Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Mexico

36-hour limit in migration stations (Amparo en revisión 388/2022)

Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico (First Chamber) · Mexico · 2023-03-15 · National court

Citation: AR 388/2022
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

How long may migrants be held in a migration station?

What the court decided

No more than 36 hours; after that people must continue their migration procedure at liberty.

In plain language

A man was held for a long time in the migration station in Matamoros. The Supreme Court said nobody may be held in such a station for more than 36 hours.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang pria ditahan lama di stasiun migrasi Matamoros. MA menyatakan tidak seorang pun boleh ditahan di stasiun itu lebih dari 36 jam.

Pertanyaan: Berapa lama migran boleh ditahan di stasiun migrasi?

What happened afterwards

  • 2023-03-15: Judgment.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/mx-scjn-ar-388-2022/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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