Finally. An American administration that actually has violent members of Mexican drug cartels fearing for their existence. A high-ranking member spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity for fear of capture. “You can’t be calm, you can’t even sleep, because you don’t know when they’ll catch you” the cartel member said. “The most important thing now is to survive.”
Others said that due to military strikes inside Mexico, some drug cartel members have already gone into hiding. “Trump established a deadline, and we are seeing the results of everything we could have seen in years being done in a month,” Jaime López, a security analyst based in Mexico City, said to the NYT. “The government is sending a message that when it really wants to, it can exert that kind of pressure.”
The Daily Caller reports the recent offensive has put a dent on fentanyl production in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, the home base of the ruthless Sinaloa cartel. Additionally, the Daily Caller writes:
A shift in policy began on day one of Trump’s return to the Oval Office. The Republican signed executive orders that spurred deployment of U.S. troops to the southern border, the designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and resumption of border wall construction. The administration has also reportedly bolstered a covert drone program to detect fentanyl labs across Mexico.
The campaign largely became a bilateral effort after Trump threatened sweeping tariffs on all Mexican imports unless the government did more to control illegal immigration and the illicit drug trade. Faced with the possibility of economic ruin, President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 of her own national guard troops to the southern border — and has since scored major busts against organized crime within her country.
Under the auspices of the tariff deal, Mexican officials were given a month to satisfactorily crack down on drugs and illegal immigration.
In February, Mexican authorities seized roughly 440 pounds of methamphetamine, a nearly $40 million haul, in the Sinaloa Cartel heartland. Later that month, the Mexican government extradited 29 drug bosses to the U.S., including one narco allegedly behind the 1985 kidnapping and killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration and wanted by American authorities for years.
