Hundreds of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and other nationalities have turned the Central de Abasto in Mexico City into their new starting point, working among the aisles and warehouses of the largest wholesale food market in the world after abandoning the American dream, according to a report by Univision/N+ published this Thursday.
The massive facility, located in the Iztapalapa borough and covering 327 hectares, handles about 30,000 tons of goods daily and provides around 70,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Due to the shortage of local labor, merchants have opened their doors to migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic, the report states.
The tasks range from loading and unloading food to working in warehouses and assisting in retail establishments. A merchant interviewed by Univision summarized the dynamics with a striking figure:
"It's a necessity for us. They come daily, and they are very hardworking. I have 143 migrants," said Ramiro Encino, one of the businessmen at the central.
The absence of discrimination is one of the factors most valued by those who work there. "There are many opportunities here, and they don't check your race, color, or anything. If you can work, they give you a job, no matter where you come from," stated one of the interviewed Haitian migrants.
For Cubans, salaries range from 300 to 500 pesos per day for shifts of up to ten hours, which amounts to between 1,500 and 2,500 pesos per week.
The conditions are demanding, and the income barely covers rents that can reach 5,000 pesos per month, but many prefer this precarious stability to the uncertainty of the journey north.
This phenomenon reflects a profound change in migration patterns. The tightening of U.S. border policy since 2025 has dramatically reduced irregular crossings, pushing thousands of Cubans to stay in Mexico as a destination for settlement rather than merely transit.
In 2025, Mexico received nearly 40,000 asylum applications from Cuban citizens, and the proportion of Cubans with humanitarian visitor cards jumped from 23% to 78% in just one year.
This is compounded by deportations: according to a report from Human Rights Watch, between January 2025 and March 2026, the United States deported 4,353 Cubans to Mexico, making them the largest group among nationals of third countries sent to that territory. Since June 2025, more Cubans have been deported monthly to Mexico than to Cuba.
The Central de Abasto has been incorporating migrants into its workforce for at least five years through an informal program that has registered over 4,000 people from various nationalities, according to reports from the Mexican press.
Many of them lack immigration documents, which excludes them from formal employment and pushes them towards these kinds of markets.
But for many more years, other Cubans were a reference in this establishment. The Cubans in Mexico City knew and shared the word, "that in the carrot ship, under the Chinese lanterns, was the stand of the Cuban who sold the best yuca and malanga."
The UN migration statistics bulletin for 2025 recorded 155,730 events of individuals in irregular migration situations in Mexico, a figure that illustrates the magnitude of the phenomenon that the Central de Abasto partially absorbs with its warehouses and carts.
For many of these migrants, life in Mexico has become a long-term gamble. A Dominican migrant interviewed by Univision clearly stated: "My children are in the Dominican Republic. What’s your plan? To bring them. I like Mexico; my country is still not stable."
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