Mexico rejects Trump’s reported military plan against Latin American drug cartels

Mexico said the American soldiers would not enter its territory following reports that President Donald Trump had ordered the Pentagon to target the Latin American drug cartels.

“The United States will not come to Mexico with the military,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there will not be an invasion. This is excluded, absolutely excluded.”

The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump had secretly signed a directive to start using military force on foreign soil.

In a declaration to the BBC, the White House did not address the directive but said that “Trump’s absolute priority was to protect the fatherland”.

The reported directive seems to follow a decree signed by Trump earlier this year, officially designating eight drug cartels as terrorist entities – including six Mexicans.

Speaking to journalists, Sheinbaum said that the Mexican government had been informed that an order on the cartels would happen, and “that it had nothing to do with the participation of military staff”.

“This is not part of any agreement, far from it. When it was raised, we have always said” no “,” she said.

Earlier this year, Sheinbaum told journalists that Trump’s decision to designate cartels as terrorists “could not be an opportunity for the United States to invade our sovereignty.”

On Thursday, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio said that the designation would help the United States target cartels, including through intelligence agencies and the Ministry of Defense.

“We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not just drug trafficking organizations,” said Rubio.

The New York Times report indicates that the directive signed by Trump provides “an official basis for the possibility of direct military operations” against cartels, both in sea and on foreign soil.

In recent months, Mexico has worked with the United States to slow down the illegal flow of migrants and drugs through the American-Mexican border.

June saw the lowest recorded border crossings ever recorded, according to American customs and border protections, and last week, the American ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson said that fentanyl convulsions on the border were more than half.

In an article on X, Johnson celebrated the collaboration between Sheinbum and Trump, writing that their leadership had trained cartels “and that our countries are safer because of this”.