Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday she had told her US counterpart Donald Trump that any deployment of US troops to Mexico was "not on the table" after he hinted at ground attacks against drug cartels.
"We talked about various topics, including security with respect for our sovereignties, reducing drug trafficking, trade and investment," Sheinbaum said on social media, reports the Telegraph.
Trump said again last week that ground strikes against drug cartels would follow recent US naval operations in the Pacific and Caribbean, without specifying where or when.
"Now we're going to start hitting the ground running on the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico," Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Mexico extradited dozens of cartel leaders to the US in 2025 and strengthened border cooperation, but Sheinbaum has consistently expressed opposition to any foreign military intervention.
Trump recently told Mexico it needed to "take action," after months of pressure on the United States' southern neighbor over drugs and trade.
He said Sheinbaum, whom he met in Washington in December, was a "wonderful person," but added that he was pushing her to allow him to send U.S. troops to fight drug cartels in Mexico, an offer he said she had previously rejected.
Since the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president from Caracas, Trump has also made threats against other leftist governments in the region, including Cuba, Colombia and Mexico.
Ground attacks on cartels in Mexico would represent a significant expansion of US military involvement in the region.
Mexico's two most powerful criminal organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, control vast territories and are engaged in a violent rivalry that killed more than 30,000 people last year.
Trump designated six Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in February 2025, a move that Mexico condemned as a threat to its sovereignty and potentially justifies military intervention.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has proposed constitutional reforms to strengthen protections against unauthorized foreign operations, and has consistently rejected any US military presence on Mexican soil.
Sheinbaum said last Monday that the Americas "do not belong" to any single nation, responding to Trump's assertion of Washington's "dominance" over the hemisphere after Maduro's capture.
Overdoses from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have caused more than 100,000 deaths in the US per year as of 2021.
Mexican cartels produce most of the fentanyl entering the US using chemical precursors originating mainly from China. /Telegraph
