Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has once again rejected the prospect of United States military intervention on her country’s soil, despite increasing threats from her counterpart, Donald Trump.
In her morning news conference on Tuesday, Sheinbaum was asked about Trump’s statements a day prior, when he expressed displeasure with Mexico and mused about taking forceful action.
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“It’s not going to happen,” Sheinbaum replied in Spanish.
She proceeded to explain that she had made her position clear “many times” in telephone conversations with Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
“He has suggested on several occasions or has said, ‘We offer you a United States military intervention in Mexico or whatever you need to combat criminal groups,’” she explained.
While she said she would accept collaboration and intelligence-sharing with the US military, she repeated her stance that no outside intervention would be allowed on Mexican soil.
“We do not accept an intervention by any foreign government,” Sheinbaum continued. “I’ve told him on the phone. I’ve said it with the State Department, with Marco Rubio.”
A response to Trump
Her comments come on the heels of an Oval Office meeting between Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Monday. The Republican president used the public appearance to address his expanding military campaign against drug cartels and criminal networks in Latin America.
When a reporter asked if he was considering “potentially launching strikes in Mexico”, Trump answered in the affirmative.
“To stop drugs? It’s OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” Trump said. “I looked at Mexico City over the weekend. This is some big problems over there.”
He then made a reference to the US bombing campaign that began on September 2.
At least 21 deadly missile strikes have been conducted against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 83 people.
United Nations officials and other legal experts have denounced the military campaign as an illegal form of extrajudicial killing.
Trump, however, suggested the campaign could eventually include strikes on land-based targets in Mexico.
“ If we had to, would we do there what we’ve done to the waterways? You know, there’s almost no drugs coming into our waterways any more,” Trump continued.
“ Would I do that on the land corridors? I would absolutely. Look, every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives, not to mention the destruction of families.”
While Trump has repeatedly used that number — 25,000 — to justify the boat bombing campaign, there is no factual basis for that figure.
Provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that fatal drug overdoses have declined in recent years, with 73,960 deaths recorded during the 12-month period ending in April.
The Trump administration has also provided no definitive evidence to prove who was on board the bombed vessels, nor that they were linked to drug trafficking.
The identities of the victims remain largely unknown, though families in countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago have asserted that their loved ones disappeared after the attacks. Some have claimed their relatives were only fishermen.
Two survivors were repatriated in October, one to Colombia and another to Ecuador, the latter of which released the man without charging him with a crime.
Trump has long threatened to broaden his bombing campaign to include land-based targets. But he declined to say whether he would ask permission before striking Mexico, should he choose to do so.
“ I wouldn’t answer that question,” he told a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday. “I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand.”
He later added, “ Let me just put it this way. I am not happy with Mexico.”
Framing cartels as ‘enemy combatants’
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has claimed extraordinary powers to justify his increasingly aggressive actions against drug cartels, going so far as to claim the US is in a state of war with traffickers.
Only Congress can formally declare war in the US. But in August, Trump reportedly signed a secret order allowing the military to take action against the cartels, leading to renewed fears in Mexico.
Sheinbaum, at the time, told her constituents there would be “no invasion”.
Then, on October 2, Trump issued a memo to Congress asserting that Latin American cartels were “enemy combatants” in a “non-international armed conflict”, laying out his administration’s legal argument for the ongoing attacks in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Trump has also categorised various drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations” throughout his second term, though that designation alone does not justify military action under international and domestic law.
In Monday’s Oval Office remarks, Trump reiterated his position that he viewed the US as being in an armed conflict.
“ We know the addresses of every drug lord. We know their address. We know their front door. We know everything about every one of them. They’re killing our people. That’s like a war,” Trump said.
The US has a long and controversial history of military intervention in Latin America, and in recent years, there has been renewed interest on the US right to send armed forces into Mexico.
In 2023, for example, then-presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, a prominent Republican leader, said he would deploy US special forces across the border to Mexico to fight drug-trafficking cartels.
“And I will do it on day one,” DeSantis told Fox News at the time, musing on his plans for the presidency.
Fears that Trump could spearhead such an action stretch back to his first term, from 2017 to 2021, when he first considered using the “foreign terrorist organisation” designation.
Then-Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor, likewise had to quell concerns that Trump would pursue foreign intervention as a result.
On Tuesday, Sheinbaum echoed Lopez Obrador and denied that any US intervention was on the table.
“There is collaboration, and there is coordination,” Sheinbaum replied. “But there is no subordination, nor can we allow an intervention.”
