Why Mexico is accelerating cartel prisoner transfers as Trump threatens military action

MEXICO CITY — Mexico has sent 37 more suspected cartel operatives to the United States to face justice, the country’s top law enforcement official said Tuesday; This appears to be the latest attempt to dissuade President Trump from ordering a US military strike against drug trafficking targets in Mexico.

Mexican security minister Omar García Harfuch said in social media posts on X that the 37 suspects were sent on seven Mexican military flights to various US cities, including Washington, Houston, New York, San Antonio and San Diego.

It was the third such transfer of “high-impact criminals” from Mexico to the United States since Trump took over the presidency a year ago vowing to crack down on Mexican cartels. Mexico says the transfers involve a total of 92 prisoners currently in U.S. custody.

While García Harfuch emphasized that the expelled suspects “can no longer cause violence in our country,” the transfers are widely seen here as an effort to appease Trump and forestall his oft-stated desire to send U.S. military assets after cartels in Mexico.

Mexican security adviser David Saucedo said the latest handover was clearly an attempt by the Mexican government to ease “Donald Trump’s pressure on Mexico to allow elite US troops to conduct ground attacks on drug labs.”

“Mexico has been managing the conflict for months and is slowly meeting the demands of the U.S. government,” Saucedo said. “That’s exactly what they’re doing now, under American pressure, they’re making small concessions and they’re not fully achieving the goals that Washington has set on the issue.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has spent a year trying to convince the Trump administration that Mexican authorities are targeting the cartels like never before. His daily briefings include regular updates on the arrests of suspects, the destruction of drug labs, the disruption of money laundering operations and other actions.

Sheinbaum has rebuffed Trump’s repeated requests to send U.S. troops to help fight cartels in Mexico.

The idea of ​​U.S. military intervention in Mexico is highly controversial in a country that has suffered several historic U.S. land grabs and occupations, including the 19th-century Mexican-American War, which resulted in Mexico losing half of its national territory, including California.

But Trump, while praising Sheinbaum, insisted on multiple occasions that Mexico was “controlled” by the cartels and that U.S. military intervention was necessary to reverse the situation.

Many in Mexico fear that Trump will be further emboldened to deploy the US military south of the border following a successful US operation in Caracas on January 3 to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, whom US prosecutors accuse of drug trafficking.

Maduro’s arrest follows months in which US forces destroyed ships suspected of carrying drugs and killed crews in both the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Trump portrayed the operation as a possible prelude to attacks on drug traffickers.

In a recent interview on Fox News, Trump said: “We’ve eliminated 97% of the drugs coming in by water, and we’re now going to start making landfalls as far as the cartels are concerned.”

Mexico, unlike Venezuela, is the main source of illegal drugs sent to the United States.

Mexico is both a major transshipment point for South American cocaine and a manufacturing hub for the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States. Authorities say illegal fentanyl in the United States is produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border.

Trump has described fentanyl and related precursor chemicals as weapons of mass destruction; This classification is viewed by many as making the United States more likely to attack smuggling targets in Mexico.

The Trump administration has already designated various Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

The final group of 37 detainees includes suspects linked to various cartels, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation syndicates, Mexico’s two largest criminal organizations, as well as the Northeast cartel and the Beltrán Leyva gang, which operate along the Texas-Mexico border.

Those detainees include both suspects charged in the United States and other suspects wanted by U.S. authorities, but no formal charges have been filed against them, Saucedo said.

García Harfuch said the Justice Department agreed not to seek the death penalty for those deported to the United States. Mexico has abolished the death penalty and routinely seeks guarantees from the United States that suspects extradited or otherwise sent to the United States will not face the death penalty.

While all 37 people deported are wanted in the United States, none of them are well-known figures outside law enforcement.

The most notorious of the 92 cartel agents deported north last year was legendary drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, wanted in connection with the 1985 murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.

The announcement of the transfer of 37 suspects on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration prompted a flurry of assessments in the Mexican media reflecting on a checkered year in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Since Trump took office, Sheinbaum has waged a kind of two-front war: Sheinbaum has tried to block any U.S. military strikes against the cartels even as his government engages in a bureaucratic effort to thwart Trump’s plans to impose more tariffs on Mexican imports.

But there was no indication that the timing of January 20, when the transfer of 37 drug operators was announced, was more than a coincidence.

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.