Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum assured this Friday that the United States military will not intervene within Mexican territory. According to a publication in The New York Times, US President Donald Trump has issued a secret executive order that allows the use of the Armed Forces to carry out direct operations in foreign territory against"certain Latin American drug cartels that his Administration has declared terrorist organizations."
"The United States is not going to come to Mexico with its military; there will be no invasion," she emphatically emphasized in her morning press conference,"that is absolutely ruled out." The president conceded that such an intervention has been requested in some of the talks with the United States."When they've raised it, we've told them no, that we can collaborate in other ways, but not that."
Sheinbaum commented that US authorities had already informed her of the impending executive order and assured her that it "had nothing to do with the participation of any military personnel or any institution" on Mexican territory."We'll see how the executive order is, but there's no risk of them intervening in our territory," she reiterated before closing the press conference.
The decision to involve the US military in this fight is the most aggressive step taken by the Trump administration in its escalation against the cartels, the American newspaper says. It notes that Trump is willing to use military forces in what he considers his greatest security responsibility: stemming the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States.
Last February, the White House officially added several criminal cartels to its list of terrorist organizations. Six of them—the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generación, the United Cartels, the Northwest Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana—are Mexican, along with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha, both of which have a presence in Mexico. In July, the Venezuelan Cartel of the Suns was added, and its leader is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This Thursday, his bounty was doubled to $50 million and he was accused of having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to the newspaper, U.S. military officials are already preparing options for how they might conduct operations against the cartels, but they are concerned about the legal implications of conducting attacks on foreign soil outside of a Congress-sanctioned armed conflict against civilians who pose no direct threat, even if they are suspected criminals.
When these six Mexican cartels were designated terrorist organizations, President Sheinbaum warned that it should not be"an opportunity for the United States to invade our sovereignty." "They can name them whatever they want, but with Mexico it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination, never interference, and even less so invasion," she added. The Mexican government criticized the White House for making these initial designations unilaterally and expressed concern precisely because U.S. laws protect counterterrorism operations abroad even if they violate international law.
Since Donald Trump's return to power in January 2025, in addition to their phone calls, the two presidents have engaged in a sort of dialogue through public statements on security and tariffs. In May, when Trump announced that he had raised the possibility of sending troops to Mexico to combat the cartels with Sheinbaum, the president replied that she had declined in"defense of national sovereignty." In his usual style, Trump replied that she was paralyzed by her fear of criminals. A few days later, after learning of the court agreement for drug trafficker Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín"El Chapo" Guzmán and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, to become a cooperating witness, Sheinbaum joked that they had violated the doctrine that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.
