During the election campaign, Donald Trump threatened to send US troops to Mexico. This is how he wants to fight drug crime. However, if the worst comes to the worst, the civilian population could suffer.
Donald Trump almost never spared pithy words during his election campaign. However, the president-elect always came into his own when it came to one of his passion projects: migration policy. Trump often targeted Mexico. Millions of migrants who the Republican sees as criminals are to be deported – the majority of them come from the United States’ southern neighbor. And what’s more: Trump is threatening his neighbor with high import tariffs that would put the Mexican economy to the test.
But things became even more martial when it came to Trump’s drug policy. Military strikes against Mexican drug cartels are “absolutely” on the table, Trump said in an interview with Fox News in June. Trump claimed that 300,000 people die every year in the US from overdoses of the drug fentanyl, which is brought into the country from Mexico. His designated “border czar” Tom Homan threatened the cartels that Trump would give them “a lot of attention.” The Trump administration wants to “eliminate” the criminal organizations.
As head of the police and customs agency ICE, Homan is actually supposed to be responsible for protecting the border. The fact that he is now joining in with his future boss’s threats to the powerful Mexican drug cartels bodes ill. Over the past few decades, the US “war on drugs” has taken many turns. However, things have rarely worked out for the benefit of the people in Latin American countries.
According to Latin America expert Günther Maihold, the countries of South and Central America are often a kind of plaything in US politics. “Drug policy and its consequences for Latin American countries are mostly due to domestic political developments in the USA,” he says in an interview with t-online. While Joe Biden also saw drug policy as health policy, Trump sees it primarily as a security and migration problem. And he apparently doesn’t shy away from the most drastic measures.
Günther Maihold is a sociologist and political scientist. Maihold is currently an honorary professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin.
He previously worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica, among others. Maihold was deputy director of the Science and Politics Foundation until June 2023.
According to his own statement, Trump would resort to military means in the fight against the cartels even if Mexico did not agree to it. It would be a fatal disregard for the sovereignty of a state. During his first presidency, Trump is said to have considered missile strikes, according to his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Even some Republicans now believe that the idea of sending troops to Mexico is not unreasonable.
“It is extremely unlikely that Trump could send regular troops to Mexico,” says Maihold. Any intervention by the USA would have to be coordinated with Mexico – and “Mexico reacts very sensitively to violations of national sovereignty,” explains the expert. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the US President-elect will take a detour to intervene: “Trump could rely on private security companies.”
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This type of intervention cannot be dismissed completely out of hand. “In the past, Washington has sometimes ignored Mexico’s sovereignty,” said Maihold. “Trump will also simply create facts if he thinks it’s right.”
What Maihold means: Just last July, US officials arrested the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, who had been wanted for decades, at a small airport near the Texas city of El Paso. He was apparently lured into a trap by the son of the notorious drug lord “El Chapo”, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, in collaboration with the US authorities.
Mexico reacted angrily to its neighbor’s go-it-alone approach, demanding a “full report” on the process and “respect.” There had previously been no official extradition request.
“A security agreement between the two states would be important,” says expert Maihold. However, he fears that the US President-elect could take a different path: “Against Mexico, Trump will probably mix the issues of migration, drugs and free trade in order to put pressure on the country.”
The topic of the economy is particularly sensitive for Mexico. The USA is the largest buyer of Mexican products – and Trump is threatening to raise import tariffs up to 100 percent.
