A group of 72 House Democrats recently forwarded a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning that any unilateral military action against Mexico would be “disastrous” and “would destroy trust, eviscerate cooperation with Mexican authorities, and make it harder to keep drugs out of the communities we represent.”
The letter also specifically denounced comments made by Trump during an appearance on Fox News just hours after the U.S. invaded Venezuela and seized President Nicolás Maduro in which Trump brazenly threatened military action against Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Trump would reiterate a similar threat on January 8th on Fox News when he told Sean Hannity that the United States was “going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels,” adding that “the cartels are running Mexico.”
Trump’s fixation with military strikes in Mexico is, of course, nothing new.
On November 3rd, NBC News reported that the Trump administration had started “detailed planning for a new mission to send American troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to target drug cartels.” Although, at the time, a deployment was not “imminent,” according to the sources cited in the article, the “early stages of training for the potential mission, which would include ground operations inside Mexico” had already started.
Trump’s fixation with conducting some type of military strike in Mexico 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 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 Rolling Stone article published in May of 2024, to “deploy American assassination squads into Mexico” if reelected.
And, during the interval after Trump had won reelection and before he assumed office, 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.
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 larger 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.
And, by early February of 2025, Trump had started to openly accuse the Mexican government of maintaining an “intolerable alliance“ with Mexican cartels and, during his congressional address on March 4th, Trump once again invoked the prospect of military action in Mexico when he declared that it’s “time for America to wage war on the cartels.”
Unfortunately, in season two of the Trump Show, there’s no one around to really stop Trump from pursuing his belligerent and reckless agenda in Mexico. Gone are the days of Mark Esper, John Bolton, and Mark Milley. At this point, every top official in the Trump administration of relevance to this situation has made it abundantly clear that they too support the use of military force in Mexico.
The effort to forward the letter was led by Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Notable signatories of the letter include Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, Greg Casar, D-Texas, Adelita S. Grijalva, D-Ariz., Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., and Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M.
Some conspicuous absences from the list of signatories include Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the House minority leader, Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
