President Claudia Sheinbaum warned Thursday that Mexico will never tolerate an invasion of its national sovereignty by the United States, following Washington’s designation of Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organisations.
“This cannot be an opportunity for the U.S. to invade our sovereignty,” she told the audience. “With Mexico it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration officially designated eight cartels as terrorist organisations. They include Mexico’s two largest drug trafficking organisations, the Jalisco New Generation and the Sinaloa cartels.
On his first day back in the White House, Mr. Trump issued an executive order stating that the cartels “constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organised crime.”
The move has sparked speculation about potential military action.
Elon Musk, a tech billionaire who has been given a prominent role in the Trump administration, stated on social media that the designation “means they are eligible for drone strikes.”
Experts, on the other hand, said that bombing Mexican cartels or sending troops across the border remained unlikely, though Mr. Trump’s unpredictable nature makes it impossible to rule out entirely.
According to Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, an analyst at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the concept “was once found in a niche, very much on the fringes, and now it is at the centre of the discussion.”
In 2022, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper told “60 Minutes” that during his first term, President Trump proposed firing missiles into Mexico to combat drug cartels. When Esper questioned the idea, Mr. Trump responded, “No one would know it was us.”
Mexico targets U.S. gun manufacturers
Sheinbaum also stated on Thursday that Mexico would carry out her promise to expand legal action against US gun manufacturers in the wake of Washington’s decision to designate cartels as terrorist organisations.
The Mexican government accuses US arms manufacturers of negligence in the sale of weapons that end up in the hands of drug traffickers, and Sheinbaum believes the lawsuit will result in a new charge of alleged complicity with terrorist groups.
Every year, “60 Minutes” reported that an estimated 200,000 to half a million American firearms are smuggled into Mexico.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, dozens of cartel gunrunning networks, which operate similarly to terrorist cells, pay Americans to purchase weapons from gun stores and online dealers across the country, as far north as Wisconsin and even Alaska.
The firearms are then transported across the Southwest border via a network of brokers and couriers.
Mexico has already filed a lawsuit in the United States against American arms manufacturers and vendors, seeking $10 billion in damages for their alleged involvement in criminal violence in the country.
Earlier this month, Sheinbaum reacted angrily to the United States’ accusation that her government has an alliance with drug cartels.
“We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Mexican government about alliances with criminal organisations,” the president stated on social media at the time.
“If there is such an alliance anywhere, it is in the U.S. gun shops that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups,” she informed us.
Last month, Sheinbaum launched a campaign to reduce the number of weapons on the country’s streets by offering cash to those who anonymously leave weapons at designated drop-off locations, such as churches.
