US Ambassador Ronald Johnson, an uncomfortable voice amid Mexico’s defense of sovereignty

The Mexican government’s campaign against foreign interference has reached U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson. The U.S. representative this week clashed with President Claudia Sheinbaum after her Sunday speech, in which she protested U.S. interference in Mexico’s internal politics. Johnson, a former Green Beret appointed by Donald Trump to press for action against the drug cartels, replied with a social media post that the Mexican leader acknowledged almost immediately: “Ambassadors must be respectful of countries’ internal political affairs.”

The post that unsettled the president was published by Johnson on Monday afternoon, a day after the rally in which Sheinbaum marked two years since her electoral victory with a renewed defense of national sovereignty and a direct reproach to the United States for making public its claims of alleged ties to drug trafficking against Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha and nine other individuals. On Monday Sheinbaum sought to soften the tone by acquitting President Trump of responsibility for the supposed campaigns against Mexico, which she blamed on “sectors of the far right,” but the diplomat responded forcefully: “The fight against cartels should unite us, not divide us. People on both sides of our border want to live safely and in peace. They deserve freedom from the intimidation, corruption, and fear that the cartels inflict. Every moment spent turning this shared security challenge into a political dispute is a missed opportunity to strengthen our partnership and protect the people we serve.”

The remarks by Johnson, a retired colonel with extensive experience in the U.S. intelligence apparatus, were not well received at the National Palace. It is not the first time the ambassador has stirred tensions in the bilateral relationship, with messages touching on the two most sensitive current issues: Chihuahua and Sinaloa. In Mexico they have sparked a bitter debate between the government and the opposition, who accuse each other of encouraging interventionism and covering up narco-politics.

Johnson’s messages

It was U.S. Ambassador Johnson who announced on Sunday, April 19, 2025, the deaths of two U.S. agents in a car accident in Chihuahua. “We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of two U.S. Embassy personnel, the Director of Chihuahua’s State Investigation Agency (AEI), and an AEI officer in this accident. We honor their dedication and tireless efforts to confront one of the greatest challenges of our time,” he wrote. What appeared to be a conventional message of condolence turned into a delicate disclosure instead: the involvement of CIA agents in dismantling a drug lab in the Sierra Tarahumara, which put Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos, a member of the opposition PAN party, under fire from the federal government and the governing party Morena for allegedly authorizing foreign agents to operate on national territory.

The Chihuahua case prompted the Mexican government to send a diplomatic note to the United States requesting an explanation, and to summon the ambassador to a meeting with officials from the Security Cabinet. The Attorney General’s Office also opened an investigation that remains ongoing, and Morena threatened to push for an impeachment proceeding against Maru Campos, a process it later chose not to pursue.

Just four days after the Chihuahua incident, the U.S. ambassador visited Sinaloa to witness the launch of a project called Mexinol — a low-emissions methanol production plant — and used his remarks to launch a couple of barbs at an event that the then-governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, did not attend. “No company will commit resources where the rules are unclear, where there is no transparency, or where accountability is optional. If we want projects like this to succeed, if we want our shared future to be as promising as it can be, corruption and extortion must have no place,” the ambassador said in a state governed by Morena since 2021 and long suspected of protecting the Sinaloa Cartel dating back to Trump’s first presidency (2016–2020).

A week later, on Wednesday, April 29, Johnson posted on his social media a message reporting the filing of criminal charges against Governor Rubén Rocha and nine others by the U.S. federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York. While the ambassador again highlighted the “close coordination” and the fight against corruption as a “shared priority” of both governments, he also stressed: “The corruption that enables organized crime and harms both our countries will be investigated and prosecuted wherever U.S. jurisdiction applies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice released the grand jury indictment against Rocha; Morena senator Enrique Inzunza, Culiacán Mayor Juan de Dios Gámez and other officials. The political storm was only beginning.

In the days that followed, the Sheinbaum administration rebuked the United States for making the Rocha case file public, despite the existence of diplomatic channels and the confidentiality obligations that should govern communications between the justice systems of both countries. Sheinbaum personally questioned the arrest-with-a-view-to-extradition request, saying there is no conclusive evidence implicating Rocha and other Sinaloa politicians who are members of Morena. Since then the president has placed defense of national sovereignty at the top of her government’s and party-movement’s public agenda. “In the face of external attacks there must be national unity,” she said on May 1. “Mexico is nobody’s piñata,” she declared at the end of the month in her message marking two years since her electoral victory, by which time bilateral relations had already been strained by this episode.

For international relations scholar Érika Ruiz Sandoval, the latest dispute between the president and the U.S. ambassador shows that the government has not understood that the terms of the Mexico–United States relationship changed when Trump took office for a second time. The coordinator of the international relations degree at Universidad Iberoamericana believes that the National Palace grew used to the rhythms of Ken Salazar, the ambassador during President Joe Biden’s administration, who frequently visited President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, always wearing his cowboy hat and a broad smile.

“They don’t realize that the ambassador is acting as a harbinger of what’s going to happen to you; Ambassador Johnson is being clearer than ever that the terms of the relationship are different, and not negotiable. They are different because they can be, and because they caught you with your fingers in the door and you have no room to maneuver, no international political capital, and no reputation to defend,” Ruiz Sandoval says. The relationship between Salazar and López Obrador, however, soured when the diplomat and former cabinet member under Barack Obama criticized Morena’s judicial reform.

This expert considers it a mistake to defend sovereignty at all costs at the expense of the relationship with the United States, at a delicate moment in negotiations over the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), without gaining anything in return and solely to protect Morena politicians. “It’s a very short-sighted, poorly considered stand that risks what is ultimately this country’s lifeline, which is the USMCA,” she adds.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition