The White House continues to press for military intervention in Mexico to eliminate the cartels

Hardly a day goes by without someone in the White House voicing Donald Trump’s desire to open the door to an intervention in Mexico — either directly or through euphemisms like “help” or “military assistance” in the fight against organized crime.

On Thursday, it was Karoline Leavitt’s turn; the White House press secretary chose an unsettling ellipsis when asked how far the Trump administration is willing to go in Mexico. In response, she spoke of “additional measures,” while also recalling that “it is a promise the president has made to the American people.” A day earlier, another heavyweight — Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff — was more explicit, comparing the current campaign against drug trafficking, or “narco-terrorism” as it is called in Washington, to the offensive against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Trump himself said at the beginning of the week that he would be “ok” with launching strikes on Mexican soil — just as he has ordered in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Claudia Sheinbaum responded to the Republican magnate, as she does whenever rhetoric intensifies from the White House. “It’s not going to happen,” said the Mexican president.

The latest escalation has been fueled by various voices in the MAGA universe. Several of its spokespeople, from Steve Bannon to Alex Jones, seized on last Saturday’s protests in Mexico against the government to insist on a hard-line approach across the border. In fact, these Trumpist commentators are promoting some of the most repeated slogans during the march, such as the argument that Mexico is run by “a narco-government.” The Mexican administration denounced that behind the supposedly spontaneous, youth-led protests were international far-right organizations.

Trump’s campaign against drug trafficking — focused heavily on three countries that are not exactly allies in the region: Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela — has had a legal framework since the beginning of this year. In January, a decree designated a handful of criminal groups, including six Mexican cartels, as terrorist organizations. On paper, the measure opened the door to military interventions in the territory of third countries.

So far this year, the White House has already sunk more than 20 supposed “narco-boats” in the waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific, resulting in at least 80 extrajudicial executions. Against that backdrop, Leavitt’s remarks on Thursday about Mexico and the “additional measures the president is considering” took on added significance.

The White House press secretary began, as usual, by complimenting the Sheinbaum administration. “They have been incredibly cooperative with the president’s efforts at our southern border to crack down on illegal immigration,” she said, before going on the attack: “Now the president is very interested in taking additional measures against the drug cartels. He’s been very clear about that. He’s spoken about it. And this is a promise he made to the American public. His national security team is discussing these options.”

A similar argument was made by Miller, one of the voices that routinely describes Mexico as a state “run by criminal cartels.” He said: “The whole physical boundary of our southern border on the Mexican side is controlled by these narco-terrorist organizations. Everything that happens there, they decide, they control. There’s no more essential issue of national security than the dismantlement of these organizations.”

He further suggested that just as the U.S. “used military and lethal force to go after Al-Qaeda and to go after ISIS,” the same approach could be used against “the cartels in this hemisphere,” which he claimed “control territory, control armies, and control political outcomes by assassinating politicians at will to control entire governments.”

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