The Washington Post recently reported that officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration “advocated for a series of military strikes in Mexico” during the opening days of Trump’s second term.
As noted in the article, “DEA officials suggested both targeted killings of cartel leadership” along with “attacks on [cartel] infrastructure” within Mexico.
Derek S. Maltz was the DEA’s acting administrator at the time of these early conversations, and he openly admitted to the Post that he had been “in favor of hitting the production labs and command control leaders in Mexico” since Trump’s first term in office.
The discussion of U.S. military strikes in Mexico is, of course, nothing new.
Trump’s fixation with this idea was evident as early as the summer of 2020 during his first term in office, when, on at least two separate occasions, he asked Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary at the time, about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico.
This fixation would reemerge during his campaign for a second presidential term, when, as reported by Rolling Stone, Trump tasked his policy advisers with developing “a range of military options” in Mexico including strikes that were “not sanctioned by Mexico’s government.” He would also vow, according to a subsequent Rolling Stone article published in May of 2024, to “deploy American assassination squads into Mexico” if reelected.
And, according to a third Rolling Stone article on this particular topic published in November during the interval after Trump had won reelection, Trump reportedly advised confidants and various GOP lawmakers of his intention to deliver an ultimatum to Mexican officials warning them that if they failed to stem the flow of fentanyl to America they would face American military reprisals.
Not surprisingly, one of Trump’s first official acts at the start of his second term in office was the theatrical signing of an executive order initiating the process by which certain Mexican drug cartels could be designated as terrorist organizations. This executive order laid the groundwork for the formal designation of the Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Noreste (formerly Los Zetas), La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Cártel del Golfo (Gulf Cartel), and Cárteles Unidos as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists by the State Department on February 20th.
Most recently, in early August, Trump issued a directive to the Pentagon to prepare a set of options to “begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration has deemed terrorist organizations.” This directive is clearly applicable to a number of cartels in Mexico.
To date, however, the Trump administration has refrained from directly attacking Mexican cartels within Mexico.
One possible reason for this restraint was offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio who, while on an official visit to Ecuador on September 4th, explained that the United States would not use lethal force in “cooperative” countries that proactively advanced the administration’s counternarcotics objectives.
A day earlier, while on an official visit to Mexico, Rubio characterized Mexico’s security cooperation as “the closest security cooperation we have ever had, maybe with any country, but certainly in the history of U.S.-Mexico relations.”
During Rubio’s visit, the U.S. and Mexico availed themselves of the opportunity to issue a joint statement announcing a new “high-level consultation” framework for dealing with narcotics interdiction.
Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that this tenuous state of affairs could easily change.
According to reporting by the New York Times, there’s apparently a hardline faction within the Trump administration, led by Sebastian Gorka, the senior director for counterterrorism within the White House National Security Council, that openly favors the direct use of the U.S. military in Mexico without the cooperation of Mexican security forces.
But it’s not just this hardline faction that is open to unilateral attacks in Mexico.
Even Rubio, who has stated a preference for working collaboratively with Mexico and who has praised the Mexican government for its interdiction efforts, has not ruled out unilateral military attacks in Mexico.
Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, has also refused to rule out the possibility of unilateral U.S. military strikes in Mexico during his confirmation hearing in March before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And, as a number of analysts have explained, simply dismissing all of the aggressive rhetoric emanating from the Trump administration as mere political theater would be a mistake.
According to Phil Boas, an opinion columnist for the Arizona Republic, Trump’s executive order transferring control of a strip of land along the Mexican border to the U.S. military is about a lot more than simply apprehending undocumented migrants. It’s ultimately, as argued by Boas, a prelude to “staging operations against the cartels.”
James Bosworth, in an article unambiguously entitled “Take Trump’s Threats of U.S. Military Action in Mexico Seriously,” similarly argues that the Trump administration is preparing for “an actual war” in Mexico with or without Mexico’s cooperation.
As Bosworth explains, the only discernible “division” that exists within the Trump administration, at this point, is not between those who are for or against the use of the U.S. military in Mexico. Instead, the “big question” being debated within the administration, according to Bosworth, is “whether the Mexican government should be asked to be a partner in these offensive operations or if the U.S. should launch them unilaterally without consulting Mexico first.”
In late April, as reports surfaced of a heavily armed Mexican army patrol accidentally crossing into the United States and confronting two Americans exploring the remote Bootheel area of New Mexico, I had the opportunity to consult directly with Ioan Grillo who has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the most experienced journalists covering organized crime in Mexico.”
Although Grillo believed at that point that the threat of a U.S. military strike on Mexican territory had been mitigated by the efficacy of the Mexican government’s interdiction efforts, he acknowledged that “things could change very quickly.” All it would take, he warned, is one random “incident” to “spark things up” and provoke a larger and perhaps more serious confrontation in Mexico.
