What goes on inside Mexican prisons spills over the walls. This is not only due to its impact on the country’s security, but also on relations with the United States. In the last year, Mexico has transferred 92 prisoners to the U.S., where they are also wanted by the justice system for organized crime offenses. Mexico has justified this move as a sovereign decision that “benefits national security,” given the evidence that they continued to operate for criminal groups from behind bars. Federal Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch has emphasized that these prisoners — transferred within a vague and controversial legal framework — were directing criminal activity from their cells and extorting Mexican citizens through phone calls. “Unfortunately, within prisons, they often form alliances with other groups, and in various locations where they are incarcerated, they have the opportunity to continue committing crimes. This is for the benefit of our country,” he argued to the press, hinting at the persistent problems of lack of control within the national prison system.

Having become command centers and call centers for the cartels, as denounced by experts and civil organizations and acknowledged by authorities, prisons have been a weak point in the security policy inherited from one presidential term to the next. However, this is the first time the Mexican government has extradited nearly 100 prisoners, in three separate transfers over the course of a year, with the official justification that the leaders of criminal organizations operate behind bars and continue to intimidate their victims. The latest transfer of crime bosses included high-profile figures who were incarcerated in federal prisons, such as Juan Pedro Saldívar Farías, alias “Z-27,” and Daniel Manera Macías, alias “Danny,” both members of Los Zetas, held at CEFERESO 4 Northwest in Tepic, Nayarit. Others, such as Armando Gómez Núñez, better known as “Delta-1,” or Pedro Inzunza Noriega, alias* *“Sagitario,” were in Altiplano, a maximum-security prison.

That didn’t stop them from continuing to work for criminal networks. “These high-profile criminals, even while incarcerated, continued to direct illicit activities through visits, which cannot be prohibited out of respect for their human rights,” acknowledged Harfuch, the security czar of Claudia Sheinbaum’s government. They took advantage of these contacts with the outside world “to maintain criminal operations, threaten officials, and extend networks of corruption and intimidation.” Jorge Luis Gutiérrez, director of the organization Así Legal, explains that for criminals to maintain their influence from prison, under the state’s care, access to the outside world is necessary, whether through phone calls or visits. “It has to do with the state’s lack of capacity to control this entire population and all the problems,” Gutiérrez points out, highlighting “the lack of personnel” in prisons. According to the diagnosis of the National Human Rights Commission on prison supervision, 77% of prisons lack sufficient staff and many of the officials — more than 44% — have not even received specific training for that task.

Another factor hindering the state’s ability to exert greater control within prisons is overcrowding. Of the 276 penitentiary centers in the country, over half — 142 — house more inmates than their capacity allows. This surplus is excessive in some cases, such as the Chalco Penitentiary and Social Reintegration Center in the State of Mexico. With an official capacity of 591, as of December 2025 it housed 3,128 inmates — five times more than it should have — according to the latest Monthly Report on Penitentiary Statistics. This level of overcrowding in the system creates fertile ground for self-governance within prisons, where 60% of inmates, in national figures, are already serving sentences compared to 40% who are awaiting trial. The chaos masks any crimes that may be committed within its walls.

Months ago, the Secretariat of Security reported that 56% of all phone lines used for extortion originated from 12 prisons, without specifying which ones. A third of these lines were blocked by removing the cell tower in Altamira, Tamaulipas, replacing the one in Matamoros, and blocking 3G and 4G services at the Santa Martha Acatitla Women’s Social Reintegration Center in Mexico City. Even so, extortion, a crime identified as high-impact by authorities, continues unabated in Mexico, despite the well-known role prisons play in generating chain calls until a victim is deceived and pays out of fear. Víctor Hernández, professor and director of the Latin American Institute for Strategic Studies and former security advisor in the Enrique Peña Nieto administration, asserts that mechanisms exist within prisons to prevent this, but points to neglect and corruption as obstacles preventing them from fulfilling their function. “There’s a lack of funding. We have a lot of pressure on the system, with no cameras or cameras that don’t work,” he points out. He adds that in centers where there are signal jammers to prevent extortion calls, “the guards themselves turn them off.”

Both experts criticize the fact that prisons, far from serving as centers for social reintegration, end up becoming ecosystems of small-scale crime that draw everyone into the dynamics of the most powerful. In many cases, they explain, due to insufficient prison staff, administrative tasks are delegated to inmates, who then end up charging their fellow prisoners, forcing them to find ways to pay, also through extortion. Alberto Guerrero Baena, a consultant specializing in security policy, warns that delegating certain tasks to guards leads to them controlling access to resources or services within prisons, and this fosters everything from sex trafficking rings to illegal charges for family visits. “You might encounter issues of prostitution, drug use — which is the most common — and inmate governance regarding essential services like water, soap, or toilet paper. You have to navigate a monopoly held by someone who controls all these things, including phone calls,” he explains.

Both Hernández and Guerrero suggest implementing a counterintelligence program within prisons to ensure that the efforts of the Security Cabinet, which have led to more than 37,000 arrests in Sheinbaum’s first year in office, are not lost. This counterintelligence system should not only monitor and punish corrupt prison officials but also analyze the gangs that coexist within the prison system to prevent them from forming alliances while incarcerated. The recent sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department on José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, alias “El Marro,” leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, have once again highlighted these deficiencies in the prison system. Although he was arrested in 2020, U.S. authorities accuse him of remaining an active member of the cartel from the federal prison in Durango, from where he sent instructions and orders to his associates through his lawyers and family members.

Armando Vargas, coordinator of the security program at México Evalúa, also agrees that the security strategy of Harfuch and Sheinbaum — which has resulted in numerous operations with arrests, seizures, and the dismantling of criminal cells by capturing their leaders — will not yield the expected results if the issue of prisons is not addressed. “As long as this is not on the agenda, we will not have policies that reverse this crisis. I insist, reforming the prisons involves not only harsher sentences or cutting off communication systems, but also a comprehensive institutional strengthening of the penitentiary system,” he points out.

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