In early February, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum ordered the deployment of 10,000 members of the National Guard to patrol the country’s northern border with the United States, one of the key demands made by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid, or at least postpone, the imposition of blanket tariffs on Mexican goods exported to the United States. Although the National Guard’s mobilization was a clear capitulation to Trump’s ultimatum, Sheinbaum had already signaled from the early days of her presidency that she intended to revamp the country’s security strategy. So while Trump has now gone ahead with those tariffs despite Sheinbaum’s conciliatory gesture, it is still worth examining the deployment’s impact on and implications for Mexico’s security landscape.
The primary objective of the deployment is to reduce the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border as well as to combat drug trafficking, particularly of fentanyl. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Mexico increase its efforts to tackle these issues and has successfully weaponized his demands by tying them to the import tariffs he has now imposed, which could have disastrous effects for Mexico’s manufacturing and export-oriented economy depending on how long they are maintained. Additionally, his administration designated six major Mexican criminal groups as terrorist organizations, exerting further pressure on Mexico and increasing the risk of U.S. intervention in its southern neighbor’s security affairs. These actions will have long-lasting repercussions not only in the bilateral relationship between the North American partners but also for Mexico’s crime and security dynamics for years to come.
So far, the results of the National Guard’s deployment have been positive, albeit modest. Official data shows that the “northern border operation,” as it is referred to by Mexican authorities, has led to more than 500 arrests and the seizure of just under 7 tons of narcotics, mainly methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine and fentanyl. It is, however, too early to tell whether these indicators signal a sustained improvement, especially in a region as problematic as Mexico’s northern border. Criminal groups have infiltrated myriad municipal administrations in this area, and over the course of decades they have built complex smuggling networks and even sophisticated underground infrastructure to traffic illicit substances. Although the deployment has not yet sparked widespread confrontations between the authorities and criminal groups, violent flareups tend to follow mobilizations of law enforcement. As such, the entire region will remain vulnerable to disruptions of public order, such as shootings, attacks on private and public infrastructure, and road blockades.
As noted, even prior to Trump’s return to the White House, Sheinbaum had made it clear that she intended to overhaul Mexico’s security strategy. Her predecessor and political mentor, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, oversaw a feeble security strategy that amounted to an undeclared but evident laissez-faire attitude toward major criminal groups and resulted in a decline in seizures of drugs and weapons. AMLO’s strategy, dubbed “hugs, not bullets,” led to the further strengthening of criminal groups, particularly those engaged in fentanyl production and based in the states of Sinaloa, Guanajuato and Michoacan, such as the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima and La Nueva Familia Michoacana.
In the longer term, preventing cartels from diversifying their criminal activities and stopping the emergence of new and more violent groups will be Sheinbaum’s main security challenges.
By contrast, Sheinbaum, who assumed the presidency Oct. 1, had embarked on a more confrontational stance vis-à-vis criminal groups even before Trump’s inauguration in January. For example, according to a study by the think tank Mexico Evalua, during Sheinbaum’s first 100 days in office, the number of operations against criminal groups increased more than sixfold compared to the same period of AMLO’s term, while direct confrontations between criminal groups and the authorities almost doubled. Arrests and seizures of drugs and weapons increased by even larger margins. Sheinbaum has consistently said that strengthening intelligence and investigative capacities will remain one of the primary pillars of her security strategy. Although building these institutional capabilities will take time, the statistics show that she and Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch are at least changing the paradigm they inherited from their predecessors.
In the short term, the most obvious consequence of Trump’s demands will likely be an increase in confrontations between authorities and criminals in northern states, especially those with large urban areas that are major drug-trafficking hubs like Baja California, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas. These states—home to some of the country’s most violent cities, such as Tijuana and Reynosa—are likely to experience an uptick in violence related to organized crime.
Although the National Guard’s deployment is concentrated in the north, operations are also likely to increase gradually in central and southern states, including Jalisco, Michoacan and Guanajuato, where a large proportion of clandestine laboratories for the production of methamphetamines and fentanyl are located. Sheinbaum is likely to prioritize the dismantling of clandestine laboratories to show her commitment to reducing drug production—a more effective strategy than combating trafficking once the drugs have been produced. Her administration is also expected to focus on seizing chemical precursors used in meth and fentanyl production, which will require increasing surveillance and interdictions along trafficking routes, especially those connecting large port cities like Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas to drug-producing regions inland.
In the medium term, these enforcement efforts will lead to a reconfiguration of the country’s main criminal organizations, their alliances and their activities. As is often the case in Mexico’s drug war, losses inflicted on one group generally lead to relative or absolute gains by another. Criminal groups that have traditionally engaged in synthetic drug production and trafficking, like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, are likely to be the government’s prime targets. Rival groups or splinter factions of these organizations will seek to fill the void left by weakening them. Even if Sheinbaum’s administration is successful at curbing drug trafficking to the United States, absolute volumes of smuggled drugs will remain staggeringly high, and cartels will continue to fight for their shares of the billions of dollars generated by drug sales annually.
In the longer term, preventing cartels from diversifying their criminal activities and stopping the emergence of new and more violent groups will be Sheinbaum’s main security challenges. Combating one kind of criminal activity, such as drug production and trafficking, often provokes changes in the behavior of criminal groups, as they seek to engage in other kinds of crimes that can be just as socially and economically disruptive. For example, over the past decade, Mexican criminal groups have diversified their activities, including oil pipeline theft and the creation of a black market for fuel, which has generated major security crises in states in central Mexico and has had severe economic implications for Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex. Extortion has also increased notably over the past decade, even replacing drug trafficking as the primary revenue source for some criminal organizations, such as Los Viagras in Michoacan state.
Over the past two decades, Mexico has also experienced cycles of fragmentation in its criminal landscape following the implementation of hardline security strategies. This has created immense challenges in the past, as authorities are forced to combat criminal groups on different fronts, while new, smaller groups tend to be more violent than large, centralized criminal enterprises. This situation is currently evidenced by the ongoing fragmentation of the Sinaloa Cartel, leading to a spike in violence in northwest Mexico as splinter factions such as Los Chapitos combat former partners and the authorities to assert territorial control.
In addition to these potential ramifications, the U.S. designation of six major Mexican drug-trafficking groups as terrorist organizations will become one of the most contentious issues in Mexico-U.S. relations. As long as it is in place, Mexico will be wary of security cooperation with its northern neighbor, given the deep-rooted concerns over sovereignty and increased U.S. interventionism. Moreover, the designation could have huge economic repercussions, as these groups’ business and financial dealings extend to numerous sectors, with thousands of legitimate businesses and individuals, including in the U.S., potentially connected with them and therefore susceptible to sanctions.
The National Guard’s mobilization and focus on the northern border will also lead to law enforcement vacuums in other regions of Mexico that also require greater presence of the authorities, such as south and central states like Chiapas, Puebla, Guerrero and Morelos. In all these states, major criminal groups engage in a wide range of activities, including cargo and fuel theft, kidnapping and extortion, among others. Increasing the size of the National Guard, while necessary, is likely to be a gradual and slow process, leaving it overstretched to address the country’s myriad challenges in the meantime.
The seismic shift in Mexico’s security landscape occasioned by Trump’s policies is in its early stages, and the full repercussions are still unclear, particularly in light of his decision to follow through on his tariff threat despite Sheinbaum’s willingness to work with him on border security. It is certain, however, that the effects will linger for years to come and that Sheinbaum will have only limited power to shape them.
Eduardo Arcos is a senior political and security analyst for the Americas, based in London. His research focuses on international political economy, organized crime and Latin American affairs.