Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated on Friday that the U.S. military will not enter Mexican territory, following reports that U.S. President Donald Trump had instructed the Pentagon to target drug cartels.
“The United States will not come to Mexico with its army,” she said. “We will continue cooperation and coordination, but there will be no invasion. This scenario is absolutely ruled out.”
The American newspaper The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump had secretly signed an order to begin deploying U.S. military forces abroad.
In a statement to the BBC, the White House did not directly address this order but emphasized that Trump’s top priority is “the defense of the homeland.”
The reported order appears to follow another executive order signed earlier this year by the U.S. president, which officially designates eight drug cartels as terrorist entities — six of them originating from Mexico.
Speaking to reporters, Sheinbaum stressed that the Mexican government was aware of the executive order concerning drug cartels and that “it has absolutely nothing to do with the participation of military personnel.”
“It is not part of any agreement — far from it. Whenever it has been brought up as a possibility, we have always said ‘NO,’” Sheinbaum added.
Earlier this year, the Mexican president told reporters that Trump’s decision to classify cartels as terrorist organizations “cannot be seen as an opportunity for the U.S. to undermine our sovereignty.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that this designation would help the United States strike at the cartels, including through intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense.
“We must start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not merely as drug trafficking groups,” Rubio stated.
