MEXICO CITY — Amid reports that the Trump administration is considering drone strikes against cartels, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated her staunch opposition to any such military action.
“We do not agree with any kind of intervention or interference,” Sheinbaum told reporters Tuesday at her daily morning news conference. “This has been very clear: We coordinate, we collaborate, [but] we are not subordinate and there is no meddling in these actions.”
The president’s comments, reaffirming her already-stated views on the sensitive topic, come as various reports have suggested the Trump administration may be considering aerial strikes on cartel targets — and that the administration is prepared to act unilaterally if Washington cannot secure Mexican support.
On Tuesday NBC News cited six current and former U.S. officials saying that the Trump administration was weighing drone strikes in Mexico “to combat criminal gangs trafficking narcotics across the southern border.”
The Trump White House has already designated six Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move that Mexico opposed vociferously. Many in Mexico viewed the designation as moving the United States toward its first military strike on neighboring Mexico in more than a century.
Sheinbaum has agreed to stepped-up military and Central Intelligence Agency surveillance flights over Mexico in a bid to gather intelligence on cartel operations, officials have said.
But military strikes would probably cross a red line and could trigger a sharp deterioration in U.S.-Mexico relations — and, experts say, could result in curtailed cooperation in battling illegal immigration and drug smuggling, and resolving other cross-border issues.
“Unilateral U.S. strikes on Mexican soil would be devastating for the bilateral relations and could be detrimental to the objective of fighting drug cartels,” Gustavo A. Flores-Macías, professor of government at Cornell University, wrote via email.
“The Mexican government would face tremendous domestic pressure to respond in the strongest possible terms — including severing diplomatic relations with the U.S. and collapsing binational cooperation on migration and security, among other topics,” wrote Flores-Macías.
The issue of U.S interference is an extremely sensitive one in a country that lost more than half of its national territory — including present-day California — in the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, a conflict widely viewed here as act of U.S. imperial aggression. Mexico also endured 20th century incursions, including the 1914 U.S. military occupation of the port of Veracruz and the unsuccessful 1916-17 expedition to capture Gen. Francisco “Pancho” Villa, the Mexican revolutionary leader.
Although drone strikes would undoubtedly produce the kind of kinetic optics that President Trump favors, experts have questioned their use against Mexican cartels — highly atomized operations that often produce clandestine drugs in primitive laboratories that can be easily replaced.
Sheinbaum has won widespread praise at home and abroad for her administration’s “cool-headed” talks with the Trump administration on the contentious issue of tariffs. The White House has imposed duties on imports of automobiles, steel and aluminum from Mexico, but has largely maintained the free-trade regimen of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, signed in 2020, during Trump’s first White House term.
But Trump has also charged that Mexico is “essentially run by the cartels” — an assertion rejected by Sheinbaum, who has said that Mexico would defend its sovereignty against “violations by land, sea or air.”
Under the leadership of Sheinbaum, who took office in October, Mexico has stepped up actions against organized crime, arresting scores of alleged traffickers, making record busts of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and shipping 29 purported cartel capos to the United States to face trial. She has quietly dropped the “hugs not bullets” approach of her predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who reduced U.S.-Mexico coordination on anti-drug efforts and was widely criticized for not taking a more aggressive stance toward cartels that dominate wide swaths of Mexican territory.
Trump has praised Sheinbaum’s actions, calling her a “marvelous woman.” But the U.S. president has still still insisted that the United States should “wage war” against drug cartels.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
