Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that efforts to crack down on Mexican cartels and slow migration north were showing “compelling results” in an effort to head off intervention talk by the Trump administration.
The comments come after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened action against Mexican drug cartels by U.S. forces last week. Mr. Trump told Fox News last week that the United States had “knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water” and that the U.S. was “going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels.” The Trump administration has also begun to add militarized zones to the southern border.
Sheinbaum, a leftist who boasts of taking on chaos with a “cool head,” has sought to placate Mr. Trump and, unlike Maduro, has worked to build out a strong relationship between the Mexican and U.S. governments. A dramatic United States military raid on Venezuela that deposed former president Nicolás Maduro in early January set much of Latin America on edge, fueling concern that Mr. Trump could soon turn American forces on other nations, particularly Cuba and Mexico.
On Thursday night, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Mexican Foreign Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente released a joint statement after a phone call, saying they agreed “more must be done to confront shared threats.”
Sheinbaum, mentioning the call on Friday in her morning press briefing, said that Mexico’s government had made significant progress cracking down on cartels, citing a steep drop in the homicide rate, much lower fentanyl seizures by U.S. authorities at the border and sparse migration. Mexican authorities seized over 1,500 pounds of methamphetamine from clandestine laboratories in the country earlier this week.
She noted it was a joint effort with the U.S.”There are very compelling results from the joint cooperation and the work that Mexico has been doing,” she said.
She reiterated her call for the United States to stop arms trafficking into Mexico and highlighted drug use in the U.S. as a key factor fueling cartel violence in Mexico.
“The other side also has to do its part. This consumption crisis they have over there also has to be addressed from a public health perspective, through education campaigns,” she said.
Sheinbaum and Mr. Trump also spoke by phone Monday. Sheinbaum said it was a “very good conversation.”
“We told him, so far it’s going very well, it’s not necessary, and furthermore there is Mexico’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and he understood,” she said.
