Mexico is caught between Trump and the cartels

A burned car sits beside a damaged business, one day after the Mexican military killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, the leader of one of the world’s largest drug cartels, in Guadalajara, Mexico, Feb. 23, 2026. President Donald Trump has demanded President Claudia Sheinbaum confront the cartels. The killing of “El Mencho” suggests it might be working — but could come at a cost.(Cesar Rodríguez/The New York Times)

By JACK NICAS

El Mencho was the biggest kingpin left.

The drug lord, whose real name was Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, had evaded capture for two decades, outlasting his rivals El Chapo and El Mayo and building his Jalisco New Generation Cartel into Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization.

Then, over the weekend, his run came to an abrupt end, in part because of a romantic rendezvous.

The killing was a clear success for the Mexican authorities. The timing, however, seemed to be telling.

President Donald Trump has been loudly and repeatedly demanding that Mexican officials dismantle the cartels that have amassed fortunes by sending drugs across the border. If they don’t, he has threatened, the U.S. military may do the job instead.

Those threats appear to be having an effect.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has overseen one of the most aggressive offensives against the cartels in more than a decade.

On Sunday, weeks after Trump ordered a military intervention in Venezuela and warned that Mexico was next, Sheinbaum took another bold swing. She authorized Mexican forces to take out her nation’s most wanted criminal, using intelligence provided by the United States.

The killing of Oseguera Cervantes shows how the tense interplay between Trump and Sheinbaum — two leaders with starkly different styles but an unlikely camaraderie — has fundamentally reshaped the U.S.-Mexico relationship, particularly on security.

“The pressure that Trump has put on her administration has been a force she’s taken advantage of,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst who studies U.S.-Mexico relations. “She wanted to change Mexico’s security, but Trump came at a very interesting moment to push her in that direction.”

Yet, Bravo added, Sheinbaum is also playing with fire.

“I don’t know if she wanted to go as far as she’s going,” he added. “This is clearly putting her administration under a lot of stress, and there is a big question now of what are the Mexican state’s capacities to govern the consequences of this operation.”

Like with the mythological monster the Hydra, cutting off one head of a cartel often spawns many more.

Killing Oseguera Cervantes unleashed a wave of shootings, arson and blockades across the country, and now Mexicans are bracing for even more violence ahead, as competing factions jockey for power and confront the government. It is a cycle Mexico has lived through many times before.

It is also the latest example of Trump’s growing impact on Latin America. Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Argentina, Honduras and others all can attest.

In her daily news conference Tuesday, Sheinbaum pushed back on the notion that she was acting in response to Trump, calling any speculation about that “almost laughable to read.”

Sheinbaum has consistently sought to set boundaries with Washington. Just as Trump’s wish to strike Mexico has become a regular part of his rhetoric, so has her refrain about protecting Mexico’s sovereignty.

On Monday, she repeated the limits on the American role. “There is no participation of U.S. forces,” she told reporters. “The understanding with the United States is based primarily on the exchange of intelligence.”

Sheinbaum confirmed that U.S. agencies provided intelligence for the operation against Oseguera Cervantes, and The New York Times reported Monday that critical information came from the CIA. The CIA declined to comment.

Mexico’s defense secretary also credited U.S. agencies with assistance but said the break in the case came when Mexican intelligence officials identified an associate of one of Oseguera Cervantes’ lovers, who then led authorities to the cartel leader’s hideout.

It is clear the two sides have improved cooperation. In January, the U.S. military set up an intelligence-sharing task force in Arizona, about 15 miles from the Mexico border. The force has roughly 300 military and civilian staff members who study the cartels — their leadership, logistics and financial operations — to feed intelligence to Mexican authorities. The task force aided the raid on Oseguera Cervantes, the Times reported.

From 2008 to 2023, the United States spent $3.6 billion on bilateral security with Mexico. But it was not always so collaborative. One classified U.S. intelligence program investigated top targets in Mexico but kept the information from Mexican authorities. That secretive approach was partly validated when numerous Mexican officials were shown to be corrupted by the cartels.

John Feeley, a top U.S. diplomat in Mexico from 2009 to 2012, said it appeared the tides were shifting. “The big difference always was that we never had full buy-in from the Mexicans,” he said. The recent successes, he added, “show that, with Mexico at least, the United States needed to bring more pressure to bear to create the moment of political will.”

Still, Mexican authorities had tried to catch Oseguera Cervantes before. In 2012, he escaped when his cartel blocked roads with burning vehicles. In 2015, his gunmen shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing three soldiers.

Those were under more conservative presidents. Under Sheinbaum’s leftist predecessor and political benefactor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Oseguera Cervantes appeared to face less pursuit. López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” approach to solving Mexico’s violence by addressing root causes led to rising violence. It also badly fractured the U.S.-Mexico security relationship.

“The question always was: Is Claudia going to emerge from AMLO’s shadow?” Feeley said, referring to López Obrador by his initials. “She has not only emerged, she has cut a level of security engagement from a whole new cloth.”

Now that Sheinbaum has eliminated Mexico’s most wanted cartel boss, will Trump lay off the threats?

On Monday morning — less than 24 hours after arguably Mexico’s biggest achievement in its cartel war in years — Trump posted a message online for his neighbor: “Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs!”