Reinforcement of border security with troops of the Mexican National Guard is part of the agreement with the US to stop the fentanyl trade
and illegal migration. Photo: Luis Perea/Xinhua/dpa/picture alliance
One week after reinforcing security on the northern border at the request of US President Donald Trump, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum presented the first results: 139 arrests, 82 weapons and a ton of different drugs seized. It seems like a success at first glance.
However, US pressure on the Mexican government, which Trump accuses of having an “intolerable alliance” with drug cartels, has a militaristic vision that can worsen the structural problem of violence and impunity in Mexico, warn experts consulted by DW.
Betting on Failed Militarization
“The Trump government is betting on militarization,” security expert Falko Ernst told DW. “That means responding to violence with violence. The experience of the last decades has shown that this is counterproductive,” says the criminologist, who was a representative of the Crisis Group organization in Mexico.
Ernesto López Portillo, coordinator of the citizen security program at the Universidad Iberoamericana, laments in an interview with DW the lack of data and objectives in the deployment of 10,000 elements of the National Guard on the border. “There are no details of the president’s instructions, nor of the deployment, nor of the strategy,” criticizes the researcher. “We face opacity.”
The academic community also has serious doubts about the effectiveness of using the National Guard to combat organized crime. According to the Ibero balance based on data from 2022, each Guard member arrested 0.071 people per year compared to the 1.6 people arrested by each member of the State Police.
Hunting Migrants, Not Criminals
Many detainees, in addition, were migrants, highlights Lisa Sánchez, general director of the civil organization Mexico United Against Crime. “The National Guard was used throughout the last six-year term as a border patrol with the eminent task of detaining migrants and not preventing and investigating crime, which is its institutional objective.”
Estimates from the citizen organization, with more than two decades of experience, indicate more than 800,000 migrants detained during the entire term of the previous Government (2018-2024).
Sending elements of the Civil Guard to the border may be an effective short-term negotiation strategy, Sánchez admits, but it comes at a cost: neglecting citizen security in other regions. “In the end, we enter a vicious circle, the more you use them against migrants, the less you have for security functions, the more crime rises and the more pressure there will be from the US.”
Opening the Door to Interventionism
Regarding another of Trump’s strategies – the declaration of the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels as terrorist groups – analysts agree that this opens the possibility for the US of more interventionism and unilateral military operations in Mexican territory, although this is not immediate or automatic.
The declaration first affects the legal order in the US, says political scientist Sánchez, with the possibility of trials in absentia and a reversal of the burden of proof for third parties suspected of supporting these organizations. “But, in itself, it does not authorize extraterritoriality.”
However, it increases the pressure on Mexico, especially if seen in the current political context. “The new US ambassador is an intelligence specialist and the Mexican Senate will soon authorize the entry of a group of Marines (elite US soldiers) to train Mexican soldiers,” recalls López Portillo.
“There is extreme pressure from the US, legally backed up to be able to carry out operations, perhaps jointly, perhaps covert, clandestine and unilateral,” she warns.
The Danger of Destabilizing Mexico
Falko Ernst considers it a dangerous strategy: “This approach could destabilize Mexico, as shown by the example of Sinaloa.” In that northern state, controlled by the Cartel —which bears the name of the entity, the homeland of the organization’s bosses—, U.S. agents set a trap for one of the bosses, Mayo Zambada, in July of last year, taking him directly to the U.S. in an undercover operation with alleged collaboration from the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, founder of that drug trafficking mafia.
Since then, an open war has broken out between the different factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has seriously affected public life and the economy in the state’s capital, Culiacán. “The same could happen in other places,” warns Ernst, and recalls that to combat transnational organized crime, a strategy of cooperation is needed. “Unilateral action only destroyed trust.”
How should Sheinbaum react then? Raymundo Riva Palacio, general director of the digital newspaper Eje Central and one of the best experts on bilateral security relations, has some advice: “Trump seems to be asking for a head to sell it internally as the success of his pressure on Sheinbaum,” he writes in his weekly column. “And the president would have to change her way of thinking and understand that MORENA blood must flow – from another party it would seem to be scapegoating – to show that she is serious about the fight against cartels and fentanyl,” he points out in reference to the ruling party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).
In other words, something like a test of good faith, proof that Sheinbaum is willing to attack the complicity between politicians and drug traffickers that, in the view of the ruling team in the US, have been reinforced in the last six-year term of her predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Original article by Sandra Weiss, Deutsche Welle, February 17, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.