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Sheinbaum appoints new Director of INM

Mexico City, Mexico – President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced a new Director will be assigned to head the INM (National Migration Institute). Sergio Salomón, the Governor of Puebla, will replace the current director of the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), Francisco Garduño.

Sheinbaum made the announcement at a Tuesday morning press conference in Mexico City.

“It is not an easy job, but precisely for that reason such a capable person will occupy this position and he will be a comprehensive approach to improving the National Migration Institute,” Sheinbaum said during her announcement.

“The person who will occupy the position of the National Institute of Migration is the current Governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón,” she said.

Salomón will replace the controversial director Francisco Garduño, who faces criminal proceedings for the death of 40 migrants who were killed in an IMN facility fire in 2023.

Sheinbaum says the changeover in position will take place in December when Salomón will take his leave from his current governor position. Until then, Sheinbaum said “until the transition time comes, Francisco Garduño will stay so as not to disrupt the work that is being done.”

“He (Salomón) will leave in December (from his mandate), the change of government, which in the case of Puebla, is at the beginning of December. He is already getting involved (in the INM),” she said Tuesday.

Sheinbaum commented that the “process continues” and that it is “nothing against” Garduño, so he will remain in charge of the INM because “the strategy” that former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) began “cannot be broken.”

Francisco Garduño will continue with his position as INM Director until early December. Photo: INM

“And in December Sergio Salomón will take over this position. There is a comprehensive strategy that President López Obrador made for the issue of migration, but there are still important pending issues at the Institute and he (Garduño) will work on this issue,” she said.

Salomón is “a very qualified man and a person with many abilities,” she added. Salomón faces the challenge of record irregular migration through Mexico, which rose 193% year-on-year in the first half of the year to more than 712,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.

“It is not an easy job, but precisely for that reason such a capable person will occupy this position and he will be a comprehensive approach to improving the National Migration Institute,” Sheinbaum said.