President Claudia Sheinbaum said the U.S. labeling of drug cartels as foreign terrorist groups “cannot be an opportunity for the United States to invade our sovereignty.”
The Washington Post
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her party has proposed reforms to the country’s constitution to better protect its sovereignty in response to the United States designating six Mexican organized-crime groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
The U.S. State Department on Thursday upgraded the designation of cartels including Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación, which together dominate fentanyl manufacturing and importation into the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“This cannot be an opportunity for the United States to invade our sovereignty,” Sheinbaum said at a news conference Thursday, adding that Mexico would collaborate on combating organized crime but would not accept “subordination.”
A “foreign terrorist organization” designation allows the State Department to deploy special sanctions and expands the U.S. government’s ability to prosecute people who provide support to the groups and tocollect “military action intelligence,” according to a Wilson Center analysis.
Branding cartels with the designation has been raised several times by U.S. lawmakers, but Mexico has staunchly opposed the idea because of fears it could lead to U.S. military intervention and negatively affect Mexico’s global reputation, analysts say.
Constitutional changes are more common in Mexico than in the United States — Sheinbaum had shepherded through at least 12 constitutional reforms by Jan. 30, after being sworn in on Oct. 1 — and they are especially straightforward given her leftist Morena party and its allies hold majorities in both chambers of the NationalCongress and control three-quarters of state legislatures.
The first reform proposed by Sheinbaum on Thursday would state that Mexico will not accept any “act from abroad that is harmful to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the Nation,” including coups, election interference and unauthorized foreign interventions in investigations and prosecutions.
“With Mexico it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination, not interference and much less invasion,” Sheinbaum said.
The second reform would enshrine that any national or foreigner involved in illegal weapons trafficking, and any foreigner who infringes on Mexico’s sovereignty, would be subject to automatic pretrial detention and maximum penalties. She added that 74 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico come from the United States.
“There is also organized crime in the United States and there are American people who come to Mexico to do these illegal activities,” Sheinbaum said during a news conference last week. “Why do we say this? Because if not, who would distribute it? Who would distribute fentanyl in the cities of the United States?”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to begin the process of designating certain cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and itwent into effect on Thursday. The order said cartels had carried out a “campaign of violence and terror” throughout the Western Hemisphere and “flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”
Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación are “at the heart of this crisis” of synthetic drug importation, such as fentanyl, that has “resulted in the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced,” then-DEA Administrator Anne Milgram wrote last year.
Fentanyl is an opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States each year — more than car accidents, gunshots or suicides — The Washington Post reported in a 2022 investigation. The majority of it is manufactured by Mexican cartels and clandestinelyimported at official border crossings into the United States.
The other groups designated foreign terrorist organizations were Mexico’s Cártel del Noreste, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Cártel de Golfo and Cárteles Unidos, as well as Tren de Aragua, which originated in Venezuela, and MS-13, which originated in Los Angeles but has shifted to Central America.
Follow the KOIKIMEDIA NEWS 🗞️ CHANNEL on WhatsApp