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Noor Mohammad Amiri speaks Spanish as a second language. He formally studied the language for a year at a school in Puebla, Mexico, but his abilities really took off once he began working at a taqueria. His phone, however, is still set to Farsi, with long lines of text running right to left. 

Amiri first arrived in Mexico from Afghanistan in early 2023, with more than 400 other Afghans. At the time, Mexican officials said that most were passing through on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. This was under former President Joe Biden, when migrants could schedule asylum appointments at the border via a smartphone app called CBP One, the first step in a process that could ultimately allow them to be paroled into the United States.

In January 2025, at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration declared a national emergency at the southern border, sharply restricting access to asylum and canceling all scheduled CBP One appointments for migrants, some of whom had been waiting for months.

The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda has had major global impacts, including in Mexico, where migrants from all over the world are going to build their lives now that living in the U.S. seems out of the realm of possibility. Amiri is part of a very small minority of Afghans in the country who are finding a way to move forward and integrate into Mexican society. Based on religion alone, as of 2020, fewer than 8,000 people identified as Muslim in Mexico, or 0.01% of the population. Meanwhile, 99.7% of Afghanistan is Muslim.

But Amiri is different from many other Afghans who are effectively stranded in Mexico right now: He never submitted a CPB One application. In fact, it was never his goal to go to the U.S. 

There are no official figures for how many Afghans reside in Mexico. The Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) announced that 1,682 Afghans requested asylum between January and October 2023, though it’s unclear how many may have crossed into the U.S. since then.

To Amiri, a thin man with dark eyebrows, pin-straight hair, and a boyish smile, Afghanistan is never far away. He may be in Mexico in one of the largest cities in the country, but the sheer luck of what exactly brought him here is never far from his mind.

An escape  

It’s Sept. 1, 2025, Amiri spoke to Prism in his small studio apartment. It has a kitchen with a hot plate, a bathroom, and a single room. It costs about $200 a month, and it is very far removed from his previous life. 

Amiri is originally from a village called Kajak in the Daykundi province of Afghanistan. He is part of the Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan, distantly related to the Mongols who traveled through the region in the 13th century.

The Hazara have faced persecution for centuries. In the late 1800s, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan came to power and initiated what many historians and advocates describe as a genocide against the Hazara that included forced displacement and enslavement, with women and children bought and sold in Kabul until at least 1919. 

Humaira Ghilzai, an Afghan cultural consultant based in San Francisco, told Prism that until her family fled Kabul during the Russian invasion in the late 1970s, the Hazara were still relegated to roles as domestic workers, but things changed in profoundly positive ways in the decades since. 

“In the past 43 years, Hazaras have thrived a lot as a community,” Ghilzai said. “[They] really believe in education for both men and women.”

Ghilzai said that as more Hazara pursued higher education, they transitioned into jobs in industries such as journalism, TV production, and politics. All of the Hazara she’s met in Afghanistan and in the U.S. are impressive people, she said, and they often work to educate others on the legacy of the genocide waged against them. 

However, since American troops evacuated Kabul in 2021 and the Taliban took over, there have been numerous bombings, shootings, and attacks at mosques targeting the Hazara. 

When Amiri was a child in the late 1990s and early 2000s, 12 families lived in Kajak, working as subsistence farmers growing almonds and grapes. There were 20 kids in the village, and they walked two hours each way to school at the closest mosque, even in 100-degree weather. 

In 2016, Amiri finished his final classes. He was 19. It was winter. He looked out at Kajak, and it occurred to him that this was going to be his life if he didn’t leave. He would be a farmer toiling in the fields, which was what school helped him escape as a child. He packed a bag and caught a ride on a motorcycle to a neighboring town. He lied to his mother, telling her he was going to a nearby village. He actually headed for the capital. He caught rides with strangers to travel over 24 hours to Kabul. 

“I was going to escape the town,” he explained, leaning over his small dining room table in Mexico.

He didn’t return to Kajak for two years. 

“There isn’t enough support”

Amiri’s new restaurant, Kebab, is located in Plaza Mexico, a typical, new shopping center common in Puebla, with gray laminate floors and thick white walls. The restaurant is in Cholula, a college town just outside of the city. Plaza Mexico is sleepy during the day, with numerous new storefronts for rent. There’s a Pilates studio, a hair salon, and a cafe with board games. 

Kebab is on the second floor. It’s small, with just four tables and a wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room. By last fall, Amiri had already paid rent on the space for two months while he procured and set up kitchen equipment. On a visit to his restaurant, he pointed out different pieces of equipment—a freezer, refrigerator, chairs, tables—and explained how much each cost. He designed the steel ventilation contraption over the grill himself, he explained. 

Amiri’s goal was to open the restaurant in just a few weeks. The rent is about $475 per month, and it cost him about $2,000 to buy all of the kitchen equipment. He had to make it work. He put in his two-week notice at the taqueria, where he worked full-time for about $480 a month. He had some savings when he decided to open the restaurant, but it’s all gone now. A local Afghan partner is sharing restaurant costs with him. The two split everything 50-50, Amiri said. He was excited, eyes all over the place. There was so much to do, and he didn’t even have a menu yet. 

“Sometimes I’m very positive, and I’m thinking: OK, we’re going to open the restaurant, we’re going to develop it, we’re going to gain customers,” he said. “I’m also nervous about the future of the business, but overall, I’m not a very negative person.” 

Before coming to Mexico, Amiri lived in Kabul from 2016 to 2021, four years of which were spent studying law at Kateb University. After Kabul fell in 2021, Amiri returned to Kajak and then fled Taliban rule by escaping to Iran in the summer of 2022. 

In March and April of that year, Amiri heard from a friend from Kabul who went to Pakistan after the Taliban takeover and was connected to two international programs that helped them relocate from Pakistan to Puebla. The friend reached out to Amiri to see if he might be interested in going to Mexico. Amiri was very interested. Before long, Amiri was enrolled in an educational program that allowed him to enter Mexico on a student visa to study Spanish. He moved from Iran to Puebla, where the groups supported him with an apartment, language classes, and pocket money for one year. 

Nohemí Rivera Corzas, one of Amiri’s Spanish teachers, said he immediately stuck out to her. The majority of Corzas’ students are Americans learning Spanish in order to move to Latin America and become missionaries. In general, few students outside of the Anglosphere or religious sectors cross her path.

In a courtyard in downtown Puebla, Rivera Corzas explained that the first time she heard of Amiri, it was because he was among a few Afghans at the school who didn’t speak any English. She said that was novel—and also made teaching Spanish much more difficult. But by the time Amiri rotated into her classroom, his Spanish was functional, and Rivera Corzas noticed something curious about him.

“I noted very quickly his sense of humor. It’s very specific,” she said, explaining that Amiri’s jokes surprised her, given the stereotypes she held about Muslims. “These jokes and thoughts about meat, pork, matrimony. I thought it wasn’t possible, and it was.” 

His sense of humor was the key that unlocked their friendship. Rivera Corzas is still friends with many of her former students, but the relationship with Amiri grew to be different. It was intimate, but never romantic. They developed a mutual trust, she said, which led them to ask each other burning, somewhat insensitive questions. She asked about the stereotype that Afghanistan is full of extremists and that children are forced into marriage. In turn, Amiri asked Rivera Corzas about Mexico’s stagnation. There was such cultural richness in Mexico, he observed, and women had so many more freedoms in Mexico than Afghanistan, yet Mexico’s overall development was not on pace with its wealth. She understood where he was coming from. His reflection was something Mexicans often wonder themselves, she said. 

Part of the equation is income inequality. In 2025, Mexico ranked as one of the top 10 most unequal countries, and Latin America and the Caribbean are the most unequal regions in the world. Mexico is an upper-middle income country with an average yearly income of $12,800 per person, but that’s a far cry from what the typical worker earns. 

In 2025 the minimum wage rose to about $467 per month, or $5,600 per year, with the exemption of the northern border zone, which has higher wages. About 4 in 10 workers earn the minimum wage, and about 30% of the national population lives in poverty, though rates shift dramatically depending on the state. For example, in Chiapas, a southern state known for its Indigenous communities, two out of every three people live in poverty. Meanwhile, the same is only true for one out of every 10 people in Baja California, which borders San Diego. Where Amiri lives in Puebla, over 40% live in poverty. 

According to Rivera Corzas, corruption is what stands in the way of more robust development. People who have had power for generations do not want to let go of it, she said. These themes of corruption and inequality fueled the rise of Morena, a left-wing populist political party founded in 2014. 

In 2018, Morena leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, was elected president with over half of the popular vote, and Morena remains popular. In 2024, AMLO’s handpicked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, was elected president. Sheinbaum, in many ways, has carried on AMLO’s legacy, including the numerous reforms he instituted to curb income inequality, such as pensions for the elderly. 

But from 2018 to 2024, 400,000 more Mexicans were living in extreme poverty than in the beginning of AMLO’s term, even though alleviating poverty is central to the Morena platform. And while pensions for the elderly are currently reaching 14.4 million adults, the pensions are not income-based, and Mexico’s poorest are receiving less public funding now that all applicable federal dollars are shared among all senior citizens. With seven out of 10 Mexican citizens saying that these pensions will fund their retirement, it’s unclear how sustainable—or reliable—the pensions will be in the future, given Mexico’s low income tax collection rate.  

AMLO, along with U.S. President Donald Trump, are just two populist world leaders who have gained major traction in recent years. Populism is often defined as a political style or movement that claims to represent “ordinary people” against elites, and in Mexico, the movement has shifted how citizens see foreigners. 

“I think there is a lot less support for migrants from South America, and probably more support for European migrants. And I don’t think we’re familiar with the idea of migrants from the Middle East,” said Guadalupe Morales Rivas, another one of Amiri’s teachers. 

Scholars and advocates point to entrenched anti-Blackness and anti-indigeneity in Mexico and Latin America as a major factor in how different migrant groups are treated. In 2024, the United Nations even demanded that Mexico investigate the cases of migrants who were discriminated against at border checkpoints due to their skin color, a practice that targeted Black and Indigenous people. 

And similar to the U.S., there is backlash in Mexico against Latin American migrants from places such as Venezuela and Central America. In a 2023 Oxfam Mexico study, 35% of the 1,400 Mexican citizens surveyed reported that they did not believe that these migrants had a positive impact on the national economy or culture. 

Unfolding at the same time is a major increase in the number of Americans and Europeans settling in places such as Mexico City. Morales Rivas explained that Westerners are entering Mexico for very different reasons. They are typically people with economic privilege, who are drawn to the quality of life and business opportunities Mexico offers, unlike migrants fleeing hunger, violence, or danger, Morales Rivas said. She added that this influx has bred economic resentment among many locals. Last year, there were numerous protests against Americans and Europeans in Mexico City, fueled by residents’ anger over gentrification. 

“It’s a big debate, what types of migrants we’ll accept,” Morales Rivas told Prism. 

She also suspected that some of the anger driving the protests in the capital may have something to do with the outrage Mexicans feel toward the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant rhetoric and mass deportations. There are an estimated 5 million undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. who may be subject to deportation. Anticipating that the Trump administration’s deportations would hit Mexican nationals the hardest, last year Sheinbaum announced the new program “Mexico Embraces You” with the goal of helping to reacclimate Mexican citizens who were deported from the U.S. The program includes benefits such as cash assistance and transportation to their home state. 

For migrants and asylees in Mexico, comparable state-funded support systems are either very limited or extremely difficult to access, regardless of whether they speak Spanish. 

“Mexico does not operate a comprehensive, state-funded integration system for refugees,” said Ernesto Rizo, an immigration attorney specializing in refugee law based in Querétaro. “There is no general program guaranteeing financial assistance, government-provided housing, or structured language training for refugees once they enter the country. … Refugees are generally expected to secure employment, housing, and community ties on their own once their legal status is resolved.”

Meanwhile, migrants from across the world are routinely subjected to violence, extortion, and other abuses by organized crime groups and Mexican officials, who are working to reduce the number of migrants who reach the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of de-escalating tensions with the Trump administration.   

Laila Ayub is an attorney and the co-director of Project Afghan Network for Advocacy and Resources (ANAR), an Afghan community immigration justice organization based in California’s Bay Area. Ayub has helped over 10,000 Afghans enter the U.S., and beginning around 2022, she noticed that more Afghans were crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. According to the attorney, some were arbitrarily detained and mistreated by Mexican officials, which fueled their desire to leave the country for the U.S. 

As just one example, last year reporters with Borderless Magazine interviewed Afghans who were separated from their families in Mexico and had their homes raided by the police and National Guard—even though COMAR granted them authorization to be in Mexico. 

Amiri is hesitant to criticize Mexico. When he first arrived in the country in 2023, he had a one-month student visa. He has since obtained a permanent resident permit and requested asylum, and the entire process was free. 

His ultimate goal was to have a future outside of Afghanistan, something he is building in Mexico with his restaurant, Kebab. He was lucky to be able to lawfully enter the country and learn Spanish—an opportunity not afforded to most migrants in Mexico. According to Amiri, it is the lack of opportunity offered to Mexico’s growing migrant population that limits their ability to envision a future in the country.

“[It’s] like the country is open, but there isn’t enough support,” Amiri said. 

For example, Amiri knows of an Afghan community in Mexico City of about 150 people. They clean up the trash in local government offices, don’t speak Spanish, and have no real legal status in the country. These conditions make them unable to rent property in Mexico, so they live out of hotel rooms with up to four people in each room, sharing the cost, which can be as high as $750 per month. 

Amiri said that for these Afghans, there is no real future in Mexico. What are they going to do? How are they going to communicate? Who is going to help them?

Stories like these are part of the reason Amiri wanted to open the restaurant in the first place. His Afghan business partner has been in Mexico for years and doesn’t speak Spanish. They have a spouse and children, and no real prospects for employment. The restaurant is one of the only ways they can earn an income.  

“But the [Mexican] government received them,” Amiri said of the Afghan migrant community. This dynamic is difficult to contend with, he said, especially when it’s challenging to find other types of community support for migrants.

When Amiri first began the process of opening Kebab, he looked into mutual aid groups that helped migrants open their own businesses. His findings were sparse, though he did locate one group that was giving away furniture to help defray restaurant startup costs. He reached out and never heard back. He has yet to successfully find an organization that can offer resources or support around financing, permitting, or business mentorship. He also told Prism that he’s never received outreach from any local groups offering such support. 

These realities fuel his passion for Kebab, which to Amiri isn’t just a restaurant. It’s an opportunity to eventually help other Afghans—with jobs, support, and community. One day, he said he hopes to be able to help at least a few fellow Afghans from falling through the cracks. 

Multicultural Mexico  

Kebab officially opened its doors the first week of December. There were big, puffy clouds in the sky, and plenty of shade over the outdoor patio. Amiri decorated each table with white and maroon checkered tablecloths and outfitted the walls with plenty of photos, including of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Cumbia classics played on a television in the corner of the restaurant. 

Local business owners and residents wandered over to Kebab to check out their new neighbor. Visitors included a German man who owns a nearby bike shop and a Colombian woman who owns a nail salon next door. 

Is this the new, multicultural Mexico? Perhaps, but at the same time, migration to Mexico isn’t entirely new.  

In the late 1800s, a flood of Lebanese immigrants arrived in Mexico, largely settling in Puebla, and revitalized and expanded the textile trade. In Puebla’s tiny town of Chipilo, 46 families migrated from the Veneto region of Italy in 1882, which is why signage throughout the town continues to be in both Italian and Spanish, and descendants speak a Venetian dialect. Almost half a century later, Iranian immigrants brought the world tacos arabes, the forefather to Mexico’s beloved al pastor. On the Port of Veracruz, there is a monument honoring Jewish migration and those who fled Europe and the Middle East in the early 1900s to find religious freedom in Mexico. And in the 1940s, there was a wave of exiled Spaniards. 

Rivera Corzas told Prism that Mexico has long had a legacy of immigration, but it’s something that many are not aware of, especially compared to more visibly pluralistic countries such as the United States.

“We don’t know or get to know the history [of immigration] here,” she said. 

Back at Kebab, Amiri was hard at work running the restaurant. On the menu is an Afghan dish called borani, a grilled eggplant drizzled with yogurt sauce. For the fledgling cook, it’s a small taste of home. 

Only time will tell if Mexican lawmakers are willing to make a true investment in integration services that meet the needs of increasingly diverse migrant populations, or if Afghans and other migrants will simply have to bide their time in Mexico before they try their luck building a life elsewhere.  

Amiri is hopeful about his future in Mexico, perhaps in part because he has an increasingly rare story to tell: that of an immigrant who was welcomed into a new country with open arms. For millions of others migrating due to war, persecution, climate collapse, or economic disaster, there is rarely a safe place to land.

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor