Trump credits the US for the downfall of El Mencho

U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed credit for the death of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka “El Mencho,” who was killed in an operation on Sunday in Mexico. “We’ve also taken down one of the most sinister cartel kingpins,” Trump said during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday at the Capitol in Washington, without explicitly mentioning El Mencho.

The government of Claudia Sheinbaum, in a report on the operation led by the Mexican Army, acknowledged that the United States had provided strategic intelligence to pinpoint the exact location of the CJNG leader at a cabin complex in Tapalpa, Jalisco. But the Mexican president denied that the U.S. participated directly in the attack.

Trump made this statement after reiterating that “large parts of Mexico have been controlled by murderous drug cartels.” The Republican leader has made this claim before, while also pressuring his Mexican counterpart to accept more direct involvement of U.S. security forces in combating organized crime in Mexico, an offer Sheinbaum has repeatedly rejected. In his speech at the Capitol, Trump used the argument of alleged cartel control in Mexico as an example of threats to U.S. security and to the Western Hemisphere, one of his administration’s geopolitical concerns.

Trump noted that his administration designated cartels in Mexico and other countries as terrorist organizations, and fentanyl, a drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans, to be a “weapon of mass destruction.”

Regarding fentanyl, Trump underscored that shipments into the U.S. dropped by 56% during the first year of his term in office. This decline shows that cooperation between his administration and Sheinbaum’s has yielded results in the fight against drug trafficking. Sheinbaum herself has cited the drastic reduction in trafficking of synthetic drugs to the U.S. as an example of Mexico’s efforts to meet Trump’s demands, who has used the threat of tariffs to pressure his southern neighbor on security and migration issues.

Sheinbaum has previously said that many of the problems faced by both countries are shared, as are the efforts to resolve them, as in the case of drug trafficking. Trump’s statement on Tuesday regarding the fall of El Mencho detracts from the merits of Mexico and specifically the Army. The head of Defense, Ricardo Trevilla, specified on Monday that the information provided by Washington was supplemented by specific monitoring previously carried out by the Mexican Army’s own intelligence services. But Trevilla also thanked the U.S. for its cooperation in this case.

Sheinbaum emphasized that the planning and execution of the operation against El Mencho was carried out by the Mexican military, in coordination with other Mexican security agencies, and she denied the presence of U.S. agents on the ground.

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