Mexico City – The US military forces will not attack Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum promised Friday in response to the reports that President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to take measures against Latin American drug cartels.
“There will be no invasion: that is rejected, absolutely rejected,” Sheinbaum told journalists at their regular press conference in the morning. “The United States will not come to Mexico with troops.”
The media accounts, originated in the New York Times, revived the nationalist fears in a nation that has suffered invasions and monopming of land over the years, although none in more than a century.
Sheinbaum said Mexico had been informed that Trump was issuing such order, but “it has nothing to do with the Mexican territory.”
The Mexican leader repeated his mantra, that Mexico “cooperates and collaborates” with his northern neighbor in drug trafficking and other bilateral problems, but rejects any military presence of the United States or attacks on Mexican soil.
In May, Sheinbaum said he had rejected Trump's offer, made in one of the many telephone calls between the two leaders, direct military assistance from the United States.
“We can share information, but we will never accept the presence of the United States Army in our territory,” said Sheinbaum told Trump in May. “Our territory is inalienable; sovereignty is inalienable.”
It is not clear what countries could be an objective for an American operation, but in an interview on Thursday with the Word Eternal television network, the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that, apart from Mexico, there are posters in Venezuela, Guatemala and Ecuador.
Rubio said the posters were no longer only a problem of application of the law, but a national security problem. “We cannot continue treating these types as local street gangs,” he said. “They have armament that resembles what terrorists have, in some cases, armies,”.
In Mexico, the fears that US forces can attack Mexican territory have been growing since the Trump administration formally labeled six Mexican posters as foreign terrorist organizations. Many in Mexico see the designation as a prelude to unilateral attacks of the Pentagon in the supposed poster objectives.
Trump has been complementary to Sheinbaum, but has denounced what he alleges that is an “intolerable alliance” between the Government of Mexico and organized crime.
Sheinbaum has rejected US claims that organized crime permeate the Government of Mexico and control vast strips of Mexican territory.
Trump has already imposed 25% tariffs on many imports from Mexico, the main commercial partner of Washington, which according to him aims to force the authorities here to make more to stop the traffic of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid blame for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States.
The Trump administration has also increased US flights on and near the Mexican territory and has concentrated US troops on the southwest border in an effort to take energetic measures against drug smuggling and unauthorized immigration.
But Mexico is not the only nation where the Pentagon could consider surprising drug cartels. Venezuela could also be found in American military while Washington expands its saber hair removal against the South American nation.
On Thursday, the Trump administration said it was doubling its existing reward, at $ 50 million, for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, an adversary that faces drug trafficking charges in the United States.
The United States Department of State calls Maduro a “leader” of the Venezolan -based Los Suns poster, which the Trump administration has labeled with a terrorist group.
Washington also accused Maduro of links to the Sinaloa poster of Mexico, which is among the crime unions that the administration has labeled with a foreign terrorist organization.
On Friday, Sheinbaum told journalists that the Mexican authorities had not seen evidence to connect Maduro with the Mafia de Sinaloa.
The Venezuelan authorities dismissed the positions of the United States against Maduro as “political propaganda.”
Maduro returned to office in January after declaring victory in a 2024 election that critics called Rigged and was widely rejected by the international community. Washington does not recognize Maduro as the president of Venezuela.
The special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
