Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the recent extradition of 37 Mexican cartel members to the United States, describing it as a “sovereign decision” amidst mounting pressure from the Trump administration to intensify the fight against drug trafficking groups.
This marks the third such extradition flight since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, but analysts warn that while this tactic has served as an effective pressure valve, its diminishing returns mean Mexico will have to find alternative solutions. “There will be more pressure on the president to confront these [criminal] networks,” said Rodrigo Peña, a security expert.
Since Trump’s re-election, he has repeatedly accused Mexico of being “run by cartels,” demanding that Sheinbaum take stronger action against them, under the looming threat of unilateral US intervention. This threat has only intensified since the US military’s extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela earlier this year, as well as ongoing strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Pacific and Caribbean.
The US government has reportedly redoubled its push for the US military to be involved in joint operations on Mexican soil to dismantle fentanyl production laboratories, but Sheinbaum has rejected this offer, citing sovereignty concerns given the history of US intervention in the country.
Instead, Sheinbaum has opted to extradite high-level figures from powerful organised crime groups, including the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and Cartel del Noreste. This includes Pedro Inzunza Noriega, the first person to be charged with narco-terrorism by the US Department of Justice.
However, experts in Mexico have questioned the legal grounds for these extraditions, which are being conducted outside the usual process. Mexico’s Security Minister, Omar García Harfuch, has defended the move, stating that the individuals “represented a real threat to the country’s security.”
Analysts warn that the Trump administration’s “aggressive, unilateral, war-like” security policy is less focused on intelligence work and more on other forms of pressure, as seen in the Caribbean. The cost of unilateral action in Mexico would be far higher for the US than in Venezuela, given the political turmoil it would provoke and the nearly trillion-dollar annual trade relationship between the two countries.
Nonetheless, the renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade deal has entangled the security and trade agendas, with the former no longer separate from the latter. “The security agenda is no longer separate from trade negotiations – and that could completely pollute or derail those negotiations,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
To stave off the threat of tariffs, the Mexican government has already helped the Trump administration with another aspect of its security agenda – the US-Mexico border – by suppressing the number of migrants arriving there and receiving deportees. However, analysts warn that this is not enough for the Trump administration, which is now demanding that Mexico go after politicians associated with drug-trafficking organisations, potentially including members of Sheinbaum’s own party.
