Immigration detention is a central deterrence policy in Mexico: between January and August 2024 alone, almost one million undocumented migrants were detained by government authorities. As a result of militarisation of borders and in the context of the reform to the migration law prohibiting the detention of children, punitive environments have extended significantly beyond detention centres, including humanitarian organisation and government shelters (CAS). This chapter discusses the inconsistencies, entanglements and imbrications between state and non-state actors within the Mexican alternatives of migration programme. By adopting the concept of “confinement continuum” (Tazzioli, 2023), it explores the nuances that shape government institutions and humanitarian aid. It focuses on the humanitarian rhetoric and punitive logic that pervades a wider spectrum of infrastructure, sites and institutions that extend migration management and control under precarious conditions. Drawing from ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews, conducted in Mexico between 2019 and 2023 with migrants, migrant officers and NGO personnel, this chapter unravels the governance of racialised migrants within the Global South.