Mexico Rejects Trump’s Military Plan Against Cartels

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico rejected the use of U.S. military forces in her country on Friday, responding to news that President Trump had directed the Pentagon to target drug cartels that the United States considers terrorist organizations.

“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military. We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out,” she said, adding that she would read the order. “It is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it has been brought up, we have always said no.”

It remains unclear what plans the Pentagon is drawing up for possible action, and the order raises a range of legal questions. It is also unclear what notice the Mexican government had: Although Ms. Sheinbaum said U.S. officials had told her and her team that the directive “was coming," three people familiar with the matter said Mexican officials had been blindsided.

Depending on what the United States does, Mexico could pull back its cooperation on issues like security and migration, those people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

For months, Mexican officials have in public and in private rejected suggestions of U.S. military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory.

The issue of U.S. military action has long raised hackles in Latin America, where the United States’ history of interventions goes back well over a century.

If the Pentagon plans to use forces in Mexico or elsewhere in the region, it could strain ties to their worst point in decades, at a time when many countries are trying to work closely with the United States on major issues like migration and combating the drug trade.

Mexico, with its deep trade ties and close partnerships with U.S. law enforcement, has been at the center of many of those efforts.

“They need Mexico’s cooperation and they need Mexico’s state and society to be functioning. This isn’t Afghanistan, where the state is broken, and you can do whatever you want as there’s a void,” said Arturo Rocha, who resigned late last year from the Mexican foreign ministry, where he helped handle relations with the United States.

“This has always been Mexico’s deepest fear, this constant sense that we could be invaded by the U.S. again,” he added. “It would have major implications in terms of cooperation with the U.S. going forward. The president has been clear that our sovereignty is a redline.”

Mexican officials thought they had turned a corner with the Trump administration in fighting the drug trade, having launched an aggressive crackdown on the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel, one of the world’s largest producers of fentanyl, has suffered serious losses as Ms. Sheinbaum has deployed hundreds of troops to fight it.

American officials seemed pleased with the progress, and had touted a 50 percent drop in fentanyl seizures in recent months compared to the same months last year. It is unclear if the decrease is because the cartels are feeling pressure and curbing production or finding innovative ways to evade detection.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, boasted late last month that the drop in fentanyl seizures was “due to a secure border” and “increased collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico.”

Under Mr. Trump and Ms. Sheinbaum’s “leadership, cartels are going bankrupt and our countries are safer because of it,” Mr. Johnson said on social media.

Washington has also cooperated with Mexico on migration, which hit record lows earlier this year and was a central issue of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns.

June saw the lowest border crossings on record, according to Customs and Border Protection data, with 6,072 migrants intercepted at the southwest border with Mexico compared with 83,532 for the same month in 2024.

U.S. military action in Mexico could be politically disastrous for Ms. Sheinbaum.

Ms. Sheinbaum has enjoyed high approval ratings, hovering around 75 percent, but there are deep divides and competition for power inside her governing party. While Mexicans have supported her efforts to negotiate with the Trump administration on issues ranging from migration to tariffs, U.S. military action inside Mexico would probably hit her hard, analysts said.

It could also undermine her ability to negotiate with Mr. Trump on future issues, they added.

The drug war in Mexico has historically been spearheaded by the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. But that effort has been in close collaboration with the Mexican authorities.

And the secrecy around the Pentagon directive has raised questions over whether the United States might use unilateral military force without Mexico’s prior knowledge — a possibility that could hurt the painstakingly built trust between the authorities in the two countries.

“The short-term benefits will be far outweighed by the long-term costs,” said Craig Deare, a former military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico in the 1990s.

“Mexico has mistrusted us for decades, and there was this thawing in the relationship that began in the 1990s,” he said. “That mistrust could snap back now.”

Mr. Deare cautioned that there was little indication of what type of action the military could take, whether using lethal drones or deploying forces.

The United States has long operated drones to hunt for drug production and smuggling networks inside Mexico, but those covert programs were not authorized to take lethal action.

Mexican officials have warned the Trump administration that the lethal drone programs the United States has run in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where terrorist groups are often targeted in rural areas, would face far different risks in Mexico.

There, drug cartels are often embedded in dense urban centers, raising the chances of civilian casualties, and there are many more dual U.S.-Mexican citizens and their relatives living in places that could be targeted.

“If the U.S. does this without Mexico’s consent, it will set the relationship back a hundred years,” said Todd Robinson, who served as the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department.

He said the U.S. military does not have the relationships that other parts of the U.S. government had developed with the Mexican authorities over many years. (The F.B.I. and D.E.A. have offices in embassies across the world, and have set up teams in countries like Mexico, Colombia and Vietnam that work closely with American forces.)

“We worked together to build cases, by sharing intelligence, that is what builds a long-term relationship,” he said, adding “there is no way you get a good relationship if you shove the U.S. military down their throat.”

While there is a long history of U.S. military involvement across Latin America, the reaction from other leaders in the region to Friday’s news was largely muted.

Venezuelan officials did not directly comment on the order. But Vladimir Padrino López, the longtime defense minister, denounced on Friday what he called “ludicrous statements” by the United States about an award for information leading to the arrest of Venezuela’s president.

U.S. officials have accused the president, Nicolás Maduro, of leading a drug trafficking group called Cartel de Los Soles, saying it is linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Both groups have been designated as terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.