Why Mexico’s Cartels Are So Hard to Defeat

On February 22, cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was killed in a hideout in the town of Tapalpa, a well-known tourist center in Mexico’s Jalisco state. The Mexican military soon presented a broad version of the events: the country’s intelligence agencies, aided by U.S. counterparts, had been closely tracking the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader and his associates for two days before elite Mexican forces launched a capture operation that turned violent, ending with El Mencho’s death. It was President Claudia Sheinbaum’s first operation against a major criminal leader, and probably not her last.

Since beginning her term in October 2024, Sheinbaum has revamped the government’s campaign against criminal organizations. The February mission appeared to be a military and political success. Sheinbaum has faced increasing pressure to crack down on cartels since President Donald Trump returned to office in the United States, and the operation demonstrated the Mexican military’s capacity to strike high-value targets using time-sensitive intelligence. It also helped Sheinbaum prove the point that, although Mexico City and Washington benefit from close security cooperation and intelligence sharing, there is no need to deploy U.S. troops on Mexican soil to confront drug cartels, as Trump and other members of the Republican party have suggested. Domestically, early polling showed that a clear majority of Mexican voters supported the government’s actions.

The aftermath of the operation was less reassuring. The Jalisco cartel responded with a wave of arson attacks and road blockades in over 20 states, displaying its geographical reach and quasi-military discipline. Dozens of troops and criminal suspects died in the clashes, and one bystander was killed. Meanwhile, journalists gained access to the abandoned crime scene in Tapalpa, where they found a trove of expense reports, payroll forms, and handwritten notes that offered a glimpse at the criminal group’s financial structure, its drug business, and its links to local governments across the country. But when presented with the journalists’ findings, Mexico’s top prosecutor said that the crime scene had been too dangerous to secure immediately, which meant the findings revealed by the press were compromised and could not be used in future legal proceedings.

The entire episode is emblematic of Mexico’s standing in the fight against organized crime. Two decades of a military-led “war on drugs” have brought the country no closer to peace, leading instead to record rates of violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, tens of thousands disappeared, and many more forcibly displaced. Sheinbaum is now trying to strike a difficult balance, still relying on the military as the state’s most effective bulwark against criminal groups but also strengthening the intelligence and investigative bodies as part of a comprehensive strategy to diminish the groups’ political and economic power. Yet investigative agencies botched the job at El Mencho’s hideout, wasting an opportunity to uncover the connections between the Jalisco cartel and state authorities. If Mexico’s war on drugs is to achieve more than fleeting military victories, the government must dislodge criminal groups from the areas they control and dismantle the support systems that keep them afloat. Sheinbaum understands what is needed to get lasting results. The question is whether she can manage political resistance at home and a tricky relationship with Washington well enough to make it happen.

DON’T CALL IT A “WAR ON DRUGS”

Sheinbaum has insisted that the operation against El Mencho was distinct from others conducted during the war on drugs, largely because it had been “the product of months-long investigations and judicial warrants issued” against the kingpin. This argument is not entirely convincing; other high-profile drug bosses killed by government forces also faced arrest warrants at the time. Yet it is the president’s attempt to soften what is indeed a departure from recent history—not from the war on drugs, which she rightly criticizes, but from her own party’s security doctrine.

That doctrine was shaped by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who founded Mexico’s ruling Morena party. López Obrador won his 2018 election on a progressive agenda that pledged to address the socioeconomic roots of violence—namely, poverty and inequality—and to reform the militarized approach to crime. In practice, his policies bordered on incoherence: during his six-year term, the security forces were given broad authority over public security and an increased role in building and managing critical infrastructure, from airports to rail systems. Yet they largely avoided direct confrontation with criminal groups and, in some cases, pursued arrangements that allowed cartels to operate as long as they refrained from overt violence. The result was a period of relative freedom for organized crime to expand its territorial reach, diversify its revenue streams, and strengthen its firepower. Violence did not subside; in many places, it intensified.

Sheinbaum campaigned on continuity with López Obrador’s agenda but moved quickly to recalibrate security policy once in office. Public concern about violence was mounting, as was pressure from Trump to stop narcotics from reaching the United States. Sheinbaum has maintained her party’s focus on addressing the social and economic problems that fuel violence, and she has been careful not to alienate her leftist coalition by avoiding any comparison between her strategy and the unpopular “war on drugs.” Instead, she emphasizes her efforts to balance military pressure with social programs and investments in intelligence and law enforcement.

The change is unmistakable. More than 160,000 troops are engaged in public security tasks nationwide, deployed to the areas facing the most critical levels of violence. In Sinaloa, where rival factions of the eponymous cartel are locked in a protracted internal war that has left thousands dead, disappeared, and displaced since September 2024, troop numbers have reached as high as 14,000, up from just 3,200 before the current conflict erupted. Residents of the capital Culiacán told me they have grown used to heavy military convoys patrolling the city’s streets. The policy’s logic is straightforward: overwhelm territory with state force to deter violence. As one former state prosecutor put it, the government is betting that “more troops equal more security.”

Sheinbaum understands what is needed to get lasting results.

Nationwide, the military is also engaging criminal groups more frequently, with the rate of clashes between security forces and cartel fighters doubling during Sheinbaum’s first months in office compared with the same period during López Obrador’s final year. In several regions, locals have told me that state forces now actively intervene in conflicts between rival criminal groups; previously, they stayed on the sidelines. The Sheinbaum administration has reinforced its more aggressive posture with increased investment in military capacity, including accelerated procurement of aircraft and antidrone systems from abroad and expanded domestic production of tactical vehicles and naval equipment.

Under pressure from Washington, the government has made counternarcotics a central priority. Armed forces have seized hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and other synthetic drugs across the country. In Sinaloa, where U.S. and Mexican government officials believe most fentanyl production is concentrated, Sheinbaum deployed 2,100 troops to dismantle dozens of drug laboratories and seize large quantities of chemical precursors. Hundreds of marines have been tasked with manually inspecting containers at seaports, significantly expanding the government’s oversight of the import of chemical precursors.

Sheinbaum’s strategy also relies heavily on mass detentions. Authorities have arrested more than 50,000 suspected “violence generators,” as the government calls them. Most are low-level operatives charged with weapons possession or drug offenses. The prison population has surged nationwide, with more than 40 percent of inmates awaiting sentencing, according to government data. Pretrial detention keeps many alleged offenders incarcerated for extended periods, even in the absence of strong judicial cases against them. The government has targeted higher-level figures, too, and transferred dozens to U.S. custody.

A drop in homicides is the government’s strongest evidence that its strategy is pacifying Mexico. According to the administration, Sheinbaum has presided over a 41 percent decrease in the average daily murder rate. Independent analysts, however, question the official data. In high-conflict zones such as Sinaloa, local sources have told me, official homicide figures no longer reflect the actual number of violent deaths in internecine fighting among cartel factions. Whereas the government says roughly 2,600 have been killed in the state since September 2024, local media outlets have tracked well over 3,000 killings and a large number of people disappeared over the same period. And although the large troop presence in Culiacán and other urban centers has mostly deterred cartel factions from engaging in open battles, the region still suffers from high levels of violence—only now, most of it happens in rural areas and takes the form of targeted attacks.

GOOD INTEL

Force is only one part of Sheinbaum’s approach. The second part is intelligence and investigations, and it rests on the belief that improvements to both can bring about what the military alone has failed to achieve: dismantling the political and financial structures that sustain organized crime. Omar García Harfuch, Sheinbaum’s secretary of security, is the architect of this effort. The son of an important politician and grandson of an army general, he forged a career in policing and served in Sheinbaum’s mayoral administration in Mexico City, which enabled him to consolidate an unusually broad influence in the current government. García Harfuch has placed allies in key intelligence and prosecutorial posts while also asserting de facto authority over security policy in some of Mexico’s most violent states. The government is building a new specialized police force under his command to engage in high-profile operations against cartels. While that force is being assembled, hundreds of members drawn from other security agencies are already operating on the ground.

To expand the government’s investigative reach, Sheinbaum’s legislative coalition recently passed laws that broaden state surveillance power, granting civilian and military authorities access to personal data, communications, geolocation, and bank accounts without prior judicial authorization. The government is investing in a central intelligence platform designed to integrate public and private databases containing vast personal records, with the aim of ensuring that intelligence can be used as valid court evidence for criminal prosecutions. García Harfuch is also developing a new federal investigative unit focused on violent crime, criminal networks, and financial activity. But coordination with federal prosecutors remains uneven, as was clear in the aftermath of the killing of El Mencho.

Successful investigations that end in the prosecution of corrupt political figures and cartel financiers—not just those who commit violence—will be crucial for Sheinbaum to turn short-term tactical victories into real strategic gains against criminal groups. She will particularly need to focus on unraveling the connections between criminal groups and local governments and security forces. Take, for instance, the drug interdiction campaign. Despite large troop deployments on counternarcotics missions and record-breaking numbers of seizures in states such as Sinaloa, official data shows that there are now fewer investigations and prosecutions of related crimes, such as drug manufacturing and trafficking, than in previous years. A deep body of evidence suggests that seizures alone do not dismantle drug networks, and criminal groups are highly adaptable, particularly when they have bought off corrupt officials. Criminal infiltration of key parts of the state may help explain why, even as the federal government cracks down in Sinaloa, fentanyl supply and prices in Mexico and across major U.S. cities have remained largely unchanged.

THE TRUMP FACTOR

Since Trump assumed office, Washington has waged an economic, military, and political pressure campaign aimed at forcing Mexico City to crack down in visible ways on criminal groups involved in drug and migrant trafficking. Sheinbaum has offered deepened security cooperation with U.S. authorities but rejected Trump’s push to deploy the U.S. military on Mexican soil. To avoid the latter scenario, her government has made significant concessions, including transferring almost 100 criminal suspects to U.S. custody and conducting high-profile operations against cartel leadership. So far, Sheinbaum’s willingness to cooperate and readiness to act has tempered the White House’s most hawkish instincts.

But despite Sheinbaum’s best efforts, the relationship is drifting into volatile territory. The U.S. government recently indicted and sought the extradition of ten major political figures and security officials, including Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, for colluding with the leaders of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. According to U.S. prosecutors, criminal leaders kidnapped and intimidated Rocha’s political rivals, helping ensure his 2021 election victory, and Rocha offered to return the favor. The U.S. charges maintain that Sinaloa officials leaked sensitive law enforcement and military information to the cartel faction, safeguarded certain drug consignments, secured passage routes for trafficking, and murdered enemies of the cartel.

Rocha is a member of Sheinbaum’s party, and the indictment poses a complex political challenge for the president, who needs to both unravel corrupt networks and maintain cohesion in her governing coalition. Thus far, Sheinbaum has sought to deflect domestic pressure by questioning the U.S. government’s evidence. Yet her position might not be sustainable. Although Rocha and two other defendants have maintained their innocence, at least two others—including a retired army general who served as the state’s security secretary—have turned themselves over to U.S. authorities. Their surrender suggests that the indictment, rather than merely being a U.S. pressure tactic, could have substance to it.

The U.S.-Mexican relationship is drifting into volatile territory.

Reports of expanded U.S. involvement in ground operations in Mexico have exacerbated tensions further. In late April, two local law enforcement officers and two CIA officers died in a car crash while returning from a mission to dismantle a synthetic drug lab in the state of Chihuahua. Sheinbaum said her government had not been notified of the operation and argued that the unauthorized presence of U.S. agents would violate Mexican sovereignty and national security laws. More recently, media reports have suggested that CIA activities in Mexico might extend far beyond intelligence sharing to include covert lethal actions that target specific cartel operatives. Both governments have denied these reports.

For Sheinbaum, unrelenting U.S. pressure is both a constraint and a potential lever. If Trump goes so far as to order unilateral military action, it could destroy the U.S.-Mexican cooperation that has been essential to fighting criminal groups. But for now, the threat of escalation from Washington can give Sheinbaum enough political cover to accept the latest indictments and withstand pressure from members of her coalition.

What would help even more, however, would be for Washington to offer greater reciprocity. If Mexico City agrees to extradite the latest indicted officials to the United States, Washington should increase its efforts to halt the illicit trafficking of U.S.-made weapons into Mexico. The Trump administration in 2025 designated six Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a step that enables U.S. prosecutors to pursue ambitious criminal cases against individuals and entities that provide these outfits with material support, services, or resources, such as selling them arms or laundering their profits. But so far, enforcement has been limited. U.S. authorities have mostly focused on Mexican individuals connected to cartels while largely ignoring U.S. entities, including arms dealers, that participate in southbound arms trafficking. Washington should also comply with Mexico City’s extradition requests for U.S. citizens accused of serious crimes. And both administrations should avoid measuring success by the killing or capture of criminal bosses; these flashy operations often end up splintering criminal groups, stoking more violence as rival factions compete for control.

WALKING A FINE LINE

Sheinbaum’s security strategy has begun to deliver results, but it has also exposed fault lines within the ruling Morena party. Allegations linking local officials, party barons, and elements of the armed forces to criminal groups have tested the administration’s willingness to confront crime. Authorities have moved quickly against lower-level officials, but accusations involving senior political figures or powerful allies (such as Rocha) have largely been dismissed, with Sheinbaum herself claiming a lack of evidence to launch investigations. The uneven response suggests that the government is only committed to accountability insofar as it does not fracture the party or weaken its political hold across the country.

Next year’s legislative and gubernatorial elections could expand or contract Sheinbaum’s room for maneuvering. Her approval ratings have reached as high as 80 percent, giving her plenty of political capital, but her grip over her party will be tested at the ballot box. Without clear support from the party, Sheinbaum’s fight against corruption and violence could stall as she becomes trapped between the imperative to confront organized crime and the political costs of doing so. But if she can translate her popularity into durable political control, not only securing a legislative majority but replacing compromised state officials with candidates who pass muster, she could build on the achievements of the past year and a half and put together a more thoroughgoing campaign against the political and financial bases of organized crime.

Real success will depend less on the number of troops deployed, drugs seized, suspects captured, or kingpins taken down than on the Mexican government’s ability to uncover and dismantle the political and economic arrangements involving corrupt officials and white-collar operators that have allowed criminal groups to grow in power for decades. Those tasks will require the intelligence and prosecutorial capacities that Sheinbaum and García Harfuch are investing in, as well as political will. If Sheinbaum can marshal both while navigating internal political constraints and Trump’s hawkish interventionism, her administration could mark a turning point in the fight against organized crime in Mexico. She could be the president who not only takes the fight to criminal groups but also confronts the networks that sustain them.

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