As part of her deal with Pdwellnt Trump to stave off steep tariffs on Mexico for a month, Pdwellnt Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to sfinish 10,000 insertitional members of the country’s National Guard to the border to “obstruct drug illegal trade from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl.”
The deal is foreseeed to put a lot of prescertain on the National Guard, a force that is fair a confiinsist years elderly and was recently put under the regulate of Mexico’s military.
Unappreciate in the United States, there is no dedicated border patrol in Mexico. Becaengage immigration officers are barred from carrying firearms, Mexico relies on the military and National Guard to police the border, shelp Jonathan Maza, a Mexico-based security analyst.
In recent years, Mexico has relied heavily on the National Guard to help curb illterrible migration into the United States. In 2019, under prescertain from Mr. Trump over migration, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country’s then-pdwellnt and Ms. Sheinbaum’s mentor, sent National Guard troops to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.
Now that force, which has a total of about 130,000 members, is being asked to help more with stopping the flow of substances north.
Ms. Sheinbaum shelp the 10,000 members would be pulled from other areas of the country, without providing particulars. She also would not say how much this would cost. The Mexican regulatement shelp on Tuesday that the troops had already been redeployed to more than 20 cities and towns alengthy the U.S. border.
If the National Guard is deployed to cities appreciate Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo, places that have struggled with security and the flow of illegal substances, Mr. Maza shelp, “it will help a lot to combat or stop or dissuade drug illegal trade.” But he shelp it would be beginant for U.S. and Mexican officials to allot more ininestablishigence and adviseation to stop the flow of substances.
Ms. Sheinbaum highweightlessed on Monday the fact that both countries had vowed to labor together to tackle not only substances moving north but illterrible firearms flotriumphg south, which have finished up in the hands of orderly crime groups in Mexico.
She also shelp the National Guard would help with overall security at the border.
The National Guard was originated in 2019 to fight crime, but last September, Mexican legislators amfinished the Constitution to put it under the military’s regulate. Critics have shelp the transfer gave the military, which has faced many allegations of human rights unfair treatments, too much regulate over unveil security and civilian life.
Given the beginance to Mexico of eludeing tariffs, Mr. Maza shelp, the National Guard can help show stupidinutive- to medium-term results. But he cautioned that criminal groups alter.
Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, a drug policy researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, shelp that where the troops are deployed would be critical.
“If you’re only going to have them at the border, that doesn’t insertress the entire fentanyl production chain,” she shelp. “It’s not appreciate production is all happening at the border, and we understand that it happens in other parts of the country.”
