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Document #2125256
International Crisis Group (Author)
The Trump administration has made a series of harsh demands upon Mexico to reduce the number of migrants and the amounts of illegal narcotics coming into the United States. In this Q&A, Crisis Group expert David Mora looks at how Mexico has responded.
In his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has pushed the U.S.-Mexico relationship into uncharted territory. Wielding the threat of crushing tariffs, he has pressed President Claudia Sheinbaum to block the entry of the highly addictive opioid fentanyl and undocumented migrants into the United States.
To meet Trump’s demands, Sheinbaum has deployed security forces in a bid to stymie criminal groups more effectively, sent additional troops to the border and transferred more than two dozen high-level criminals from Mexican jails to U.S. custody. But, while showing her willingness to work with the U.S., the Mexican president has also fiercely protected her country’s sovereignty, a matter of great sensitivity in a country that was forced to cede over half its territory in 1848 after a U.S. invasion. Sheinbaum has proven to be a skilful politician, gaining both Trump’s praise and wide support from her constituents: recent polls show her approval rates at around 82 per cent. Her strategy has worked, at least partially. Trump has backed away from some, if not all, of his threatened tariffs, but his capricious decision-making and browbeating continue to loom over Mexico.
Despite signs of stronger law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, some officials in Washington appear to be laying the groundwork for military action against drug trafficking organisations in Mexican territory, with – or without – Mexico’s consent. If the Trump administration were to act without Mexico’s permission, perhaps by launching drone strikes on illegal fentanyl manufacturing labs or ordering a special forces mission to capture high-profile criminal leaders, Sheinbaum would face enormous domestic pressure to revoke bilateral cooperation or worse.
Trump won the 2024 election after a campaign centred on his assertions that undocumented migrants and drugs crossing the border from Mexico were sapping U.S. power and endangering U.S. national security. Trade with Mexico presents another threat in Trump’s worldview: Mexico is the top source of imported goods into the U.S., making it a target for the tariffs that Trump argues will push manufacturers to return to U.S. soil. On the day of his inauguration, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and then imposed a 25 per cent tariff on all imports from Mexico on 1 February, stating that the drug trafficking organisations have an “intolerable alliance” with the government, which affords them “safe haven”. Anxious to fend off a potentially devastating blow to Mexican exports, which account for about one third of the nation’s GDP, Sheinbaum won a one-month reprieve by mobilising an additional 10,000 National Guardtroops to eighteen towns along the border.
By the end of February, however, Trump said Mexico still had not done enough to curb the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the U.S. Facing imminent tariffs on the lion’s share of Mexico’s total exports, Sheinbaum skirted the ordinary extradition process to summarily transfer 29 jailed criminal bosses to U.S. custody, including 72-year-old Rafael Caro Quintero, sought in connection with the 1985 murder of an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, as well as high-ranking operatives in other criminal outfits, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels. After initially imposing the tariffs on 4 March, Trump partially relented two days later, limiting them to goods that are not covered by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.
Still, Mexico was not spared 25 per cent global tariffs on steel and aluminium, and nor was it exempted from planned 25 per cent levies on imported cars and non-U.S. car parts. Most recently, the U.S. government has brandished new threats, including additional tariffs over a water dispute (which appears for now to have been resolved) and Mexican tomato exports. Trump has stated that he would reduce the original tariffs to 12 per cent if he is satisfied with Mexico’s cooperation, but in practice his demands are fitful and open-ended. Lobbying against the tariff threats by U.S. industries that depend on commercial relations with Mexico seems to have had limited purchase: Trump appears to be willing to take the risk that his tariffs will scramble supply chains and inflate consumer prices in exchange for showing voters that his strongman approach to Mexico will succeed in blocking migrants and drugs.
Sheinbaum is being forced to respond to Washington’s policy gyrations, underlining the highly asymmetric relationship between the two countries. Arrests of undocumented migrants, for example, fell to historic lows in February, leading Trump to proclaim on 1 March that the “invasion” was over. Days later, however, the White House declared that Mexico’s “failure to arrest traffickers, seize drugs or coordinate with U.S. law enforcement” is reason to move ahead with tariffs. The Mexican president’s cooperation in counter-narcotics, meanwhile, has been unstinting. Mexico has captured at least sixteen criminal suspects sought by U.S. authorities, including an alleged senior figure from El Salvador’s MS-13 gang on the ten most wanted fugitives list posted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the last six months, Mexico has also seized 1.4 tonnes of fentanyl, including a record haul of 1.1 tonnes on 5 December in Sinaloa – a threefold increase over the previous administration’s average seizures.
Sheinbaum inherited a country immersed in a longstanding security crisis. Decades of militarised crackdowns have not reduced the number of Mexican criminal groups, restricted their territorial reach or curbed their grip on illicit and, increasingly, licit businesses. Transnational organisations at the apex of the global trade in drugs, like Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, fight over trafficking routes. Smaller outfits, such as Carteles Unidos, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, the Noreste Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, have extended their extortion rackets into legal business, co-opted local governments and bolstered their sway over communities. Meanwhile, local gangs vie to ally with larger groups in order to claim a share of criminal markets. Together, these criminal tiers have unleashed surges in violence, particularly in border states such as Baja California and Chihuahua, the Pacific coast states of Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco, and two central states, Guanajuato and the State of Mexico.
Since taking office on 1 October, Sheinbaum’s approach to security has differed in some ways from that of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In place of López Obrador’s avowed preference for “hugs not bullets”, which translated in effect into a reliance on military-led law enforcement and local agreements with criminal groups, Sheinbaum has opted for a more confrontational approach combined with a new emphasis on criminal investigations. She is investing in civilian intelligence and policing, rolling out legal reforms to assign those responsibilities to the Public Security and Civilian Protection Secretariat. Its head, Omar García Harfuch, who is in charge of the new policy, draws heavily from his experience as Mexico City’s security chief during Sheinbaum’s term as mayor from 2018 to 2023, a period in which violent crime fell sharply. García Harfuch is moving swiftly to build a civilian force capable of identifying and prosecuting criminal outfits. His goal is to create a nationwide investigative and intelligence force with up to 10,000 agents, as well as an elite police group formed by 800 officers.
A November 2024 constitutional reform also gives García Harfuch’s agents important new powers. According to the government, they will have the authority to investigate crimes alongside prosecutors – who have a poor record of building and presenting criminal cases in court and are partly accountable for impunity rates for serious crimes that hover at around 90 per cent or above. The reform will also centralise the large databases and information collected by military and other intelligence agencies nationwide. (Congress must still pass implementing legislation, which is expected later in 2025.) In addition, Sheinbaum supports a controversial judicial reform approved at the end of López Obrador’s term, in which voters will elect half of Mexico’s federal judges and a large number of state judges in June, with the remainder to be selected in 2027.
García Harfuch’s outsized role in security strategy in itself marks a major change. López Obrador downgraded the role of the Public Security Secretariat and state governments, enabling the defence secretary and armed forces to assume de facto authority and amass a large budget. Now, for the first time in more than a dozen years, security policy has been concentrated under a civilian. Even so, the military remains powerful, with the 133,000-strong National Guard having shifted under its command, and parts of its top brass are reportedly eager to see a return to tougher law enforcement. Sheinbaum has also respected López Obrador’s legacy and maintained the military’s responsibilities – and budgets – for building infrastructure, including major train lines and hospitals.
The crucial question is whether Sheinbaum’s reforms will be sustainable and effective. Past experience is not altogether heartening: previous presidents also created new national civilian forces, only for their successors to undermine or disband them. But arguably the greatest threat is from pervasive corruption. As Crisis Group has analysed in detail, collusion between criminal outfits and authorities, particularly at the local level, has hindered efforts in Mexico to reduce violence and loosen the grip criminal groups have on swathes of the country. Constitutional experts also warn that overhauling the judiciary could lead to its capture by special interests, including organised crime. Meanwhile, if García Harfuch’s new investigative force ends up recycling active or retired members from other state agencies, it could perpetuate graft and criminal connivance. To avoid this scenario, civil society groups and academics have argued for more safeguards, including independent oversight of security forces, but the government has ignored their proposals so far.
Since Sheinbaum took office, federal forces have veered toward a more active law enforcement approach, increasing arrests along with drug and arms seizures. The government has destroyed 758 fentanyl and methamphetamine labs. Comparative data are difficult to calculate with certainty because the Mexican government publishes only aggregate numbers for drug seizures and lab destruction. But the fentanyl figures presented by Sheinbaum’s administration appear to represent a threefold increase over the average during the López Obrador administration. In addition, the current administration has doubled arms seizures to almost 9,000 in six months. Operación Frontera, Sheinbaum’s 10,000-troop response to Trump’s pressure regarding border control, has posted similar results, with troops seizing 163kg of fentanyl powder and over 1.13 million fentanyl pills in the first two months.
As for Mexico’s high murder rates, the effects of more robust law enforcement appear to be less striking. Targeted National Guard deployments have in the past failed to reduce violence, and the early statistics indicate that they are falling short of hopes once more. The government has reported 14,102 homicide victims in the first six months of Sheinbaum’s presidency, claiming that daily murders have fallen 14 per cent compared to September 2024, the last month of the previous administration. But calculations by Crisis Group comparing the total number of victims murdered during the first six months of the current administration with the same period at the end of López Obrador’s government point to just a 1 per cent drop in the murder toll.
Results have also been less clear-cut in areas afflicted by high levels of violence. Homicides are concentrated in certain localities, with 75 per cent of murders committed in just 7 per cent of Mexico’s municipalities. Official data for Tijuana, Tecate and Ciudad Juárez, border cities with high murder rates, have not registered a significant change in reported homicides or extortion cases in the two months since the extra troops’ arrival. A slightly more encouraging outcome can be found in the north-western state of Sinaloa, where two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have engaged in internecine warfare since 9 September, paralysing the state capital Culiacán and killing over a thousand people. The government followed its new doctrine to the letter: more troops, more confrontations with combatants and hundreds of arrests, including of high-ranking figures within both factions. Even so, an initial sharp decline in homicides seems to have flattened out in the past three months.
The violent rupture in the Sinaloa Cartel also underscores a worrying phenomenon: a rise in the number of people reported as disappeared in tandem with a fall in homicide victims. Criminal groups appear to have decided to disappear the bodies of their victims to avoid high murder counts and too much close attention from the state. So far, at least 1,297 people have gone missing in Sinaloa since the cartel’s infighting began, more than the number of murder victims. Civil society groups, including the Catholic Church, have said a nationwide reduction in murders under Sheinbaum has been accompanied by increased disappearances.
As noted above, corruption and the lack of coordination between local and federal authorities are also likely to hinder Sheinbaum’s security strategy. Discovery of a ranch apparently used as a forced recruitment and training camp, and where an unknown number of people might have been killed, offers a harrowing example. On 5 March, a group looking for their disappeared relatives entered the abandoned ranch in Teuchitlán, just an hour away from Guadalajara, Mexico’s third largest city. Images of mountains of shoes and knapsacks found at the site horrified the country. Jalisco state and federal officials have traded blame over who bears responsibility for not acting earlier. Shockingly, this discovery was not the first time the authorities had set foot on the ranch. National Guard troops and Jalisco state prosecutors first raided the complex in September 2024, finding a body, rescuing two kidnapped men and detaining ten suspects. But they failed to make a proper inspection or secure the location, letting the case lapse.
The two neighbours have long cooperated on law enforcement, but their ties got stronger after Mexico declared war on drug trafficking organisations almost two decades ago. That said, undercurrents of distrust have occasionally risen to the surface. Under López Obrador, the relationship grew fraught after the arrest of former defence minister General Salvador Cienfuegos in 2020 in Los Angeles on drug and money laundering charges. Pressure from Mexico and concern among officials in the first Trump administration that Mexico might suspend migration cooperation led to the charges being dropped. Cienfuegos returned to Mexico, and a swift Mexican investigation cleared him. Soon thereafter, the Mexican Congress passed laws to curtail foreign law enforcement agents’ activities, and the government disbanded a special unit trained by the DEA. Meanwhile, overdoses arising from illegal synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which have accounted for over 310,000 deaths in the U.S. in the past five years, prompted Republicans frustrated with López Obrador’s apparent soft line on crime to table proposals for military action.
A new irritant emerged at the end of López Obrador’s term, when Joaquín Guzmán López, son of the imprisoned kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera and a leader of one of the Sinaloa Cartel factions, handed himself over to U.S. authorities in July 2024, accompanied by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leader of a rival faction. Zambada later said he was tricked and kidnapped in the operation, which Washington kept secret from the Mexican government. Once Sinaloa became engulfed in violence in the aftermath of these arrests, the Mexican government’s initial embarrassment gave way to anger. Mexico partly blamed the U.S. for the fighting, while former U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar’s frustrations spilled into the open on 13 November, when he said López Obrador had “closed the doors” to counter-narcotic cooperation.
Sheinbaum began her term by turning the page, showing far more openness to collaborating with U.S. law enforcement. But Trump’s volley of demands meant that she would have to do much more than simply mend frayed ties. The 27 February transfer of high-ranking criminal figures was the most dramatic evidence so far of her government’s willingness to bend to U.S. pressure. As Mexico has continued to capture and hand over other high-value suspects, reports have emerged that the federal government and U.S. officials are actively collaborating on a second mass transfer of 40 crime bosses in Mexican jails.
Sheinbaum has also approved stronger military-to-military cooperation. On 19 February, General Gregory Guillot, who leads the U.S. Northern Command, and Mexican Defence Minister General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo agreed to carry out coordinated patrols along the border, as well as boost information sharing and communications between military border units. In the wake of reports of covert U.S. drone flights over Mexico to gather intelligence, Trevilla Trejo said Mexico had full knowledge of these operations, adding that the flights had played a key role in recent actions against the Sinaloa Cartel. The secret flights go back more than two decades and helped capture “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Cooperation in immigration enforcement, meanwhile, was already strong and has not changed much under Sheinbaum. Faced with Trump’s first tariff threat in 2019, López Obrador established immigration checkpoints across Mexico and the armed forces blocked hundreds of thousands of immigrants going north each year. Sheinbaum merely stepped up the policy by dispatching additional National Guard troops to the border. In any event, Trump’s crackdown, which all but cancels asylum access, has dramatically reduced the number of migrants reaching Mexico’s southern border. Sheinbaum has also cooperated in Trump’s mass deportation campaign, receiving over 24,000 migrants since 20 January, over 80 per cent of them Mexican.
From its side, Mexico has pushed one key demand: stemming the illicit flow of guns into Mexico. Despite early talks, there has been no indication that Washington will respond. The U.S. Justice Department is already reviewing plans to roll back a handful of gun regulations passed by the Biden administration. A diminished Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which in the past worked with Mexico on tracing U.S.-made guns seized in Mexico, may also be folded into the DEA. On 4 March, lawyers representing the Mexican government presented their case before the U.S. Supreme Court in their lawsuit against gun manufacturers, but some of the justices appeared sceptical of Mexico’s argument that gunmakers should be liable for violence in Mexico.
Washington seems to be contemplating military action in Mexico. The State Department designated six Mexican criminal organisations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) on 20 February. A month later, U.S. intelligence agencies listed Mexican criminal groups as a top threat to U.S. security in their annual report for the first time. Domestically, the administration has considered invoking the Insurrection Act to allow the U.S. army to deal directly with drug and immigration enforcement on the border and has beefed up the military presence there, deploying around 10,000 active-duty soldiers, military aircraft, U.S. navy destroyers and other marine assets, in part to gather intelligence against drug trafficking organisations. This show of force seems to be in part performative: by the end of March, there were 4.6 U.S. uniformed personnel for every apprehended migrant at the border.
That said, none of the wartime or counter-terrorism instruments Trump has invoked authorise the use of military force on Mexican territory. The 20 February FTO designation may serve as a stepping stone to the use of military force, but on 8 April Colby Jenkins, acting assistant secretary of defence, confirmed to Congress that it does not permit military action. News reports, citing unnamed White House sources, nonetheless say the government is planning for what could be an “unprecedented” drone operation to bomb criminal organisations and their assets; the CIA is reportedly assessing the risk of collateral damage to U.S. citizens and the possibility of retaliation by criminal groups. The incoming U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, told senators that the U.S. would “prefer to work with our partners in Mexico” but would not rule out unilateral action, saying “all cards are on the table”.
Launching drone strikes, special operations or any other lethal action against criminal organisations in Mexico without the country’s consent could backfire and cause huge damage to the bilateral relationship. Any move by the U.S. would certainly be condemned by Sheinbaum’s political base and seized on by the opposition as a sign of weakness, requiring a decisive response. She could halt law enforcement cooperation or return to López Obrador’s laissez-faire approach to fentanyl trafficking. She might soft-pedal migration enforcement or kick the DEA, FBI and other U.S. agencies out of the country. If better cooperation is what Trump wants from Mexico, military action would be the best way to stall it. Some White House advisers, including immigration hardliners, as well as State Department officials, appear to understand that risk.
Beyond the law enforcement spectacle that military crackdowns and high-level killings offer, they have simply proven ineffective in reducing drug trafficking. Military leaders recognise those limits. On 1 April, General Guillot testified before the U.S. Congress that sealing the border militarily would lead “cartels [to] adapt and try to find new ways to get their products, whether that’s drugs or people, across the border”. The military-first approach has also failed to bring down levels of violence, he told Congress. “The limited ability to get across the border has forced cartels to incur onto other cartels’ territory to try to get across ... seeing an increase in violence as well”.
Complicating matters further, fentanyl production and smuggling rely on small-scale operations. Chemical precursors are shipped into ports as legal products. Makeshift labs operate in heavily populated areas. U.S. citizens smuggle pills across the border in their cars. Finding a target to bomb with a drone would prove difficult, and could expose innocent civilians, including possibly U.S. nationals, to great risk. Another question is whether and how Mexican criminal organisations might respond. They have typically refrained from attacking U.S. citizens and U.S. interests. But the day after drone strikes, their calculations could change.
The threat of tariffs and military action moved Sheinbaum’s government toward a more aggressive approach to organised crime. Even though her own security doctrine already marked a departure from her predecessor’s inertia, Trump’s presidency created an urgent need to show immediate results. The initial outcome of the U.S.-backed response, measured by arrests and drugs and weapons seizures, has played well for both governments. But it will take time to know if Sheinbaum’s broader strategy, combining stronger enforcement with more precise targeting and effective criminal investigations, will reduce violence and weaken criminal groups. Those are the results that matter more to Mexicans, and Sheinbaum faces the huge challenge of overcoming the country’s institutional failings and high impunity rates while responding to each new threat from Trump. In the end, success will depend on her ability to shift the centre of gravity in law enforcement away from shows of military strength to a professional civilian-led force – precisely the opposite of what Trump seems to be proposing.
For now, Sheinbaum’s enormous popularity gives her political room for manoeuvre in meeting Trump’s mercurial demands, provided that her party and public opinion remain convinced that she is protecting Mexican sovereignty. Escalating threats and unlawful unilateral action from Washington could easily backfire, doing grave harm to U.S. economic and law enforcement interests. It would almost certainly shatter the cooperation achieved so far, increase violence in Mexico, with potential spillover into the U.S., and fail to reduce the flow of fentanyl across the border. A stronger security partnership with Mexico could emerge from Trump’s arm twisting, but one rash decision could set it back again for years.
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