Mexican president says she instructed Donald Trump that Mexico ‘won’t ever settle for the presence of US military in our territory’.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she rejected a suggestion from her United States counterpart, Donald Trump, to ship US troops to Mexico to assist fight drug trafficking.
Talking at a public occasion on Saturday, Sheinbaum mentioned Trump had requested her throughout a name how he may assist battle organised crime and instructed sending US troops.
The Mexican chief mentioned she declined, telling Trump, “We’ll by no means settle for the presence of the US military in our territory.”
“I instructed him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty shouldn’t be on the market,’” Sheinbaum mentioned.
Her feedback come a day after the Wall Road Journal reported that Trump was pressuring Mexico to permit “deeper US navy involvement” within the battle in opposition to drug cartels.
Citing unnamed folks accustomed to the matter, the information outlet mentioned “pressure rose” throughout an April 16 name between the 2 leaders as Trump “pushed to have US armed forces take a number one function in battling Mexican drug gangs that produce and smuggle fentanyl to the US”.
Since taking workplace in January, Trump has repeatedly hit out at Mexico and the US’s different neighbour, Canada, over drug trafficking.
He has accused the 2 international locations of permitting unlawful medicine, most notably fentanyl, to move over their borders into the US.
Trump’s administration has additionally tied its push to impose steep tariffs on Mexican and Canadian items to fentanyl trafficking, amongst different elements.
On Saturday, Sheinbaum mentioned she had provided to collaborate with the US throughout her talks with Trump, together with by means of better information-sharing.
On the identical time, the Mexican president mentioned she had urged Trump to cease the cross-border arms trafficking that has contributed to a wave of violence that has killed greater than 450,000 in Mexico over almost 20 years.
She added that Trump issued an order on Friday “to make sure that every little thing vital is in place to forestall weapons from getting into our nation from the US”.
A spokesperson for the US Nationwide Safety Council instructed the Reuters information company that Trump had been “crystal clear that Mexico should do extra to fight these gangs and cartels and the US stands prepared to help and increase the already shut cooperation between our two international locations”.
The spokesperson added that Trump had labored carefully with Sheinbaum to attain the “most safe southwest border in historical past”.
However “harmful overseas terrorist organizations proceed to threaten our shared safety and the medicine and crime they unfold threaten American communities throughout the nation”, the spokesperson mentioned.
In the meantime, Trump has continued to push ahead along with his plan to hold out the “largest deportation operation” in US historical past, regardless of a number of authorized challenges in opposition to his hardline anti-immigration insurance policies.
The US Division of Protection mentioned earlier this week that it designated a second stretch on the border with Mexico as a navy zone to implement immigration legal guidelines.
The most recent space is within the US state of Texas and is connected to the Fort Bliss Military base in El Paso.
Like the primary zone established final month in New Mexico, navy personnel are authorised to take custody of migrants who irregularly cross the border till they’re transferred to civilian authorities within the US Division of Homeland Safety.
