Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on August 8, 2025, that U.S. military forces would not enter Mexico, responding to reports that President Donald Trump had authorized the Pentagon to prepare options for using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels.
The reported U.S. directive raised questions about how far Washington could go against criminal organizations that the Trump administration had formally designated as terrorist groups. Sheinbaum, however, said cooperation between the two countries did not include U.S. military operations on Mexican soil.
"The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military," Sheinbaum said, according to Reuters. She emphasized that Mexico was willing to cooperate with Washington on security matters while maintaining control over its own territory.
What Was Reported About Trump's Directive?
The New York Times reported that Trump had secretly signed a directive instructing the Pentagon to begin preparing options involving military force against some cartels designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations.
The existence of reported military planning did not, by itself, establish that the United States had decided to conduct strikes or deploy troops inside Mexico. At the time of the report, major details about possible targets, locations, legal authorities and operational plans remained undisclosed.
The White House did not publicly confirm the details of the reported directive in its response to the BBC, instead emphasizing Trump's stated priority of protecting the United States from cartel activity and illicit drugs.
Sheinbaum said Mexican officials had previously been informed that Washington was preparing an action concerning the cartels, but she said Mexico had been assured that it did not involve the participation of U.S. military personnel inside Mexican territory.
Mexico Draws a Line at U.S. Military Operations
Sheinbaum's August remarks were consistent with a position she had expressed several months earlier. In May 2025, she said she had rejected an offer from Trump for U.S. troops to help Mexico fight drug-trafficking organizations.
According to Reuters, Sheinbaum said Mexico welcomed coordination, intelligence sharing and other forms of cooperation but would not accept a deployment that infringed on Mexican sovereignty.
"We can collaborate. We can work together. But you in your territory and us in ours," she said when describing Mexico's position.
The distinction is important: security cooperation between Washington and Mexico has continued across areas such as drug trafficking, migration, weapons smuggling and intelligence, but the Mexican government has repeatedly rejected unilateral U.S. military intervention on its territory.
Why the Cartel Terrorism Designations Matter
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14157, which established a process for considering international cartels and other transnational organizations for designation as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or FTOs, and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
The executive order itself did not immediately place specific organizations on the FTO list. That required a separate determination by the secretary of state under U.S. law.
On February 20, 2025, the State Department formally designated eight organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The list included six Mexico-based criminal groups: the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Carteles Unidos, Cartel del Noreste, Gulf Cartel and La Nueva Familia Michoacana. Tren de Aragua and MS-13 were also designated.
The official designations were published in the Federal Register.
Foreign Terrorist Organization status expands the U.S. government's legal and financial tools against designated groups, including criminal penalties for knowingly providing material support and restrictions on members and assets. The designation does not, by itself, automatically authorize U.S. military action inside another sovereign country.
Rubio Says U.S. Has More Tools Against Cartels
Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued in August 2025 that treating major cartels as terrorist organizations gave the United States additional options for confronting them beyond traditional law-enforcement measures.
His comments reflected a broader Trump administration strategy of treating some transnational criminal organizations as national-security threats rather than solely as drug-trafficking organizations.
That policy shift, however, left separate questions about when military force could legally be used and what role the consent of another government would play. Those questions became especially significant in Mexico because Sheinbaum's government explicitly rejected U.S. military operations on Mexican soil.
U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation Continued
Despite the disagreement over the possible use of U.S. forces, Mexico and the United States continued working together on border security, migration and narcotics trafficking during 2025.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data showed a sharp decline in Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border during the first half of the year. CBP recorded 6,068 southwest-border Border Patrol apprehensions in June 2025, compared with 29,105 in January, according to the agency's published statistics.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson also credited bilateral security cooperation with reducing fentanyl trafficking. In late July, Johnson said fentanyl seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border had fallen by more than half while Mexican authorities had increased their own seizures. His statement was an assessment by the ambassador rather than proof that the cartels had been eliminated or financially defeated.
What Was Confirmed at the Time
By August 8, 2025, several elements of the story were clear. The Trump administration had formally classified several Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, senior U.S. officials were advocating stronger measures against those groups, and credible reporting indicated that Trump had directed the Pentagon to develop military options.
What had not been established publicly was an approved U.S. combat operation inside Mexico.
Mexico's government said unequivocally that it had not agreed to such an intervention and would not permit one. The episode therefore highlighted both the expanding U.S. campaign against transnational cartels and a continuing limit imposed by Mexico: cooperation with Washington, in Sheinbaum's formulation, would not mean surrendering Mexican sovereignty or accepting foreign troops on its territory.
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