The Mexican government seized nearly $40 million worth of methamphetamine amid pressure from Donald Trump to take more action to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.
The roughly 440 pounds of meth seized by Mexican authorities took place over the weekend during an operation to destroy unlawful drug laboratories in the state of Sinaloa, the heartland of the ruthless Sinaloa Cartel, according to CBS News. Law enforcement also captured over 3,170 gallons of chemical precursors used to cook the meth during its operation.
The major confiscation came just weeks after Mexico caved to sweeping tariff threats by the Trump administration. Faced with the prospect of 25% tariffs on all goods exported to the U.S., her country’s largest trading partner, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Feb. 3 agreed to help stem the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs by beefing up border security.
Sheinbaum announced she would deploy 10,000 members of her country’s national guard to the U.S. southern border, with a particular focus on blocking fentanyl. In return, Trump agreed to pause its tariffs on Mexican imports for one month as he assesses progress.
Sheinbaum’s willingness to meet Trump’s demands coincides with an illicit fentanyl epidemic that has rocked the U.S., with more than 21,000 pounds of the drug being seized at the southern border during the final year of the Biden administration, according to Customs and Border Protection data. One single kilogram of fentanyl can kill up to half a million people, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Mexico has also served as a major conduit for millions of migrants to illegally traverse into the U.S., and more recently allowed a record-setting number of migrant encounters to take place with Border Patrol agents.
Since reaching a deal to stave off tariffs, Mexico has racked up a number of major drug seizures. The country’s law enforcement authorities have nabbed nearly 5 tons of meth, 453 kilos of cocaine and 55 kilos of fentanyl since the Mexican national guard deployment began on Feb. 5, according to CBS.
“It is clear that the Mexican government has been managing the timing of fentanyl seizures,” security analyst David Saucedo said to the news outlet in December, as Trump was preparing to enter the White House and making his demands of Mexico clear. “But under the pressure by Donald Trump, it appears President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration is willing to increase the capture of drug traffickers and drug seizures that Washington is demanding.”
The drug bust over the weekend served as a blow to the Sinaloa Cartel, in particular. The cartel “dominates the fentanyl market through its manipulation of the global supply chain and the proliferation of clandestine fentanyl labs in Mexico,” according to a 2024 drug threat assessment from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In addition to forcing action from the Mexican government, Trump took the fight against drug cartels a step further on his first day back in office by signing an executive order that designates them as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
Earlier in February, the Mexican Senate voted in favor of allowing members of the U.S. Army to enter the country and train Mexican military units until the end of March. The war against Mexican drug cartels will also reportedly be bolstered by a covert American drone program, recently augmented by the Trump administration, that seeks to locate fentanyl labs across the Latin American country.
House Republicans are currently seeking to turn the president’s executive order into law, according to legislation first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Under the bill introduced by Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy ,the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Cartel Del Noreste and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion would be officially labeled as FTOs.
“The cartels have spent the last four years exploiting our border to profit off of misery, fear, and death,” Roy previously stated to the DCNF. “Now that their open-borders cash flow is about to dry up, they have resorted to planting live explosives on the Texas border and shooting at Border Patrol agents in broad daylight.”
“They are terrorists and we need to treat them like it,” Roy continued.
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