A Mexican delegation went to Washington yesterday to close a security agreement, while White House officials discuss a strategy to combat posters and stop drug flow through the border.
Within the White House, Donald Trump’s officials are immersed in a debate about whether to carry out military attacks against Mexican drug posters or, instead, collaborate with Mexican authorities to jointly dismantle criminal organizations.
On the one hand, they say several people familiar with the matter, some US officials advocate unilateral military action against the figures and poster infrastructure to stop drug flow through the border. On the other hand, these people say, some officials advocate greater collaboration with the Mexican government to guarantee, among other things, continued cooperation in the issue of migration.
In the conversations held so far, US officials have launched vague ultimatums and unclear political demands so that Mexico dismantles posters or faces the entire strength of Washington’s power, according to three people familiar with preliminary negotiations that were not authorized to speak publicly, which has caused confusion among Mexican officials. Much of the confusion is due to the existing division within the Trump government about the treatment of drug cartels, several of which were recently designated by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.
One of the sides is led by Sebastian Gorka, principal director of Contrarrorism of President Trump within the White House Security Council, according to three current and previous US officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. Gorka, a Trump’s combative defender, has been working with a former officer of the Joint Special Operations Command, which supervises special military operations highly secret, in an effort to boost the use of US military power to end the Mexican drug lords and their operations on the ground, the current and previous officials said.
The White House National Security Council, led by Stephen Miller, has adopted a more prudent position. Miller has made a solid group of federal officials in charge of enforcing the law, who have great experience in investigating, processing and directing capture operations against cartels with local counterpart leaders.
According to two people familiar with the conversations, Miller’s most measured approach is due to the concern that going too hard against the posters could cancel the broader cooperation with Mexican forces in one of their main emblematic policies: preventing migrants from reaching the US border.
Discontent
The Mexican delegation arrived only a few days before Trump said he will impose a 25 percent tariff to Mexican imports as retaliation because the Mexican government does not do enough to counteract the Fentanyl flow, and so he held them yesterday.
The draft of the security frame, which will lay the foundations for future cooperation, currently asks for more arrests from posters leaders and the creation of more Mexican units examined by US security forces to combat from money laundering to the fight against drug groups on the ground, according to three people familiar with it. It is also expected to address migration and border.
What is at stake for Mexico could not be greater. When the State Department appointed six Mexican posters as terrorist organizations earlier this month, that action established the possibility that pentagon and intelligence resources were deployed against drug traffickers, if Washington decided to do so.
As the calls of Trump government officials increase in favor of a military solution for posters and to combat drug trafficking, in particular the fentanyl, the Mexican government has strongly opposed.
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has demanded that any American military action against the posters be carried out in cooperation with Mexican forces and has promised to protect Mexico’s sovereignty.
On Tuesday, Sheinbaum said at a press conference that his government does not want to “have operations in our country with their strength,” referring to US authorities and added that there is currently a wide exchange of intelligence and information with them.
In Mexico there is “coordination and collaboration, but never subordination, never invasion,” he said. Sheinbaum added that his government would seek amendments to the Constitution to stop the work of foreign agents in Mexico, in order to guarantee that they do not operate independently.
In an effort to help the Mexican government, the CIA has intensified the secret flights of unmanned aircraft on the country, although the agency has not been authorized to use unmanned planes to carry out any lethal action on their own, according to the officials. For now, the agents of the CIA in Mexico have been transmitting the information collected by the drones to Mexican officials.
The North Command of the US Army is also expanding its border surveillance, but unlike the CIA, it is not entering the Mexican airspace.
“Sovereignty is not negotiable, that is a basic principle,” said Sheinbaum at a press conference earlier this month, after The New York Times revealed the flights of unmanned airplanes of the CIA.
The Mexican forces have intensified their fight against the posters in the middle of the flood of Trump’s threats, hoping to placate Washington and demonstrate that they are members willing and capable of the war against the posters.
In the state of Sinaloa, the Neuralgic Center of the most powerful criminal organization in Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Mexican government has carried out high -level arrests, dismantling drug laboratories and narcotic seizures that have disrupted fentanyl production operations.
In December, the Mexican authorities also seized more than 20 million doses of fentanil in Sinaloa, the greatest seizure of opiates in their history.
On Tuesday, the Mexican Secretary of Defense said that American non -manned planes had been used to stop high positions of the Sinaloa Cartel. Recently, the Mexican authorities announced the arrest of José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza, who was said to be the right hand of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, son of the famous drug trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo.
Canobbio Inzunza was charged in the United States in November accused of smuggling of fentanyl in American cities such as Chicago, where two of the younger brothers of Iván Guzmán – Joaquín and Ovidio Guzmán López – also face positions.
But if the United States presses Mexico too much, it could reverse decades of cooperation between the two nations, they have warned analysts and ex -demonstrators. Even before Trump was re -elected, the ties between the United States and Mexico around the drug cartels were already tense.
This summer, the Mexican authorities were outraged by what they considered a direct American involvement in the kidnapping of one of the most powerful drug lords in the country, Ismael Zambada García, who was transferred by force to the other side of the border, where he was arrested by US federal agents near El Paso. Despite the US statements that the kidnapping was carried out by one of the children of the Chapo without American help on the field, the Mexican authorities demanded that the Department of Justice give more answers.
The episode of Zambada García, who faces in Brooklyn a wide accusation of drug trafficking, occurred only a few years after another breakdown of relations between the United States and Mexico in which the cartels were involved.
In October 2020, agents of the US Security Forces arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos, former Mexican Defense Secretary, accused of having received bribes from a violent Mexican cartel.
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At its highest levels, the Mexican government reacted with a demonstration of collective anger that practically paralyzed the joint anti -narcotics operations of the USA and Mexico. By order of William Barr, then the Attorney General, the Federal Prosecutors of Brooklyn finally dismissed the charges against General Cienfuegos and sent him back to Mexico.