Day-to-Day Killings in Mexico Drop Over a Third Under the Sheinbaum Administration, Per Government Statistics

The mean figure of everyday killings monthly in Mexico has dropped by 37% since Head of State Claudia Sheinbaum assumed power, per recent government data. However, public safety analysts have cautioned that murder numbers may not point to enhanced national security.

Marked Decline in Daily Numbers

Officials reported an average of close to 55 homicides a day in November compared with nearly 87 when Claudia Sheinbaum began the presidential office in September of last year. This announcement was delivered by the head of the nation's national safety agency, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the president’s daily news conference on Tuesday.

“The outcome in killings that we have seen over these past months is very significant,” Sheinbaum said, noting that last month the smallest number of homicides were documented for any November in the last decade.

Recent Context and Government Plan

Intense organized crime internal conflicts, coupled with the administration's heavily military campaigns to take on the drug gangs, have made Mexico’s murder rate soar in the past few years. The figure hit a record high of 36,773 killings in 2020, as reported by the country’s official data agency.

That meant Mexico a homicide rate over 4x greater than that of the United States. Since then, homicides have been on the decline, declining to 33,550 the previous year. Sheinbaum has linked her national security plan for an ostensibly steeper decline in homicides this year.

At a media briefing in August, the President declared: “There is a strategy, there is tracking of the plan, and we have detailed monitoring locality by locality in certain cases. The approach works. And we have to persist at it each day.”

The main components of Sheinbaum’s safety plan encompass:

• Reinforcing Mexico’s national guard.
• Enhancing intelligence and investigation work.
• Enhanced collaboration between various agencies.

Expert Skepticism and Data Limitations

However, public safety experts warned that focusing solely on murder data to paint a picture of improved security was misleading. This is especially true given the uptick in different criminal activities such as forced disappearances.

“This would be excellent information if this was a decrease, but I think we must not just look at the homicide numbers and say: ‘Oh well, good,’” stated Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an expert on Mexican organised crime. “I would be cautiously hopeful.”

Per the public policy research thinktank Mexico Evalúa, murders overall declined by more than 20% in the initial 10 months of the current year compared with the identical timeframe last year. But, missing persons cases have gone up by 15% and in some regions have increased by as much as 200%.

“Statistics on murders is not reliable for gauging the situation of insecurity,” argued Armando Vargas, a safety expert at Mexico Evalúa. “First, we have police and investigators who do not have the resources or the desire to accurately recognize and classify remains. Secondly, organised [criminals] … have the means to mask violence through disappearances.”

Vargas added that using month-to-month means of daily killings was also concerning because it could hide days when there were notably spiking numbers of murders.

“Using the daily mean makes high peaks of violent crime less visible,” he stated.

Arrests and Seizures as Measures of Progress

An area where the government can point to the effectiveness of its security plan is on detentions and confiscations. Nearly 40,000 individuals were arrested between last October and November 2025 for high-impact crimes, according to official data. Over 20,000 guns were confiscated and 311 tonnes of narcotics confiscated.

“The former US president cannot claim President Sheinbaum of inaction, because actually she is doing a lot with these thousands of detentions, thousands of confiscations, and all the tactical weakening of organised crime. It’s extremely in political terms advantageous,” commented Vargas.

Ongoing Violence and Public Anger

Yet despite these measures, Mexico is still beset by extreme bloodshed, with several regions in the grip of cartel-driven violence. In the previous month there was a notable killing of a popular mayor in the state of Michoacan, one of 10 local leaders murdered in the past year.

A short time after, thousands of protesters protested in the capital and throughout the country to voice their frustration at corruption and narco-violence.

“The government presents [data] in a way to build a story of improvement. From a political standpoint it’s extremely effective, socially it’s highly debatable,” the analyst concluded.