Mexican president says she told Donald Trump that Mexico ‘will never accept the presence of US army in our territory’.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she rejected an offer from her United States counterpart, Donald Trump, to send US troops to Mexico to help combat drug trafficking.
Speaking at a public event on Saturday, Sheinbaum said Trump had asked her during a call how he could help fight organised crime and suggested sending US troops.
The Mexican leader said she declined, telling Trump, “We will never accept the presence of the United States army in our territory.”
“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale,’” Sheinbaum said.
Her comments come a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was pressuring Mexico to allow “deeper US military involvement” in the fight against drug cartels.
Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the news outlet said “tension rose” during an April 16 call between the two leaders as Trump “pushed to have US armed forces take a leading role in battling Mexican drug gangs that produce and smuggle fentanyl to the US”.
Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly hit out at Mexico and the US’s other neighbour, Canada, over drug trafficking.
He has accused the two countries of allowing illegal drugs, most notably fentanyl, to flow over their borders into the US.
Trump’s administration has also tied its push to impose steep tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods to fentanyl trafficking, among other factors.
On Saturday, Sheinbaum said she had offered to collaborate with the US during her talks with Trump, including through greater information-sharing.
At the same time, the Mexican president said she had urged Trump to stop the cross-border arms trafficking that has contributed to a wave of violence that has killed more than 450,000 in Mexico over nearly two decades.
She added that Trump issued an order on Friday “to ensure that everything necessary is in place to prevent weapons from entering our country from the United States”.
A spokesperson for the US National Security Council told the Reuters news agency that Trump had been “crystal clear that Mexico must do more to combat these gangs and cartels and the United States stands ready to assist and expand the already close cooperation between our two countries”.
The spokesperson added that Trump had worked closely with Sheinbaum to achieve the “most secure southwest border in history”.
But “dangerous foreign terrorist organizations continue to threaten our shared security and the drugs and crime they spread threaten American communities across the country”, the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to push forward with his plan to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in US history, despite several legal challenges against his hardline anti-immigration policies.
The US Department of Defense said earlier this week that it designated a second stretch on the border with Mexico as a military zone to enforce immigration laws.
The newest area is in the US state of Texas and is attached to the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso.
Like the first zone established last month in New Mexico, military personnel are authorised to take custody of migrants who irregularly cross the border until they are transferred to civilian authorities in the US Department of Homeland Security.