The International relations literature has not appropriately grappled with the entanglement of organized crime, the state, and international human rights regimes. This chapter explores the fundamental tension that exists between national security and the international infrastructure of human rights, which arises when states fail to protect their citizens. It does so within the context of the Mexican case where criminal organizations and agents from the state have collaborated to jointly commit a disproportionate number of human rights violations. In particular, this chapter examines the Ayotzinapa case, a mass kidnapping in 2014 in the state of Guerrero, to illustrate how epistemological assumptions about the relationality of national security and organized crime are critical for consolidation of a democratic State. We draw on social critical contract theory, arguing that there exists a gap between the state and the citizen even at the moment when the former is supposedly performing its most basic security functions. We argue the Mexican case exemplifies this entanglement, echoing the deployment of violence as a regulating strategy used in many other Latin American countries. We conclude by reimagining the distinctions between national security and the international regimes.