Mexico rejects US offer of military ops vs cartels
MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s president on Tuesday ruled out allowing US strikes against cartels on Mexican soil, a day after US President Donald Trump said he was willing to do whatever it takes to stop drugs entering the United States.
“It’s not going to happen,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said.
“He (Trump) has suggested it on various occasions or he has said, ‘we offer you a United States military intervention in Mexico, whatever you need to fight the criminal groups,’” she said. “But I have told him on every occasion that we can collaborate, that they can help us with information they have, but that we operate in our territory, that we do not accept any intervention by a foreign government.”
Sheinbaum said she had said this to Trump and to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on previous occasions and that they have understood.
Actual incursion
“Would I want strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” Trump said on Monday, adding that he’s “not happy with Mexico.”
The US Embassy in Mexico shared a video on X later Monday that included previous comments from Rubio saying that the United States would not take unilateral action in Mexico.
Meanwhile, Mexican and US diplomats were trying to sort out on Tuesday what may have been an actual US incursion.
On Monday, men arrived in a boat at a beach in northeast Mexico and installed some signs signaling land that the US Department of Defense considered restricted.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said late Monday that the country’s navy had removed the signs, which appeared to be on Mexican territory. And on Tuesday, Sheinbaum said that the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency that determines the border between the two countries, was getting involved.
‘Restricted area’
The signs, driven into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, caused a stir when witnesses said men in a boat arrived at the local beach known as Playa Bagdad and erected them.
The signs read in English and Spanish, “Warning: Restricted Area” and went on to explain that it was Department of Defense property and had been declared restricted by “the commander.” It said there could be no unauthorized access, photography or drawings of the area.
International boundary
The US Embassy in Mexico shared a comment from the Pentagon on Tuesday about the incident, confirming that contractors putting up signs to mark the “National Defense Area III” had placed signs at the mouth of the Rio Grande.
“Changes in water depth and topography altered the perception of the international boundary’s location,” the statement said.
