks, or state programs intersect. This should allow the documentary record to establish the nature and extent of the relationship in each case reviewed.

Mexico Abroad

Perhaps one of the United States’ single greatest simultaneous strength and weakness is its unique openness: foreign governments, political organizations, advocacy groups, and diaspora communities can attempt to shape public debate and government policy. That openness can undoubtedly create vulnerabilities, making it difficult to distinguish between legitimate foreign advocacy and subversive attempts to influence domestic politics. Mexico presents a particularly important case because no other country has a comparable population so deeply integrated into American society while remaining politically connected to its country of origin.

Mexican political leaders have long recognized the political importance of this population. Beginning in the Salinas era (1988-94), Mexican foreign policy became increasingly oriented toward the United States, initially through economic integration and later through a broader strategy of political, consular, and public diplomacy. Carlos Salinas de Gortari used foreign policy to facilitate Mexico’s economic opening and its integration into North America through NAFTA, while Ernesto Zedillo continued the strategy of international economic promotion. Subsequent administrations adapted foreign policy to their own domestic priorities: Vicente Fox elevated migration and sought a comprehensive migration agreement with Washington; Felipe Calderón emphasized security cooperation and the fight against organized crime; and Enrique Peña Nieto used foreign policy to promote structural reforms and attract foreign investment (Schiavon, 2022). More broadly, Mexico has used foreign policy as a lever for advancing domestic priorities, even while lacking what Schiavon describes as a consistent long-term foreign-policy strategy (Covarrubias & Schiavon, 2018, as cited in Schiavon, 2022). Since the 1990s, this evolution also transformed Mexico’s relationship with the United States from that of a relatively “distant neighbor” into a much closer partner whose bilateral agenda increasingly encompassed migration, security, trade, and other areas traditionally considered domestic policy (Thies, 2010, as cited in Schiavon, 2022).

That closer relationship was accompanied by the construction of an unusually extensive Mexican consular infrastructure in the United States. Mexico maintains a network of 53 consulates in the United States (SRE, 2025), a scale that Schiavon (2022) describes as exceptional in comparative terms. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Mexico consists of the embassy in Mexico City, nine full consulates, and nine smaller consular agencies, the latter providing more limited citizen services (U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico, n.d.). By comparison, Japan maintains 17 consular posts (14 consulates general and three smaller consular offices), while Canada maintains 12 consulates general in the United States (Global Affairs Canada, 2026; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2026).

The reach of the Mexican network extends still further because its physical consulates serve as hubs rather than fixed geographic limits. Mexico operates consulados móviles and consulados sobre ruedas [mobile consulates and consulates-on-wheels] that travel into communities distant from permanent consular offices, providing passports, consular identification cards, birth registration, information on legal and labor protections, and other services; consulates also periodically operate on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays (SRE, 2015). In March 2024 alone, the SRE scheduled mobile consular operations in dozens of locations while also opening numerous permanent U.S. consulates on weekends (SRE, 2024b). Schiavon (2022) describes Mexican diplomacy in the United States as operating at multiple levels of the decentralized American political system, cultivating relationships not only with the White House and Congress but also with state and local governments, courts, corporations, universities, media organizations, labor unions, religious institutions, NGOs, and diaspora organizations. Consulates were tasked with identifying relevant local actors, systematizing information about those relationships, conducting public diplomacy, and participating in economic, educational, cultural, tourism, and image promotion (Schiavon, 2022).

The Mexican population in the United States became particularly important within this framework. Mexico expanded consular protection for its nationals, worked with U.S. civil-society organizations to contest laws viewed as harmful to migrants, and used its consular network and discreet lobbying of American lawmakers to promote immigration reform and defend the interests of Mexican citizens living abroad (Durand, 2018; 2019, as cited in Schiavon, 2022). Under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this infrastructure was reorganized and broadened. The 2019 internal regulations of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs created new structures for public, cultural, tourism, and economic diplomacy, while embassies and consulates assumed additional responsibilities for trade, investment, and tourism promotion (Schiavon & Figueroa, 2019a, as cited in Schiavon, 2022). These expanded responsibilities, however, were accompanied by reductions in the ministry’s financial and human resources (Schiavon & Figueroa, 2019a, as cited in Schiavon, 2022).

MORENA Abroad

By the time of the AMLO Administration, Mexico had already developed sophisticated mechanisms for advancing its interests within the American political system through lobbying, consular diplomacy, civil-society relationships, diaspora engagement, and local-level political networks. What changed increasingly was the form and visibility of that engagement: the established model of diplomatic and consular influence existed alongside more explicit presidential appeals to U.S. voters and, as discussed below, the development of a permanent overseas party apparatus linked to MORENA. That change was visible not only in the frequency of presidential commentary on U.S. politics, but also in the increasingly explicit use of Mexican and Hispanic communities in the United States as an audience for electoral appeals. Gee (2023) identifies this shift as a departure from the traditional pattern in which Mexican political activity in the United States focused primarily on Mexican elections and candidacies, arguing that under López Obrador the rhetoric increasingly addressed the outcomes of American elections themselves.

More than 1.3 million Mexican citizens abroad were registered to vote ahead of Mexico’s 2024 election, and more than half a million held confirmed voting credentials; approximately 97% of credentialed Mexican voters abroad lived in the United States. The Wilson Center observed that this electorate alone possessed potential political weight comparable to the population of a small Mexican state (Ballesteros, 2024). These figures concern Mexican elections, not U.S. voting eligibility, but they illustrate the extraordinary concentration of Mexico’s politically connected diaspora inside the United States. Many members of that population also live permanently in American communities, and some are dual citizens capable of participating politically in both countries. MORENA’s overseas work plan separately makes this population an explicit target of party organization, affiliation, and political formation abroad (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024).

Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador repeatedly addressed voters in the United States about American electoral choices. In July 2022, he urged Mexican-Americans not to support Republicans over Texas border policy (Reuters, 2022). In March 2023, after Republican lawmakers proposed authorizing U.S. military force against Mexican drug cartels, López Obrador said his government would launch an information campaign directed at Mexicans and Hispanics in the United States and call on them not to support the Republican Party if the proposals continued (Gee, 2023; O’Boyle, 2023). In May 2023, he urged Latino voters in Florida not to support Governor Ron DeSantis after DeSantis entered the Republican presidential primary (Reuters, 2023a). In July 2023, he urged Mexican-American voters not to support Texas Governor Greg Abbott over border policy (Reuters, 2023b). The pattern extended beyond López Obrador personally: in May 2023, then-Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard traveled to Florida, criticized DeSantis’s immigration policies, and said that although he could not intervene in the U.S. internal process, he intended to speak directly with U.S. citizens (Gee, 2023). These episodes show senior Mexican officials directly addressing electorally relevant constituencies inside the United States over American political disputes.

Mexico’s broader diaspora policy has expanded at the same time. A 2021 constitutional reform removed the previous generational limitation on transmission of Mexican citizenship abroad, allowing descendants born outside Mexico to receive Mexican citizenship even when their Mexican parent was also born outside the country. The Foreign Ministry subsequently instructed embassies and consulates to publicize and implement the expanded right (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021). Mexico has also expanded overseas electoral participation: in the 2024 presidential election, 184,326 citizens voted from abroad, including 122,497 electronically, 39,586 by mail, and 22,243 in person at 23 consular locations, 20 of them in the United States (Humphrey, 2024). These reforms make possible an increasingly durable political relationship between Mexico and later generations of a diaspora concentrated overwhelmingly in the United States.

Building a Permanent MORENA Constituency Abroad

It is evident that AMLO viewed the Mexican diaspora inside the U.S. as a politically relevant constituency. Mexican political parties have long recognized the importance of citizens abroad, but MORENA has gone further by creating a permanent overseas party apparatus. MORENA’s statutes assign its Secretariat for Mexicans Abroad responsibility for establishing ties with Mexicans abroad and promoting the party’s growth among compatriots outside Mexican territory (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, n.d.-b).

The practical consequences are visible in the United States. MORENA related mobilization in the United States has extended beyond formal party meetings into political education, electoral participation, demonstrations, immigrant-rights activism, and coalition building (Del Cid Lugo, 2024; Galindo Sarmiento, 2025; López Cruz, 2025; Morales, 2025). In Los Angeles, LA Public Press documented the activities of Morena Placita Olvera, a volunteer group whose members conducted political-education events, displayed MORENA flags and campaign material, and held a pre-election informational event highlighting the MORENA presidential candidate. One organizer emphasized outreach to younger Mexican-Americans, explaining, “We focus a lot on the youth, we encourage all of them to get their dual citizenship” (Del Cid Lugo, 2024). Their bid seems to be paying off considering the scale of diaspora electoral participation was clearly visible in Houston during Mexico’s 2024 presidential election, where a voting line outside the Mexican consulate extended nearly two miles. Several voters interviewed by Houston Landing expressed support for Claudia Sheinbaum specifically in terms of continuing Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s political program and social policies (Brigida, 2024). Importantly, MORENA-aligned political activity in the United States extends beyond participation in Mexican presidential elections. In February 2025, MORENA’s overseas website published an article praising U.S.-born Mexican and Latino teenagers who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, describing younger generations as protagonists in defending their families and communities (Galindo Sarmiento, 2025). The publication demonstrates MORENA’s willingness to amplify U.S.-based activism. A different episode occurred in May 2025, when videos posted by an account identifying itself as Morena New York Comité 1 were recorded aboard the Mexican Navy’s Buque Escuela Cuauhtémoc during its visit to New York. The videos encouraged participation in Mexico’s judicial election and promoted particular candidates, including Lenia Batres and César Mario Gutiérrez Priego (López Cruz, 2025). The evidence does not establish party or Navy authorization but nevertheless illustrates how self-identified MORENA supporters in the United States have used social media and highly visible Mexican institutional settings for political messaging.

MORENA has also developed increasingly explicit relationships with sympathetic U.S. political organizations. In 2023, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) International Committee publicly declared solidarity with “the working class of Mexico, the MORENA Party, and AMLO” and his “fourth transformation” (Democratic Socialists of America International Committee, 2023). By 2025, the DSA International Committee’s Mexico Working Group described a nationwide effort to connect MORENA members of Mexico’s Congress with Mexican communities in the United States. Its activities included meetings in California and North Carolina, planned outreach in other states, and directed political exchanges between DSA and MORENA officeholders. The author also expressed a desire for ties between the organizations to deepen (Morales, 2025). Although the scale and immediate impact of these organizing efforts appear limited, they document sustained attempts by MORENA, sympathetic organizations, and self-identified supporters to build political networks among Mexican communities in the United States.

MORENA’s relationship to political activity in the United States is not uniform. Some demonstrations have been organized or mobilized by self-identified MORENA groups, while others were independent protests that the party later praised or amplified. The February 2024 protest outside The New York Times aligns more closely with the first category. About 200 López Obrador supporters protested after the newspaper published allegations involving people close to AMLO and organized crime. Participants told Expansión Política that they had been called to attend through social media by the Morena Committee in New York City, although they said they participated voluntarily (Navarrete, 2024). By contrast, the February 2025 Brooklyn Bridge march by U.S.-born Mexican and Latino teenagers against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies appears to have been independent of MORENA, though, as mentioned above, the party was quick to endorse the demonstration (Galindo Sarmiento, 2025). These examples suggest that MORENA-affiliated groups sometimes mobilize supporters directly, while the party also selectively endorses and amplifies independent activism that fits its political message. The immediate effect of any one demonstration may be limited and uneven, but taken together, these episodes point to a broader pattern of political engagement among Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States through direct mobilization, supporter networks, political education, and selective endorsement.

There are many areas of potential agreement between the Socialist Left in the United States and the MORENA party, including support for unfettered migration cloaked as a humanitarian, “refugee” issue; general ideological opposition to the economic and political system of the United States; a paranoid contempt for the history of the U.S. and its historic involvement in fighting communism in Latin America; and, more fundamentally, a Global South, “Third-Worldist” alignment against what they envision as the “imperialist,” “capitalist” West, of which the U.S is the reigning hegemon.

Partisan Use of Mexico’s Consular Network

The political significance of Mexico’s consular network is particularly visible in Los Angeles, which Consul General Carlos González Gutiérrez has described as the “political capital of the Mexican diaspora” (Cadava, 2025). In a July 2025 profile, The New Yorker documented the extent to which the consulate engages in the civic life of the region’s Mexican population. González Gutiérrez described a decades-long effort by the Mexican government to maintain institutional ties with Mexicans in the United States through community-affairs programs, overseas voting, migrant-development initiatives, legal assistance, and direct communication with Mexican nationals. His account reflects a broader premise underlying Mexican diaspora policy: migration does not sever an individual’s relationship with the Mexican state or remove that person from the national community (Cadava, 2025).

That conception became especially visible during the 2025 immigration-enforcement confrontations in Los Angeles. González Gutiérrez used social media to communicate directly with Mexican residents, offered guidance on encounters with immigration authorities, encouraged peaceful protest, and urged detained Mexican nationals to maintain contact with the consulate. During a federal operation in MacArthur Park, directly across from the consular building, he invited people outside to enter the consulate for protection. He also observed that U.S.-born children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants increasingly took leading roles in opposition to immigration raids while displaying Mexican flags as markers of family and national heritage (Cadava, 2025). The episode illustrates a conception of consular responsibility that extends beyond administrative services toward the active protection and civic engagement of a transnational Mexican community.

González Gutiérrez nevertheless framed his conduct in terms of reciprocity, stating that he “can only do here what he would want an American diplomat to do in Mexico” (Cadava, 2025). The comparison is imperfect. Following the Cienfuegos affair in 2020, Mexico amended its National Security Law to impose extensive reporting and oversight requirements on designated foreign law-enforcement and intelligence agents, reflecting the López Obrador government’s broader emphasis on sovereignty and Mexican control over foreign official activity (Cámara de Diputados, 2020; Felbab-Brown, 2020). The law does not govern ordinary diplomatic or consular outreach and does not establish that Mexico prohibits equivalent U.S. activity. It does, however, illustrate the sensitivity with which Mexico approaches foreign governmental activity on its own territory.

The more important point is institutional. Mexico maintains an expansive conception of its responsibilities toward nationals abroad and has built a substantial consular infrastructure to sustain those relationships (Cadava, 2025; SRE, 2025). This matters for the analysis that follows because MORENA’s overseas political strategy does not operate in an institutional vacuum. It operates alongside a preexisting state network already deeply embedded within Mexican communities in the United States.

Consular Contacts

Latinus investigative reporting from May 2026 by Julio Astorga raises concerns that boundaries between Mexico’s consular network in the United States and the organizational infrastructure of the governing party, MORENA, are becoming increasingly blurred. The investigation focuses on Alejandro Robles Gómez (MORENA’s Secretary for Mexicans Abroad) and documents a pattern of meetings between Robles and Mexican consular officials alongside his broader efforts to organize, recruit, and mobilize MORENA supporters among the Mexican diaspora in the United States. Latinus characterizes this pattern as the use of Mexican consulates as de facto branches of MORENA abroad (Astorga, 2026).

Robles met with at least six Mexican consular officials in the United States: Carlos González Gutiérrez in Los Angeles, Christian Tonatiuh González in Sacramento, Patricia Cortés in Las Vegas, Joaquín Pastrana in New York, María Elena Orantes in Houston, and Humberto Hernández in Austin. Robles publicly praised González Gutiérrez of the Los Angeles Consulate for having the “chip of the fourth transformation” [“el chip de la Cuarta Transformación”] (Astorga, 2026). This is compounded with his meeting of migrant activists, MORENA events, and efforts to expand party affiliation abroad. These interactions are also relevant in light of Robles’s previously stated view of the institutional role consulates should play within Mexican communities in the United States. In a 2023 interview with Mexico Solidarity Media, he argued that “the consulates need to be transformed into defenders of migrants” and proposed allowing local Mexican communities to elect consuls from a slate of presidential nominees and increasing the employment of locally based personnel (Mexico Solidarity, 2023). Latinus further alleges that party-organization activities occurred in consular facilities themselves (Astorga, 2026).

Excélsior provides further corroboration of the Los Angeles episode. In November 2025, the newspaper reported that Robles met at the Mexican consulate with Consul General Carlos González Gutiérrez in connection with an overseas public hearing on Mexico’s proposed electoral reform (Escandón, 2025). Robles participated as a serving MORENA official, and the reporting situated his activities within the political project of the Fourth Transformation. MORENA’s organization for Mexicans Abroad also confirms that Robles’s activities in the United States form part of a broader party-building effort. Its overseas site publicizes affiliation initiatives and, by August 2026, it announced the distribution of party membership credentials to members living abroad (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, 2026b). Robles stated that the hearings abroad were conducted at the direction of President Claudia Sheinbaum and said that MORENA would support a reform significantly expanding voting from abroad (Domínguez, 2025). His proposals included allowing Mexicans abroad to vote using a passport, consular identification card [matrícula consular], or voter ID card; expanding in-person voting options; and using consular infrastructure to facilitate voting.

The pattern extends far beyond Los Angeles. On April 14, 2026, Robles met with Consul General Christian Tonatiuh González at the Sacramento consulate and recorded a video from the consular premises in which he criticized the Trump Administration’s immigration policies as “despiadadas” [“ruthless”] (Cruz, 2026). This begs the question of the extent to which the official consular personnel, buildings, communications channels, or other public assets are being incorporated into the party apparatus. Cruz further documents separate events in Stockton and Napa where MORENA formally installed party committees. El Universal also noted earlier political activity by Robles among Mexican communities in Houston and New York (Cruz, 2026).

Other documented interactions extend beyond individual consuls. In March 2025, Robles met with Tatiana Clouthier, then head of the Institute for Mexicans Abroad [Instituto de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior] (IMME), an institution within the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs [Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores] (SRE). This office held by Clouthier is the official state equivalent of the party secretariat position held by Robles. MORENA’s overseas organization described the meeting as intended to strengthen the participation of Mexicans abroad and later publicized Clouthier’s participation in a virtual North America session as an opportunity to strengthen the organization’s relationship with migrant communities (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, 2025a). This is just another well-established point of contact between MORENA’s formal overseas political apparatus and the state institutions responsible for engagement with the same population.

From Contact to Organizational Infrastructure

MORENA’s own activities make clear that the political organization occurring alongside these governmental contacts is more than merely ceremonial. In February 2026, for example, the party reported that Robles met with the Mexican community in Nevada to discuss electoral reform, overseas party affiliation, and political formation (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, 2026a). MORENA’s overseas registration system subsequently invited Mexicans abroad either to register an existing party affiliation or declare an intention to affiliate, while allowing participants to recruit additional registrants and progress through leadership categories based on the number of people they brought into the network (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, n.d.).¹ By August 2026, the organization publicly announced that Robles had begun distributing party membership credentials to militants abroad (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, 2026b). These activities demonstrate organized overseas membership and leadership structure.

Both the SRE and Sheinbaum have denied reports that Mexican consulates were promoting or participating (directly or indirectly) in protests, political mobilization, or efforts to influence U.S. domestic political processes. The ministry emphasized that consular activities are governed by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and Mexico’s principle of non-intervention (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2026). After renewed reporting in May 2026, President Claudia Sheinbaum similarly stated that allegations that Mexican consulates were “doing politics” in the United States were “completely false” (Presidencia de la República, 2026a). She emphasized that consulates are responsible for diplomatic relations, consular services, legal assistance, and protection of Mexican nationals and stated that they had instructions not to intervene in U.S. politics. One week later, Sheinbaum reiterated that consulates should engage in politics neither in the United States nor on behalf of Mexican politics, although she distinguished that prohibition from communicating the accomplishments of the Mexican government (Presidencia de la República, 2026b).

The record should sufficiently establish that MORENA has constructed a formal overseas political organization; that organization expressly seeks continuing relationships with Mexican state institutions; and its senior overseas official has repeatedly interacted with consular personnel and used or appeared in official diplomatic facilities while carrying out a broader program of party organization in the United States (Astorga, 2026; Cruz, 2026; Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024). The significance of those contacts is made clear by MORENA’s own formal overseas strategy; its Plan de Trabajo 2024–2027 identifies the creation of MORENA committees among Mexicans abroad, greater connection between the party and the diaspora, promotion of the accomplishments of Fourth Transformation governments, and the construction of a permanent overseas party organization as explicit objectives. The plan calls for sustained engagement with the Mexican government’s overseas infrastructure, including permanent contact with more than 50 Mexican consulates and meetings and alliances with Mexican consuls (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024). MORENA’s contacts between its overseas secretariat and Mexican diplomatic institutions form part of an articulated and deliberate strategy of party construction abroad.² Concerns have also been raised from within Mexico’s diplomatic establishment. Martha Bárcena Coqui, a career diplomat and former Mexican ambassador to the United States under President López Obrador, warned in May 2026 against the growing “partidización” [partisan politicization] of Mexican communities abroad and criticized proposals in MORENA’s 2024–2027 overseas work plan to establish party committees throughout the United States and a permanent overseas assembly. Bárcena argued that Mexico’s consular network should remain an institutional instrument serving the Mexican community as a whole, without partisan bias, warning that its effectiveness could be placed at risk if consular functions became associated with MORENA’s political organization (Bárcena Coqui, 2026).

Mexico’s Consular and Legal Infrastructure

Mexico maintains an extensive government infrastructure in the United States through its 53 consulates, which operate under the direction of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) [Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores]. Beyond traditional consular services, this network coordinates legal assistance, community outreach, partnerships with American organizations, and litigation intended to protect Mexican nationals. In February 2025, SRE convened all 53 consulates around a common protection strategy emphasizing legal defense, strategic partnerships, and engagement with Mexican communities (SRE, 2025).

One important component is the Mexican Civil Rights Advisory Group (MCRAG), which SRE describes as an institutional mechanism connecting Mexican consuls with U.S. civil-rights organizations and legal experts. MCRAG has supported cooperation on high-impact litigation and other legal strategies (SRE, 2019). Mexico’s Programa de Asistencia Jurídica a Personas Mexicanas a través de Asesorías Legales Externas (PALE) [Mexico’s Program for Legal Assistance to Mexicans through External Legal Counsel] similarly allows consulates to contract with American attorneys, law firms, and nonprofit organizations to provide legal representation to Mexican nationals (Consulado General de México en Houston, 2025).

These networks have been used to respond directly to U.S. government policy. Following Texas’s adoption of Senate Bill (SB) 4 in 2023, which created state criminal offenses for unlawful entry and reentry from a foreign nation and authorized Texas judges in certain circumstances to order individuals to return to the country from which they entered, SRE directed its 11 consular representations in Texas to coordinate with government officials, legislators, civil-rights organizations, MCRAG, PALE attorneys, and Mexican communities while pursuing public-information campaigns and exploring strategic litigation (Federal Preemption and Texas S.B. 4, 2026; SRE, 2023). Mexico subsequently filed an “amicus curiae” brief challenging the effects of SB 4, an action SRE described as part of its strategy for protecting Mexican nationals (SRE, 2024c).

SRE’s own transparency records provide additional insight into this activity. Resolution CTA-469/2024 confirmed that MCRAG materials included exchanges between Mexican officials and private U.S. attorneys concerning American immigration law, government actions, pending judicial proceedings, and litigation strategy. SRE reserved portions of those records for five years, arguing that disclosure could compromise ongoing or future litigation and Mexico’s foreign-policy strategy toward the United States (SRE, 2024a).

None of this establishes that MCRAG, PALE, or their partner organizations operate on behalf of MORENA. It does, however, establish the scale and capabilities of the governmental network with which MORENA’s overseas organization has sought sustained engagement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024).

Conclusion

The record examined in this memo establishes that MORENA is attempting to construct a permanent political organization in the United States; that its strategy expressly contemplates sustained engagement with Mexico’s consular network; and that the party official responsible for that organization has repeatedly met with consular personnel and appeared in diplomatic facilities while conducting political and organizational activities in the United States. The issue is not that Mexico engages its citizens abroad; governments routinely do so. Rather, the concern is the growing overlap between the Mexican government’s official consular channels and MORENA’s partisan organization abroad, which complicates the institutional distinction between diplomatic functions and partisan political activity. Transparency is warranted and essential to U.S. security when dealing with a foreign political party deliberately organizing in one’s territory while also seeking or maintaining relationships with the actual state institutions that possess personnel, facilities, funding, legal networks, and extraordinary access to diaspora communities. Given the previous Mexican president’s demonstrated willingness to appeal directly to voters inside the U.S., the overlap warrants scrutiny when evaluating the political role of Mexico’s consular network. U.S. policy makers and diplomats must call on MORENA to moderate its political meddling in the United States and call on Mexico to stop MORENA’s abuse of neutral institutions for partisan gain if they wish to maintain diplomatic relations within the United States and further abroad.

Policy Recommendations

• The United States should also adopt a policy of aggressive Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) enforcement for MORENA’s political organization and representatives operating in the United States. Enacted in 1938, FARA is a disclosure statute that requires certain persons acting in the United States on behalf of a foreign principal to register with the Department of Justice and publicly disclose their relationship with that principal, along with covered activities, receipts, and disbursements (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.). MORENA is a foreign political party and therefore falls squarely within FARA’s definition of a “foreign principal.” The purpose of FARA is precisely to ensure transparency when persons operating in the United States undertake political or representational activities on behalf of foreign principals. Department of Justice guidance identifies political activities, political consulting, representation before U.S. officials, and the solicitation or disbursement of money or other things of value on behalf of a foreign principal among the activities that can trigger registration obligations (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.). Accordingly, the Department of Justice should more aggressively investigate and enforce FARA with respect to individuals and organizations directing, coordinating, representing, or carrying out MORENA-linked political activities in the United States, and require registration and disclosure wherever an agency relationship, covered activity, and absence of an applicable exemption can be established.
• This requirement should form part of a broader policy of zero tolerance for foreign electoral and political interference. A foreign governing party should not be permitted to develop a sustained partisan infrastructure inside the United States while operating without the transparency demanded of agents acting on behalf of foreign political interests. Where MORENA seeks to organize, mobilize, advocate, or otherwise conduct partisan political activity in the United States, mandatory FARA registration should be the minimum transparency requirement.
• The United States should likewise adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward the partisan use of consular institutions. Where Mexican consular personnel, facilities, resources, programs, or institutional relationships are used to facilitate partisan political activity, the United States should impose meaningful diplomatic consequences. Those consequences could include a substantial reduction in Mexico’s consular footprint where necessary to prevent continued abuse and to restore the institutional separation between legitimate consular functions and partisan political organization.
• U.S. policy should further be governed by the principle of full reciprocity. Mexico should receive no greater diplomatic, consular, political, or institutional access in the United States than they afford to the United States in Mexico. Congress and the executive branch should undertake a comprehensive reciprocity review of consular posts, personnel, privileges, access, operating conditions, institutional partnerships, and other diplomatic advantages extended to Mexico. Where treatment is materially unequal, the United States should respond in kind and bring Mexican privileges and access into reciprocal alignment.
• The United States should not tolerate the use of diplomatic institutions as instruments of foreign-party organization, undisclosed foreign political activity, or interference in American political affairs. MORENA’s sustained political organization in the United States should therefore trigger more aggressive FARA scrutiny and enforcement, including investigation of whether individuals or organizations acting on the party’s behalf meet the statutory requirements for registration and disclosure; misuse of Mexican consular institutions for partisan purposes should carry concrete diplomatic consequences; and the bilateral relationship should operate on the basis of full reciprocity. The objective is not to prohibit legitimate diplomatic engagement with Mexican nationals abroad, but to enforce a firm boundary between that legitimate function and partisan political activity conducted by, for, or in coordination with a foreign governing party

Footnotes

1 – MORENA’s “leadership network” assigns participants levels based on recruits generated through a personal invitation code: base coordinator at 10 registrants, regional coordinator at 50, and international coordinator at 100 (Secretaría de Mexicanas y Mexicanos en el Exterior de Morena, n.d.).

2 – It is both notable and telling that MORENA’s Plan de Trabajo 2024–2027 is no longer available at its original URL. The document remains accessible through an Internet Archive capture dated May 15, 2026, preserving the party’s stated overseas objectives even though the original online copy is no longer publicly accessible.

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