US President Donald Trump says he has been speaking with Mexico about a potential military intervention.
Published On 18 Nov 2025
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United States President Donald Trump says he may expand his unprecedented strikes against Latin American drug cartels to include Mexico, the Reuters news agency and the TV network NBC report.
“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand,” he told reporters at the Oval Office on Monday. “We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways, but we know every route.”
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Trump did not say how or when such strikes could take place. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has previously stated her opposition to any such attacks on her country’s soil.
Jeff Garmany, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Melbourne, told Al Jazeera opposition from Mexico City may fall on deaf ears. “There are several legal hurdles standing in the way, some of which are domestic and others of which are international. There are also basic protocols of international diplomacy that, while perhaps not bound by law, are generally respected by UN member states,” he said.
“But nothing about Trump’s second presidency suggests he would adhere to these laws and protocols. So, no, I’d be surprised if Trump would wait for President Sheinbaum’s sign-off if he really wants to carry out strikes in Mexico,” he continued.
Trump’s remarks came two weeks after NBC, quoting two government officials, reported that the White House was preparing for the early stages of a ground operation in Mexico that would be jointly run with US intelligence agencies. The report said the operation would focus on drone strikes against drug labs in Mexico and cartel members.
In his remarks on Monday at the White House, Trump suggested the US already has a shortlist of targets. “We know every route. We know the addresses of every drug lord,” Trump told reporters. “We know their address. We know their front door. We know everything about every one of them.”
He described the situation as “like a war” because cartels were killing “hundreds of thousands” of Americans with drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and fentanyl.
Garmany told Al Jazeera that US strikes in Mexico could likely amount to very little due to the strength of the drug cartels there. The Mexican government has itself been embroiled in a long-running and deadly conflict after declaring a “war” on drugs 20 years ago.
“Mexico’s cartels are some of the strongest and most organised criminal organisations in the world. They have extensive resources and occupy a unique geographic position, lying between the US and the rest of Latin America. Carrying out targeted military strikes would be more of a PR stunt than anything else. It won’t stop one of the world’s most lucrative illegal supply chains,” he said.
Since retaking office in January, Trump has used executive orders and legal loopholes to justify military action against drug cartels without the approval of Congress. They include designating six drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations”, which means the White House can justify military strikes as a matter of national security.
Since September, the White House has launched at least 20 strikes on boats that it said were transporting drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at least 80 people, although it has yet to provide public evidence of their ties to drug cartels like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration says the strikes are a “non-international armed conflict” aimed at “narcoterrorists” and “unlawful combatants”, reviving a controversial concept first coined during President George W Bush’s “war on terror” to justify actions against groups like al-Qaeda.
