Trump steps up pressure on Mexico over drug trade: ‘They must arrest corrupt officials’

In a so-called presidential determination sent to Congress on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump again singled out Mexico as one of the most important countries in the production and transit chain of drugs to the United States.

“Canada and Mexico need to do far more to stop the flows of deadly drugs into our country,” he wrote. Trump acknowledged President Claudia Sheinbaum’s security efforts but called for greater commitment.

Coinciding with the celebrations for Mexico’s Independence Day, during which Sheinbaum asserted the defense of national sovereignty, Trump sent her a message: “Mexico’s current investments in its security forces are insufficient to sustain and expand its campaigns against narcoterrorists, their finances, and their criminal networks. This includes exposing, arresting, and prosecuting the many corrupt public officials that have aided and abetted the cartels and betrayed their own country’s security and sovereignty.”

The document is a compilation of what the U.S. government considers to be major drug transit and illicit drug producing countries, from South America to Asia, and advice on what governments must do in the fight against drug trafficking and the organizations that sustain the business.

Mexico appears at the top of the list alongside Canada, according to the president’s view. The list includes other countries in the Western Hemisphere, many of them serving as key links in the logistics chain for cocaine, a drug that depends on coca cultivation, which occurs in the mountains of Peru, Colombia and Bolivia.

But it is Canada and, above all, Mexico, the U.S.’s immediate neighbors, that drew the most comments. “ We recognize Mexican President Sheinbaum’s administration for seizing greater volumes of drugs, dismantling clandestine laboratories, and deploying additional law enforcement and military resources to our shared border,” Trump says. “Additionally, United States-Mexican security cooperation has helped eliminate some of the world’s most notorious cartel bosses, including “El Mencho.”

But “Mexico must take additional action against the narcoterrorist organizations that dominate vast areas of its territory and continue to threaten the American people.”

In addition to Mexico, Trump also includes the Northern Triangle countries of Central America — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — on the list of transit countries. Haiti, much of which is controlled by criminal gangs, the Dominican Republic, nearby Jamaica and Belize are also mentioned as key links in the same logistics chain.

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