Mexico Cracked Down; Trump Still Slapped Tariffs On
Is a North American confrontation inevitable?
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Update on March 6 with suspension of tariffs.
On Wednesday February 19, Mexican soldiers swept on various houses in the city of Culiacán, a heartland of the country’s oldest and biggest narco network, known as the Sinaloa Cartel. The troops, Mexico’s head of the army would reveal, were helped by intelligence gathered by MQ-9 Reaper drones run by the CIA but in coordination with Mexican security forces.
In a house in the plush Las Quintas neighborhood, the soldiers nabbed José Ángel Canobbio, or “El Guerito” (blondie), a 44-year-old indicted for being a top financial operator and mastermind of fentanyl trafficking for the Chapitos faction of the cartel. In other dwellings, they nabbed various Chapitos’ operatives including their head of security. They also discovered a tunnel that the Chapitos boss, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán (the son of El Chapo), could have escaped down.
Just eight days later, Mexican troops flew Canobbio on a military plane to Chicago where he was handed to U.S. agents, without an extradition process. He was one of 29 top cartel figures that Mexico delivered to the United States that day in an unprecedented prisoner transfer; among others were Rafael Caro Quintero wanted in the murder of a DEA agent in 1985, and the former heads of The Zetas and Juarez Cartel. Mexico trampled on the prisoners’ appeals to extradition citing national security laws, a move that is legally dubious.
The “mega narco extradition” was the spearhead of efforts by the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum to placate President Donald Trump and his threats to slap 25-percent tariffs on Mexican goods. Sheinbaum also sent ten thousand troops to the U.S. border and the forces raided labs and stash houses snatching tons of drugs. Feeling the pressure, some cartels made agreements to suspend fentanyl and migrant smuggling, CrashOut found in interviews with operatives.
The crackdown was yielding undeniable results. The number of undocumented migrants that Border Patrol agents “encountered” at the southern border in February hit its lowest level in at least 25 years. This decline actually began in the last months of Biden and has various causes, such as the US now making it largely impossible to claim asylum at the border. But Mexican troops rounding up migrants and pressuring cartels to stop moving them is surely a factor.
The amount of fentanyl being discovered at the border was also plummeting. In January, U.S. border agents found 1,000 pounds of fentanyl, more than a 50 percent drop compared to September. (The results for February, since Mexico has really been cracking down, are not yet out.)
From the point of view of Trump, and his MAGA base, he was winning. He had used pressure to make real gains and dispelled the idea it was impossible to stop the sky-high numbers of migrants that had come over the border in recent years.
Yet, as the clock ticked past midnight into Tuesday March. 4, Trump slapped 25 percent tariffs on Mexican goods anyway, as well hitting Canada with the same amount and doubling tariffs on China to 20 percent. The levy was accompanied by an aggressive message that seemed to favor those in the U.S. government that would like to take unilateral military action against cartels in Mexico.
“Cartel violence, including armed drones and roadside IEDs, are coming in closer and closer proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border,” it said in the…
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