Mexican special forces killed the cartel leader El Mencho, known to his family and the Drug Enforcement Administration as Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, on Feb. 22 in a gun battle at the tourist resort of Tapalpa. El Mencho’s outfit, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, responded by blocking roads, setting fire to banks and businesses, and attacking the National Guard across more than 20 Mexican states. The Trump administration is pressing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for results. But members of Sheinbaum’s leftist Morena party are alleged to be in partnership with the cartels, and Sheinbaum said on Feb. 24 that she seeks “peace, not war.”

In 2025, Sheinbaum said that starting a “war on drugs” like the one President Felipe Calderon launched in 2006 was “not an option” because it is “outside the framework of the law.” That is where the narcotics business begins, but it is not where it leads. Drug dealings and influence pass through the law into every aspect of Mexican society and governance via legitimate fronts such as businesses and politicians. Extraditing cartel suspects to the United States, as Sheinbaum has done, will not be enough. The National Security Strategy of December 2025 identified the cartels as “narco-terrorists” and proposed using U.S. military assets against them. Apart from being enemies of American society, the Mexican wave of drug crime is an obstacle to the administration’s “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric........

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