Mexico Just Closed the Recinto Fiscalizado Estratégico to Textiles and Footwear: What Changed and What to Do

If your textile or footwear operation used the Recinto Fiscalizado Estratégico (RFE), the strategic bonded-precinct regime, a tool you relied on for duty deferral and inventory control is now closed to those goods. As of May 21, 2026, the goods you could introduce into the RFE yesterday, you cannot today. The change is not a tightening of how the regime is used. It is an outright exclusion of two sectors from it.

The instrument is the Primera Resolución de Modificaciones a las Reglas Generales de Comercio Exterior (RGCE) for 2026, published May 14, 2026, with its Anexos 5, 22 and 29 published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación (DOF) on May 20, 2026 and in force the following day. Here is exactly what moved, why, and what an affected operation should do now.

What changed, point by point

Four changes work together, and reading them as one package matters more than reading any one alone.

First, the prohibition itself. Anexo 29, which lists the goods that cannot be destined to certain regimes (temporary importation under maquila or export programs, depósito fiscal, recinto fiscalizado, and the RFE), gained a new fracción III. That fracción adds roughly 940 tariff fractions, with their NICOs, drawn from chapters 50 to 64 of the TIGIE, the chapters covering textiles and footwear, and reaching certain chapter 94 goods as well. Those fractions can no longer be destined to the RFE.

Second, the criterion behind it was retired. Anexo 5, the compilation of normative and improper-practice criteria, derogated criterio 5/LA/PI, “Mercancías destinadas al régimen de recinto fiscalizado estratégico. Textiles y calzado,” moving it to the list of repealed criteria. The reasoning is telling: the criterion became unnecessary because the conduct it used to flag as an improper practice is now expressly prohibited in Anexo 29. The authority moved from warning to prohibition.

Third, the permanence facility closed. Regla 4.8.2 lost its second paragraph, the provision that had allowed finished goods, and goods presenting the essential characteristics of a complete or finished article, classified in chapters 50 to 64, to remain in the RFE for up to three months. The holding mechanism these sectors used is gone.

Fourth, there is one carve-out. A new second paragraph in regla 4.8.4 establishes that the Anexo 29 fracción III restriction does not apply to companies holding a PROSEC authorization for the Industria Automotriz y de Autopartes that operate under the RFE. If you are an automotive or autoparts PROSEC operator, the door stays open for you. For everyone else in these chapters, it does not.

What the RFE is, and why these sectors used it

The Recinto Fiscalizado Estratégico is a customs regime, grounded in Article 135-B of the Ley Aduanera, that lets companies introduce foreign goods into a designated, controlled facility under a special scheme. Its appeal is operational: deferral of the duties and obligations that a definitive importation triggers, the ability to handle and transfer goods between precincts, and the option to later extract goods to another customs regime. For inventory-heavy, margin-sensitive sectors, that combination of deferral and control is valuable.

Textile and footwear operations used the RFE precisely for that flexibility, holding and staging goods without immediately assuming the full import burden. That is the flexibility the May change removes for these chapters.

Why it landed where it did

The authority did not frame this as a routine adjustment. It framed it as closing a gap. The facilities the RFE provides, introduction under a special scheme, transfers between precincts, extraction to other regimes, were being used in some operations to bring finished foreign textiles and footwear, or goods already carrying the essential characteristics of finished articles, into the regime without any genuine elaboration, transformation, or repair taking place inside the precinct. The goods went in, sat, and came out substantially as they entered, sidestepping the import obligations and non-tariff regulations a straightforward importation would have required.

That is the conduct the old criterio 5/LA/PI described as an improper practice. The significance of the May change is the shift in legal posture: the authority stopped characterizing a certain use of the regime as improper and started excluding the goods from the regime outright. A practice once flagged is now simply not allowed.

In our work across the corridor, this is the pattern worth noticing. Mexico has been progressively narrowing how sensitive sectors like textiles and footwear can use deferral and temporary regimes, and the RFE was one of the doors still open to them. With this change, that door closes too. Reading any single resolution as an isolated event misses the direction of travel.

What to do now

The work is specific, and it starts with knowing your own exposure.

Identify whether any of your fractions fall in chapters 50 to 64, or the affected chapter 94 lines, and whether any current or planned operation relies on the RFE for those goods. If it does, that operation needs a new structure, not a workaround.

Confirm whether the PROSEC Industria Automotriz y de Autopartes carve-out applies to you. If it does, document the authorization clearly, because it is now the specific basis on which your RFE operation continues for these goods. If it does not, do not assume an adjacent regime is an open substitute, because Anexo 29 governs several deferral and temporary regimes, not only the RFE. Evaluate, with your customs broker, whether the practical path for the displaced goods is a definitive importation with full duties and complete non-tariff compliance, and model what that does to your landed cost before the next shipment, not after it is stuck.

Common mistake to avoid: assuming the goods already in an RFE, or in transit toward one, are grandfathered. Check the effective date against your operations. The change took effect May 21, 2026, and the safest move is to confirm the status of any in-progress RFE operation in these chapters before relying on the old treatment.

Finally, expect closer scrutiny. A change framed explicitly around detected evasion comes with heightened attention to classification, permanence, and the correct application of regime benefits. Tighten your documentation and traceability for these sectors now, because the operations that come through this cleanly are the ones that can show their goods were always where the regime said they were.

The direction this points

This is not a one-off restriction to absorb and forget. It is a clear signal about how Mexico intends to treat sensitive sectors in its deferral and temporary regimes, and the RFE was among the last of those regimes still available to textiles and footwear. The operations that map their RFE dependency now, and rebuild the structure deliberately, will keep moving. The ones that discover the change at the dock will be rebuilding under pressure, with goods already committed.

Map the exposure before the regime change finds it for you. If your textile or footwear operation depended on the RFE, talk to a Joffroy expert about the alternatives that fit your structure.

TRADE. UNDER CONTROL.