MEXICO CITY — The news release from the Drug Enforcement Administration trumpeted a “bold bilateral initiative” with the Mexican government to crack down on cartels that smuggle drugs across the southern border.
It was the sort of collaboration that Mexico and the United States have called necessary and welcome to combat the powerful cartels, which have driven a wedge between the two nations.
But Tuesday morning, a day after the DEA’s announcement, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico opened her daily news conference by saying she had no idea what U.S. officials were talking about.
“I want to clarify something,” she said. “There is no agreement with the DEA. The DEA issues the statement; we don’t know based on what. We haven’t reached any agreement — none of the security institutions have — with the DEA.”
The DEA said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that its initiative “is being conducted in coordination with Mexican law enforcement counterparts.”
The confusion was the latest public divergence between the Mexican and U.S. governments, amid an intense pressure campaign by the Trump administration to get Mexico to do more against cartels that has often left Sheinbaum on the defensive.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said Mexico must intensify the fight against cartels and curb the flow of fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border. Sheinbaum has said Mexico is doing just that, and indeed, operations are up and fentanyl seizures at the border are down, according to officials in both countries.
Sheinbaum has said some of that success has been the fruit of long-standing cooperation between Mexican and U.S. authorities. And she has repeatedly suggested, including Tuesday, that the two countries are on the verge of significantly expanding their teamwork against cartels in a new security agreement that is being negotiated.
The contradiction this week may be the result of miscommunication and disagreement on how to frame the two nations’ work together, as the Trump administration seeks to publicize its action against cartels while Sheinbaum’s government tries to manage its image with a Mexican public wary of U.S. interventionism.
“The only thing we will always ask for is respect — always,” Sheinbaum said. “So if you are going to share something regarding Mexico that’s a security matter, all we ask is that it’s done within the collaborative framework we have, and that it isn’t inaccurate.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
