“I have no greater responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that no one has seen before.” This is how Donald Trump announced in his inauguration speech an avalanche of decrees in the face of the immigration crisis and the fight against organized crime. After months of warnings, the Republican materialized his threats against Mexico with a battery of heavy-handed measures, but with few surprises. “This has already happened, it is not something new,” said the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, when reviewing the White House’s actions against immigration. There was, however, one notable exception: the designation of the cartels as terrorist organizations. The change heralds a new era in the war on drugs. It puts in Trump’s hands unprecedented power, greater discretion and more weapons to pressure the Mexican authorities, in suspense over the risks to their sovereignty and the impact on all critical areas of the bilateral relationship.
“We are facing a paradigm shift,” says Víctor Hernández, an academic at the Monterrey Institute of Technology. “The relationship between Mexico and the United States is changing forever,” he says. South of the border, the main concern is that the designation of the cartels as terrorists opens the door to military intervention in Mexican territory, under the excuse of combating terrorism.
There is no clear consensus on the scope of the threat and Trump’s unpredictable nature adds to the uncertainty. The deck of possibilities that divides politicians and specialists ranges from operations to capture the drug lords without notifying the Mexican authorities to a “soft invasion.” “It could happen, stranger things have happened,” the Republican said about the possibility of action by the US Army. It’s not just a new toolbox, it’s a new toolbox in Trump’s hands and with effects that could last far beyond his presidency.
“Mexico is not going to like it,” said the Republican after signing the decree. The tone of the statements has also sparked a debate about whether it will just be a negotiating weapon, part of the Republican’s repertoire of bravado, or if the danger is real. Marco Rubio, the next head of US diplomacy, assured last week that military intervention was an “option” on the president’s table, but he clarified that the ideal was to strengthen cooperation between both countries.
The implications go beyond “invasion.” The decree gives the Trump Administration new tools to tighten the siege on criminal groups, especially to weaken their financial structures. The executive order is based on other measures, including those used by George W. Bush to launch “the war on terror” after 9/11, which give “more teeth” to US agencies to follow the money trail and sanction those who sponsor terrorist cells. The first consequence of the designation is the freezing of the cartels’ assets and their blocking of the international banking system, but the mechanism detonates an entire apparatus of military and judicial measures.
On paper, the blow to economic structures and anti-money laundering schemes is the most positive effect of the change promoted by Trump. But it is not without problems. Anyone who deals, knowingly or unknowingly, with a drug trafficker can be charged with links to terrorism. That puts financial institutions and arms manufacturers in the same bag, but also merchants forced to pay extortion or immigrants who pay a trafficker to cross the border.
“It is a much more aggressive legislation, the fight against narcotics is in the orbit of public security, while the fight against terrorism is a matter of national security,” warns Hernández. The gray areas between legal and illegal drug trafficking businesses make its application difficult and, although Democratic and Republican Administrations tested the idea during the last decade, these complications and doubts about its effectiveness ended up dissuading them.
Arbitrary arrests
The decree gives rise to arbitrary arrests under more severe penalties and against the weakest links in the criminal chain. Hernández points out that the new framework can lead to the capture of, for example, an undocumented worker pressured to launder drug money by sending remittances – a widely documented phenomenon – but shed little light on who really pulls the strings. “He is going to put a lot of people in jail, but I doubt that there will really be progress in intelligence work,” he points out.
Another problematic aspect is what is terrorism and what is not. The interpretation will be exclusive to the United States. “The designation of terrorist actors is not necessarily linked to terrorism itself, it obeys the agendas and goals of the different Administrations,” says Mauricio Meschoulam, researcher at the Universidad Iberoamericana. For Trump, Yemen’s Houthis are terrorists, but for Joe Biden they were not. Now, the attention is on the cartels and gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha.
Meschoulam, who has studied the phenomenon for more than a decade, comments that the fight against terrorism expands the margins of discretion of US agencies and reduces the burden of proof to act, arguing that prevention is crucial and that when it happens A terrorist attack is already too late. “A plausible suspicion that someone is thinking or planning an attack is enough to spy on, tap into their phones or homes,” comments the academic. In the 10 years after the 2001 attacks, sentences for terrorism in the United States increased eightfold compared to the previous decade, according to an NBC study, while Human Rights Watch documented dozens of cases with irregularities.
The decree also marks a turning point in the discourse against drugs and the immigration crisis. Trump accuses the cartels of instilling “terror” through murders and rapes, but also by “invading” his country with substances and immigrants and undermining Mexican authorities. “In some areas of Mexico they function as quasi-governmental entities, which control almost all aspects of society,” he accuses in the text.
Trump does not talk about the narcotics Pandemic or drug victims throughout the decree, but he does mention “terror” on a dozen occasions and the violation of his national interests. It is a new war, which justifies other types of measures. “It is a double militarization,” says Hernández: one of the border and another against drug trafficking. The Pentagon, with an annual budget of more than $824 billion, will play a much more prominent role in this new paradigm. This week the deployment of 1,500 US troops to the border was announced.
The decree against cartels is just the beginning. The text establishes a period of 14 days for Rubio to formulate a recommendation on which groups will be named as terrorists, the first step to place the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel at the level of ISIS or the Taliban. The secretary of state must deliver an intelligence report and notify the Republican-controlled Congress that it has seven days to review the request. The laws allow another 30 days for organizations to appeal the decision, which is unlikely because drug lords do not usually present themselves publicly as leaders of their organizations. “It will take time, although the process will move quickly,” says Meschoulam. “But Trump has already generated the political effects he was looking for, he projects that he is doing something and the conversation revolves around him.”
It also strengthens its position against Mexico. Before sitting down to negotiate the future of Security cooperation, it has already revealed a series of warnings about its neighbors. “When everything is on the table, nothing can be ruled out,” says Meschoulam. The message, according to the specialist, is that the Sheinbaum Government can accept the diagnosis and align itself or abide by the consequences.
The president has avoided talking about a military intervention, but has insisted on her interest in maintaining collaboration, as long as Mexican sovereignty is not violated. With obvious disagreements, the negotiation will also take place while other areas of the relationship are under siege, amid threats of a tariff war and mass deportations, and in the face of the possibility of radicalization of organized crime in retaliation.
Despite having approval ratings above 70% in the polls, the violence crisis has been one of the most questioned points of the Sheinbaum Government, which started in October. The Republican’s return provoked a majority reaction of national unity, although the designation of the posters has been embraced by some sectors of the opposition, amid notions that a change is needed in the security strategy and attempts to extract political traction. “The PRI does not negotiate with criminals or terrorists,” read an advertisement from the opposition party. It is a bet that has brought them criticism, but also a sign of Trump’s political omnipresence.
“We believe that it does not help,” said Sheinbaum, who commissioned a team of specialists to analyze the implications. With antecedents such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, specialists also doubt the effectiveness on the ground of the new paradigm, a change after five decades of fighting against drug trafficking. “The fight against terror and drugs is a war against ideas, against a market, and never in the history of humanity have we managed to destroy an idea or a market,” concludes Hernández.
