The ruling party and the opposition take the first step in Congress to implement Sheinbaum's plan against extortion.

The Mexican Congress has taken the first step toward launching President Claudia Sheinbaum's administration's crusade to combat extortion , a crime that is rapidly increasing in Mexico. The Chamber of Deputies approved this Tuesday the presidentially authored constitutional reform that empowers the legislature to enact a General Law against the Crime of Extortion that would allow for the prosecution of this crime ex officio. The amendment received an overwhelming unanimous vote. Both the ruling party and opposition factions have given their approval; nothing else was expected. The reform to the Constitution still has a long way to go before implementing the strategy led by the Secretary of Citizen Security, Omar García Harfuch .

The bill has been sent to the Senate for analysis and voting, which is expected to be a mere formality. Extortion has become one of the priority issues on the president's security agenda. The reform to Article 73 of the Constitution will allow, through regulatory law, the unification of the criminal offense of extortion throughout the country. Furthermore, aggravating circumstances, related offenses, and penalties will be established. The objective is clear: to launch a national strategy against extortion to prevent, investigate, and punish the crime and close the legal loopholes that have allowed these illicit practices to remain unpunished.

The presidential initiative points out, in its explanatory statement, that a challenge to effectively combating this crime at the national level is the lack of uniform penalties. Federal and local penal codes currently establish an average minimum sentence of four years and six months and a maximum of 12 years. At the federal level, the penalty ranges from two to eight years. In states like Oaxaca, sentences range from one to three years; and in Chihuahua, they range from five to 30 years, data that puts the vast differences in the penalties into perspective. With the constitutional reform, the penalties will be unified through the law that regulates it.

The victims of this crime number in the millions . Business owners, merchants at all levels, transporters, service providers, and even street vendors are forced to pay criminal fees in exchange for being allowed to work undisturbed. In the last six years, this crime has increased exponentially by 58%, going from a daily average of 19 cases in 2018 to 29 in January 2025, as announced by the president of the Constitutional Affairs Committee and Morena representative Leonel Godoy when presenting the ruling.

The range of criminal cells operating within the country has expanded to all spheres. “Telephone scams and extortion are the two main forms of extortion, and this results in businesses, roads, businesses, orchards, livestock farming—all economic activities, even the smallest—being constantly under pressure from extortion ,” the legislator said.

The figures have been mixed in the debate. PAN representative Héctor Saúl Téllez has highlighted the rapid increase in extortion rates under the current administration. In the first 10 months of Sheinbaum's administration, 9,021 cases have been recorded, contrasting with the same period three previous administrations: Andrés Manuel López Obrador's, which recorded 7,249; Enrique Peña Nieto's, with 6,792; and Felipe Calderón's, the lowest, with 2,599 cases.

“Extortion is not a fee, it's a criminal tax that criminals collect for living and working. It hits the small store, the taxi, the workshop, the bakery, the pharmacy, and the countryside,” the legislator added. This crime has been normalized, but “it is suffocating the freedom of thousands of families,” Téllez stated. On another front, according to the 2023 National Victimization Survey by INEGI, fraud and extortion crimes recorded the highest percentages of uncovered crimes, at 97% and 96.7%, respectively.