Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is accusing the U.S. of harbouring drug cartels, and claims American citizens are working with organized crime groups in Mexico, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s “slanderous” claims earlier this month that Mexico had joined forces with drug traffickers.
“There is also organized crime in the United States and there are American people who come to Mexico with these illegal activities,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference on Thursday. “Otherwise who would distribute fentanyl in the cities of the United States?”
Sheinbaum was responding to a reporter from the Animal Político news outlet, who mentioned an investigation they published this week that found more than 2,600 U.S. citizens have been arrested in Mexico for offences related to organized crime, including smuggling drugs and firearms, since Mexico’s former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018.
“The issue isn’t just that drugs go from Mexico to the United States,” she added.
Sheinbaum said that Mexico is willing to work with the U.S. government on security issues in Mexico, but she stressed that the U.S. government also has to “do its work” to “avoid the trafficking of drugs in their country.”
“In the United States, they also have to act,” she said.
During her press conference, Sheinbaum also urged Google to reconsider its decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for U.S. users. Sheinbaum said that Mexico could file a civil lawsuit against Google.
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Google changed the name for U.S. users of Google Maps to reflect the decision by the Trump government to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Sheinbaum has repeatedly decried the move, arguing the “Gulf of Mexico” name has long been recognized internationally. On Thursday, she said Google had not resolved Mexico’s earlier complaints.
“If necessary, we will file a civil suit,” she said. “Even President Trump isn’t proposing that the entire Gulf of Mexico be called the ‘Gulf of America,’ but only their continental shelf. So Google is wrong.”
She urged Google to review the decree from the White House, arguing “the only place it was effective was where (the U.S.) has sovereignty, or up to 22 nautical miles from the coast.”
In a lengthy statement on X last week, Sheinbaum addressed Trump’s statement that the tariffs against Mexico were a response to illegal immigration and the “alliance” between drug trafficking organizations and Mexico’s government.
“We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Mexican government about alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any attempt to intervene in our territory,” Sheinbaum wrote on social media. “If there is such an alliance anywhere, it is in the U.S. gun shops that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups.”
Sheinbaum said the Mexican government has “seized more than 40 tons of drugs in four months,” including “20 million doses of fentanyl,” and has “arrested more than ten thousand people linked to these groups.”
“If the U.S. government and its agencies want to address the serious fentanyl consumption problem in their country, they could, for example, combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their major cities — something they do not do — as well as the money laundering generated by this illegal activity, which has caused significant harm to their population,” she added.
Sheinbaum also suggested that the U.S. could “launch a massive campaign to prevent drug consumption and protect their youth,” like Mexico has done.
“Drug consumption and distribution occur in their own country, and that is a public health problem they have not addressed. Moreover, the synthetic opioid epidemic in the United States originates from the indiscriminate prescription of these medications, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as demonstrated by the legal case against a pharmaceutical company,” Sheinbaum wrote.
“Mexico does not seek confrontation. We believe in collaboration between neighbouring countries. Mexico does not want fentanyl to reach the United States — or anywhere else. Therefore, if the United States truly wants to combat the criminal groups that traffic drugs and fuel violence, we must work together in a comprehensive manner, but always under the principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust, collaboration, and, above all, respect for sovereignty — which is non-negotiable. Coordination, yes; subordination, no.”
On Feb. 2, the governors of Mexico’s 31 states and Mexico City backed Sheinbaum in a joint statement.
“We energetically condemn the accusations that suggest there is a link between our government and narco-trafficking cartels,” it said. “These claims are not only baseless, they also ignore the major, verifiable efforts Mexico has made to combat organized crime,” the statement read.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s economy minister, said on X that Trump is hurting himself.
“Accusing the Mexican government of being an ally of narco [traffickers] is — apart from an insult to our country – a pretext to distract US public opinion from the tremendous mistake of imposing disruptive tariffs on Mexico and North American companies that operate here. Shooting oneself in the foot,” Ebrard wrote.
— With files from Reuters
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