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drug cartels
Amid Threats of US Attack, Sheinbaum Tells Trump to Get a Grip on Illegal Guns, Drugs
“The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos," said Mexico's president.
Mar 09, 2026
Amid months of threats by US leaders to attack drug gangs in Mexico, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum slapped back Monday against President Donald Trump's assertion that her country is the "epicenter" of cartel violence by urging him to stem the flow of illegal arms across the border—and domestic demand for illicit narcotics.
“If the flow of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico were stopped, these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities,” Sheinabum said during her daily press briefing, citing a 2025 US Department of Justice report showing that approximately 3 in 4 guns used by Mexican criminal organizations were illicitly trafficked across the international border.
“There’s a very important aspect that needs to be addressed, which is reducing drug use in the United States,” she added.
In a separate interview with W Radio, Sheinbaum took aim at Trump's Saturday speech at his so-called "Shield of the Americas" summit with mostly right-wing Latin American leaders, during which he called Mexico the "epicenter of cartel violence" and announced a "brand-new military coalition" to tackle drug gangs.
“The epicenter of cartel violence is not Mexico, it’s the United States,” she said. “The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos throughout Latin America.”
In the latest in a series of threats to attack criminal organizations in Mexico—a scenario vehemently opposed by the Mexican government and most Mexicans—Trump said Saturday that allied right-wing Latin American governments have made “a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.”
Mexicans are wary of US interventions, having lost half their national territory to the United States in an 1846-48 war that two US presidents—Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant—said was waged under false pretext to conquer territory and expand slavery. The US also invaded and briefly occupied the port city of Veracruz in 1914 and launched a punitive invasion targeting the revolutionary Pancho Villa's forces in 1916-17.
Sheinbaum's remarks came after Mexican troops, supported by US intelligence, killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel chief Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—known as “El Mencho”—during a raid last month. The operation sparked a wave of retaliatory cartel violence in some Mexican states.
Mexico has also arrested hundreds of suspected drug traffickers, destroyed numerous secret narcotics labs, and handed over dozens of alleged cartel criminals to US authorities in recent months.
Last year, the US Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against US gun manufacturers, unanimously ruling that Mexico did not plausibly show the companies aided and abetted illegal arms sales.
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US-Backed Killing of Cartel Boss Unleashes Wave of Violence Across Mexico
The killing of Mexico's top cartel leader, known as "El Mencho," has created a power struggle that "could plunge Mexico into almost record levels of violence," said one expert.
Feb 23, 2026
With support from the US, Mexican security forces killed one of the nation's most powerful cartel bosses on Sunday. Almost immediately, the country descended into violence and chaos.
The killing of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—known as "El Mencho"—has set off a violent power struggle within the organization he led, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which has left civilians caught in the crossfire.
As NBC News reported on Sunday evening:
Cars set on fire by cartel members blocked roads in nearly a dozen Mexican states and left smoke billowing into the air. Jalisco’s capital, Guadalajara, was turned into a ghost town Sunday night as civilians hunkered down. Later, authorities announced they had cleared most of the more than 250 cartel roadblocks across 20 states.
Several Mexican states canceled school Monday, and local and foreign governments warned citizens to stay inside as violence erupted.
The sudden outbreak of violence has created a state of terror for many ordinary people in Mexico. One Guadalajara resident, Maria Medina, told Agence France-Presse that men with guns showed up at the gas station where she works, ordered everyone to leave, and set the building on fire.
"I thought they were going to kidnap us. I ran to a taco stand to take cover with the people there," Medina said.
The US State Department has urged Americans in parts of Mexico to “seek shelter and remain in residences or hotels.” Many flights out of the country have been canceled, leaving tourists stranded.
Visitors at the popular Jalisco beach resort of Puerto Vallarta have been forced into hiding as gunmen have taken over the streets.
One father in Seattle told the local news station Fox 13 that he received frightened texts from his daughter, who was visiting the area, around 3:30 in the afternoon, describing the chaos.
“The text she sent, talking about, ‘The whole city is on fire, and we are hiding at home,'" he said. "'The cartel are outside right now watching the citizens and making sure the military does not come in. The police are not here to help. We are hiding.’“
According to one open-source effort to map the fallout, at least 19 of Mexico's 32 states had seen outbreaks of violence as of Sunday evening.
So far, no civilian deaths have been confirmed. However, according to the Associated Press, at least 25 members of the National Guard have been killed since El Mencho's death.
United States forces were not reportedly involved in the operation that led to El Mencho's death. However, US fingerprints are all over the attack.
In a statement on Sunday night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the US "provided intelligence support to the Mexican government in order to assist with an operation" in which El Mencho was killed.
She added that "President [Donald] Trump has been very clear—the United States will ensure narcoterrorists sending deadly drugs to our homeland are forced to face the wrath of justice they have long deserved."
The attack comes after months of threats from Trump to use US military force to take out cartel leaders, against the wishes of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
At a press conference on Monday, Sheinbaum said that despite the previous day's chaos, "the country is at peace."
"We awoke today with no blockades,” she said. “All activity has practically been reestablished.”
Several news outlets have described the killing of El Mencho as a direct response to US sabre-rattling, which has ramped up following last month's operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
El Mencho, who founded CJNG around 2010, has been "public enemy number one" for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for nearly a decade, for his role in turning the cartel into a hyper-violent organization that coordinated global drug operations.
While CJNG has been considered one of the largest suppliers of Mexican fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine to the US—even greater than the more famous Sinaloa Cartel—experts say it’s unlikely that the killing of its 59-year-old kingpin will do much to solve the problem.
"What we've seen in the past is that the removal of the kingpin doesn't necessarily affect significant network disruption," Anthea McCarthy-Jones, an expert in Latin America at the University of New South Wales, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "The removal of the leader doesn't have any impact on the day-to-day relations and the relationships that facilitate this kind of global drug trafficking operation."
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau boasted that taking out “one of the bloodiest and most ruthless drug kingpins” was “a great development for Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world."
But David Mora, the senior Mexico analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG), said it will likely trigger more instability.
"In the absence of a direct succession, a power vacuum is created that opens the door to violent realignments within the organization," Mora told AFP.
Chris Dalby, an organized crime expert who has written a book about the Jalisco cartel, told The Guardian that this power struggle could culminate in a full-scale civil war if no successor emerges to fill El Mencho's shoes.
“If no one can, if the CJNG finally splinters, you have four or five different lieutenants with the manpower, the weaponry, and the criminal empires to build their own fiefdoms—and that could plunge Mexico into almost record levels of violence," said Dalby.
The explosion of violence and instability following the death of just one cartel leader has mirrored what critics warned may follow if the US attempted to bring about the “total elimination” of drug cartels using airstrikes and special operations forces.
"At best, US military strikes in Mexico will weaken the cartels over the short term," wrote fellows Daniel DePetris and Christopher McCallion in a July paper for the think tank Defense Priorities. "At worst, they will cause the cartels to splinter even further, spiking the level of violence, straining the Mexican government’s military resources, and causing significant blowback against Americans in both Mexico and the United States."
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‘A Significant Rupture’: Trump's Boat Bombing Spree Leads UK to Curb Intel-Sharing With US
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," revealed a CNN reporter.
Nov 11, 2025
President Donald Trump's policy of bombing purported drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which multiple legal experts have decried as an illegal act extrajudicial murder, is now meeting resistance from a top US ally.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the UK has now stopped sharing intelligence related to suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the US because the country does not want to be complicit in strikes that it believes violate international law.
CNN's sources say that the UK stopped giving the US information about boats in the region roughly a month ago, shortly after Trump began authorizing drone strikes against them in a campaign that so far has killed at least 76 people.
"Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, [and] cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights," explained CNN.
Last month, after his administration had already launched several strikes, Trump declared drug cartels enemy combatants and claimed he has the right to launch military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats.
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday to discuss the story, reporter Natasha Bertrand described the decision to stop sharing intelligence as "a really significant rupture" between the US and its closest ally.
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," Bertrand explained. "It really underscores the continued questions surrounding the legality of this US military campaign."
🚨HOLY SHIT: The UK - our closest ally since WWI - just cut off ALL intelligence sharing with the U.S. about Caribbean drug trafficking boats, calling the strikes illegal.
Britain doesn’t trust us anymore. Trump has torched a century of friendship while he sucks up to dictators. pic.twitter.com/E0Was3WrrY
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 11, 2025
The US military began its boat attacks in the Caribbean in September, and has since expanded them to purported drug boats operating in the Pacific Ocean.
Reporting last month from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the administration was also preparing to attack a variety of targets inside Venezuela, whose government Trump has baselessly accused of running drug cartels. Potential targets include “ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has now arrived off the coast of Latin America, in a move that the paper notes "has fueled speculation the Trump administration intends to dramatically escalate its deadly counternarcotics campaign there, possibly through direct attacks on Venezuela."
Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.
The administration's military aggression in Latin America has also sparked a fierce backlash in the region, where dozens of political leaders last month condemned the boat attacks, while also warning that they could just be the start of a regime change war reminiscent of Cold War-era US-backed coups like ones that occurred in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.
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