Mexico City – The Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, arrived in Mexico on Friday to meet with President Claudia Sheinbaum and members of her cabinet at a delicate time in relations between the United States and Mexico.
Noem arrived in the Mexican capital in the final stage of a Latin American trip of three nations that included stops in Colombia and El Salvador.
It is NOEM's first official trip to a region that has attracted an intense scrutiny of the Trump administration due to its connections with fundamental problems: immigration, drug trafficking and trade.
Noem and Sheinbaum and his team met for more than two hours in the National Palace, Mexican media reported, but there were no details available immediately about what they discussed.
The Swing of three Nations of Noem, the authorities said, focused on the efforts to frustrate illegal immigration, go to transnational criminal groups and combat the smuggling of illicit drugs, including fentanyl, synthetic opioid guilty for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States.
Mexico is a fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs to the United States. The nation is also an important important traffic zone for South American cocaine for the voracious US market.
Before meeting Noem, Sheinbaum told reporters that he would inform the United States Head of Security about “coordination and collaboration” that his administration has embarked with Washington.
Sheinbaum has launched a security offensive that has seen the arrest of hundreds of alleged smuggers and drug producers, the demolition of numerous clandestine laboratories and record seizures of fentanyl and other drugs.
He has also sent more than two dozen drugs to the United States to face justice, without going through regular extradition procedures and sent 10,000 troops to the northern border of Mexico to help deter illegal immigration and contraband.
While Trump has praised Sheinbaum's efforts, bilateral relations between the two American neighbors are suffering tense time.
Sheinbaum desperately seeks to avoid Trump's plans to impose punishment rates for Mexican imports to the United States. The economy of Mexico, plunged into a slow growth and the confidence of investors, depends largely on cross -border trade, and the United States receives more than 80% of its exports. Many forecasts say that rates could submerge Mexico in a recession.
Trump has said he intends to institute a 25% rate on vehicles and auto parts imported from all countries, including Mexico. Sheinbaum is pressing for a wide exemption for all Mexican self-sector imports under the terms of the United States-México-Canadá agreement, the Free Trade Pact that entered into force in 2020, during Trump's first presidential mandate.
“This integration has existed for decades,” Sheinbaum said at his regular daily press conference before meeting with the US National Security Chief. “It is evident that any tariff will affect this integration that we have and both economies. It affects the United States and affects Mexico.”
The booming auto -industion plants of Mexico, which produce vehicles, components and pieces mainly for export to the United States, use more than 1 million people. Experts say that the availability of jobs in the automotive industry has been a key factor in deterring many Mexicans to emigrate to the United States.
While migration was on the table at the NOEM-SHEINBAUM meeting, it is not clear if the tariffs were discussed.
Another sensitive bilateral problem focuses on the decision of the Trump administration to designate half a dozen Mexican criminal posters as foreign terrorist organizations. Mexico opposed the measure, which many here see here as a prelude to a possible unilateral attack of the United States against posters, an action that would surely stimulate a strong nationalist reaction in a country that has historically suffered multiple US invasions, although none in more than a century.
In the absence of Noem's visit to Mexico was any public sighting of its Rolex of $ 50,000, an 18 -carat gold watch that caught attention and criticism on Wednesday while traveling a notorious Mega Prisbin in El Salvador.
Within the penitentiary, with a backdrop of very tattooed prisoners stacked behind bars, Noem followed X to deliver a warning.
“President Trump and I have a clear message for illegal criminal foreigners: go now,” he wrote. “If you are not leaving, we will hunt you, we will arrest and, and you could end up in this prison in El Salvadore.”
The Trump administration faces a judicial challenge about its decision to invoke a law of the 18th century, which previously only used in times of war, to deport dozens of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they were sent to the mega prison known as the center of confinement of terrorism.
The relatives and lawyers of the expelled Venezuelans say that the US authorities set aside due process and were based on weak evidence, including tattoos and publications on social networks, to designate migrants as members of the train gang of Aragua and fly them to El Salvador.
In El Salvador, Noem dodged the questions about whether Venezuelans could leave the Salvadoran block or if they would be taken back to the United States, if a judge ordered his return.
“We are going to let the courts develop,” Noem told reporters.
The special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
