Trump officials divide on how difficult to go on Mexican posters

Within the White House, Trump officials are involved in a debate about whether to carry out military attacks against Mexican drug cartels or instead collaborate with Mexican authorities to jointly dismantle criminal organizations.

On the one hand, several people familiar with the matter say that some American officials advocate unilateral military action against the figures and infrastructure of the poster to stop drug flow through the border. On the other hand, these people say that some officials are arguing a greater association with the Mexican government to guarantee, among other things, the continuous cooperation on the issue of migration.

In the midst of this division, a high level delegation of Mexico will arrive in Washington on Thursday to meet with senior US officials to detect a security agreement, a draft of which it was prepared last week and will probably anchor the conversations.

In discussions so far, US officials have delivered vague Ultimatums and unclear policy demands that Mexico dismantles posters or in front of Washington’s power, according to three people familiar with preliminary negotiations that were not authorized to speak publicly, which leads to confusion among Mexican officials.

Sebastian Gorka is led by a camp, senior director of President Trump for the White House National Security Council, according to three current and previous officials of the United States who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Gorka, a combative defender of Mr. Trump, has been working with a former officer in the Joint Special Operations Command, who supervises the special military operations of the United States.

The White House National Security Council has been hurried by the National Security Council of the White House, directed by Stephen Miller. Mr. Miller has attended his group with federal officials of application of the law that have a deep experience in research, prosecuting and executing capture operations in Mexico against poster leaders with local counterparts.

According to two people familiar with the conversations, Mr. Miller’s most measured approach worries that to go too hard against the posters could close the broader cooperation with Mexican forces in one of their characteristic policy priorities: prevent migrants from reaching the US border.

It can come more clarity this week, such as Omar García Harfuch, the Secretary of Security of Mexico, and his delegation meet with his American counterparts. The delegation arrives a few days before Mr. Trump has said that he will impose a 25 percent tariff to Mexican imports as compensation so that the Mexican government does not do enough to counteract the Fentanyl flow.

The draft of the security frame, which will lay the foundations for future cooperation, currently requires more arrests of cartel leaders and the creation of more Mexican units examined by the US police to direct everything, from money laundering to combating drug groups in the land, according to three people familiar with it. It is also expected to address migration and border.

As the calls of Trump administration officials become stronger for a military solution to the posters and to counteract drug trafficking, particularly the fentanyl, the Mexican government has retreated strongly.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has demanded that any American military action against posters be carried out in cooperation with Mexican forces and has promised to protect Mexico’s sovereignty.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Sheinbaum said at a press conference that her government “does not want operations of US forces in Mexico,” and added that there is currently a great participation of intelligence and information with US authorities.

Mexico points to “coordination or cooperation, never invasion or subordination,” he said. Mrs. Sheinbaum added that her government would seek amendments to the Constitution to stop the work of foreign agents in Mexico, to ensure that they do not operate independently.

In an effort to help the Mexican government, the CIA has intensified the secret flights of drones over the country, although the agency has not been authorized to use drones to take any lethal action by itself, officials said. For now, CIA officers in Mexico have transmitted information collected by drones to Mexican officials.

The North Command of the US Army. It is also expanding its border surveillance, but unlike the CIA, it is not entering the Mexican airspace.

“Sovereignty is not negotiable, that is a basic principle,” Sheinbaum told a press conference earlier this month, after the New York Times revealed the flights of the CIA drones.

The Mexican forces have increased their fight against the posters in the middle of Mr. Trump’s barrage, hoping to placate Washington and demonstrate that they are members willing and capable in the war against drug cartels.

In the state of Sinaloa, the center of the most powerful criminal union in Mexico, the Sinaloa poster, the Mexican government has carried out high -level arrests, drug laboratory busts and drug seizures that have interrupted the fentanyl production operations there.

In December, Mexican authorities also confiscated more than 20 million doses of fentanil in Sinaloa, their largest bust of synthetic opioids.

On Tuesday, the Secretary of Defense of Mexico said that American drones had been used in the effort to stop the main figures in the Sinaloa cartel. Mexican officials recently announced the arrest of José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza, who is said to be the man of the right of the archival of Iván Guzmán Salazar, a son of the famous drug trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo.

Mr. Canobbio Inzunza was accused in the United States in November for positions of smuggling of fentanyl in American cities such as Chicago, where two of the younger brothers of Ivan Guzmán, Joaquín and Ovidio Guzmán López, also face charges.

But if the United States pushes Mexico too far, it can reverse decades of cooperation between the two nations, analysts and former diplomats have warned. Even before Mr. Trump was re -elected, the ties between the United States and Mexico on the issue of drug cartels were already tense.

This summer, Mexican officials were outraged by what they thought it was a direct American participation in the kidnapping of one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the country, Ismael Zambada García, who was flown by force through the border where he was arrested by federal agents of the United States near El Paso. Despite the US statements that the kidnapping was carried out by one of the children of El Chapo without American assistance in the field, Mexican officials demanded that the Department of Justice provide more responses.

The episode that involved Mr. Zambada García, who faces radical drug charges in Brooklyn, arrived only a few years after another violation in relations between the United States and Mexico that involves posters.

In October 2020, American law agents arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos, former Mexican Defense Secretary, at the Los Angeles airport with an expanding federal accusation that accused him of having taken bribes of a violent Mexican poster.

At its highest levels, the Mexican government reacted with a demonstration of collective anger that stopped joint operations of the US-mexico narcotics. In the orders of William P. Barr, then the attorney general, the federal prosecutors of Brooklyn finally dismissed the charges against General Cienfuegos and sent him back to Mexico.

Eric Schmitt Contributed reports.