How Much Further Can U.S. Forces Go In Mexico? – Analysis

The arrest of a drug kingpin in Mexico has reignited debate over how active U.S. military and intelligence forces are in Mexico and where they might be headed.

FBI Director Kash Patel's announcement on January 23 regarding the arrest of Canadian drug trafficker Ryan Wedding in Mexico led to immediate diplomatic tension between Washington and Mexico. Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder turned international drug trafficker, was taken into custody in Mexico City before being flown to the United States in what U.S. officials described as a joint operation.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum instead declared that Wedding had voluntarily surrendered at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, adding that this information had been provided to her government by the United States. Wedding's lawyer disputed this, saying his client was arrested and handcuffed by U.S. personnel, which was a violation of Mexican lawprohibiting foreign officers from participating in law enforcement operations on the country's soil.

The conflicting narratives reveal much more than just a simple disagreement over procedure. Patel's framing reflects Washington's increasingly assertive approach to security operations in the Americas and a willingness to carry out unilateral military action. Weeks before, on January 3, U.S. forces carried out a high-profile operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from a Venezuelan military base.

The trajectory is worrying for Mexico, which last faced direct U.S. military intervention during the 1916-1917 Punitive Expedition against Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. The country has long prohibited the establishment of U.S. military bases but shares a 2,000-mile border with the U.S. and is home to some of the world's most powerful criminal networksthat Washington is eager to target.

Days before Wedding's arrest became public, President Sheinbaum sought to calm domestic concerns after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warned airlines to "exercise caution" over airspace near Mexico, as well as parts of Central and South America, "citing military activities," according to the Associated Press. Viral images of a U.S. military transport plane on a Mexican runway fueled further speculation of U.S. military action.

President Trump's threat, on January 29, to impose "new tariffs" on any country importing oil to Cuba, which Mexico does, added to the anxieties over escalating U.S. pressure. "Sheinbaum is in a particularly tough spot... She has to appease Trump but also keep the peace within her left-wing party Morena, which has historically aligned with Cuba's communist regime," stated the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

U.S.-Mexico security ties have traditionally been quiet and cooperative since the mid-20th century, first in the context of the Cold War and later to combat drug trafficking. After Mexico formally declared war on the cartels in 2006, cooperation intensified with the 2007 Mérida Initiative, a multibillion-dollar security partnership involving training, intelligence sharing, and institutional reform. U.S. agencies helped professionalize select Mexican units while creating long-term dependency on U.S. logistics and intelligence.

Over time, Washington began applying lessons from the war on terror to Mexico's drug war. Private military and security contractors were incorporated into Mérida-related programs, expanding notably after 2011. That same year, Operation Lowrider began using aerial surveillance techniques refined in Iraq and Afghanistan to track cartel movements.

Concerns about cartel evolution quickly grew. Groups such as Los Zetas, whose members included former Mexican "elite military troops" trained in the U.S., became notorious due to their brutality as well as growing connections with Hezbollah. Despite these dangers, U.S. involvement in Mexico continued to deepen through new deployments.

Cooperation between agencies in the U.S. and Mexico

The U.S. has forged strong ties with agencies in Mexico to combat the flow of arms, weapons, and illegal immigrants. The FBI has traditionally focused on fugitives, kidnappings, and transnational criminal cases, particularly those involving U.S. citizens. Its Hostage Rescue Team was responsible for capturing Wedding in January. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is also active in Mexico. Having developed a strong relationship with the Mexican Army and Navy special forces, it participates in arrests and raids alongside them.

The CIA is generally considered the primary U.S. agency operating in Mexico. It concentrates on signals intelligence, aerial surveillance, and liaison with vetted Mexican units that are trained and equipped by the U.S., according to former U.S. and Mexican officials.

Other agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and local police departments maintain extensive cooperation with Mexican counterparts on smuggling routes, weapons flows, and financial crimes.

Corruption has complicated efforts to reduce the power of organized crime networks. Mexican political and security institutions have been deeply infiltrated by cartels, but there is no shortage of U.S. complicity in intelligence, political, and law enforcement circles for decades. Corruption on both sides has made it essential to rely on tightly vetted special units and to strictly compartmentalize sensitive operations so that only a small number of trusted officials know the full details.

A Harder American Stand on Drugs Could Spell Trouble for Mexico

Operations like Fast and Furious (2009-2011), run by the ATF, meanwhile, allowed weapons to pass into cartel hands in a failed tracking effort, resulting in civilian deaths and those of government officials in both countries.

Even scandals of this magnitude were not enough to disrupt bilateral cooperation until the Trump administration. Rising cartel violence and fentanyl deaths were deemed national security issues and have prompted a more aggressive American approach aimed at reducing U.S. drug fatalities but have often come at the cost of greater instability in Mexico.

As pointed out in a January article in the Americas Quarterly, "Over the past year, Washington has increased pressure on Mexico to take decisive action against drug cartels, including proposals that could involve some form of U.S. military presence on Mexican territory. These demands have been paired with repeated warnings from the White House that the status quo is no longer acceptable. The question isn't whether U.S. pressure will intensify, but how far it might go—and whether Mexico is ready for the scenarios now being openly discussed."

When former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018, he pledged to de-escalate the drug war and reduced DEA-Mexican Navy cooperation. In October 2019, a CIA-vetted Mexican army unit called GAIN captured major trafficker Ovidio Guzmán, but after cartel gunmen threatened mass violence and an assault on a housing complex where soldiers' families were located, López Obrador made the controversialdecision to release Guzmán to avoid casualties.

By then, the Mérida Initiative was largely unraveling and was replaced with the Bicentennial Framework under President Biden to preserve and reorient cooperation. Trump's return has turned U.S. policy back toward a more aggressive stance, this time now backed by broader Republican consensus. Project 2025 explicitly called for a "creative and aggressive approach" to combat cartels, including the use of active-duty military personnel and National Guard units at the border.

Operations in Mexico are a central part of the Trump administration's strategy to refocus on the Americas, justified by the threat of drug and cartel invasions. The administration declared a national emergency at the southern border on day one, and secret drone surveillance flights over Mexico also increased, while several cartels were designated as foreign terrorist organizations in February 2025.

In April, a national security memorandum titled "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" put active-duty and reserve forces on border patrol, and border crossings were treated as threatening U.S. sovereignty under it.

In November, the administration began formal planning to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to combat cartel leadership, according to multiple serving and former American officials. The following month, the administration classified fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, significantly broadening the legal authorities available for use. Parallel proposals circulated to place certain missions under Title 50 authority, bringing military personnel under intelligence community oversight to expand operational flexibility.

Plans appeared to stall briefly, but after the Maduro raid in January 2026, the administration began renewing its efforts, the New York Times reported. This could allow for a substantial military buildup along the border, similar to how there was an increased presence of U.S. forces in the Caribbean in the weeks before the Venezuela operation.

Despite clear political sensitivities, Mexico has attempted to continue cooperating. Since Trump's second inauguration, more than 50 cartel members have been extradited to the U.S., including Rafael Caro Quintero, responsible for the death of a DEA agent in 1985, satisfying a decades-long demand from Washington. And while President Sheinbaum strikes a firm public tone about defending Mexican sovereignty, she has quietly accommodated many U.S. requests to keep bilateral relations stable.

Whether she can prevent a turn toward overt, unilateral U.S. military action remains in doubt. Even without full intervention, the diplomatic risks are rising, not least due to entrenched corruption. Washington revoked visas for dozens of Mexican officials over alleged cartel ties in October 2025, while corruption cases in the U.S., including the arrest of more than a dozen Mississippi law enforcement officers in a drug sting that same month, show how deeply institutions are corrupted on both sides of the border.

There is also the serious danger of reigniting full-scale conflict with the cartels. The current uneasy equilibrium rests on a rough restraint by both state and criminal actors, keeping violence relatively contained. Expanded U.S. involvement, including direct strikes, could push Mexico back into widespread instability, especially since there is no guarantee that Washington intends to sustain the kind of long campaign such a strategy would require.

Any significant miscalculation would predictably strain U.S.-Mexico relations and could leave cartels more emboldened, not weaker. In practice, measures like reducing U.S. drug demand and tightening gun laws that feed southbound weapons flows are more likely to undercut cartel power than cross-border raids. Beyond potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives at home, such steps would also matter in Mexico, where a huge number of people have been killed by the drug war and where civilians will bear the brunt of any failed gambit or flawed policies.

• Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas', was published in December 2022.
• Credit Line: This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.