Commentary
Mexican forces raided and arrested the cartel boss, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), on Feb. 22. He and his gang fled and shot back. “El Mencho” was shot during the operation. On his way to the hospital, he died.
The same day, CJNG retaliated with arson, roadblocks, and killings. At least 50 branches of a bank and 200 convenience stores were damaged, and the entrances to cities were blockaded with burning buses. The cartel ambushed Mexican military installations, killing 25 of Mexico’s national guard.
The Mexican forces who fought against the CJNG are heroes. The ongoing operations against the CJNG will disorganize, deter, and decrease Mexico’s illicit drug exports to the United States, including cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin, and improve U.S.–Mexico relations. Following the capture and CJNG retaliation, Mexican forces continued to take action against the cartel, confiscating military-grade weaponry, including armored vehicles, rocket launchers, and high-powered rifles.
CJNG is also known to use mines, grenades, and armed drones. In most mid-sized cities under the cartel’s control, it can assemble a paramilitary group of about 50 men, sufficient to defeat the local police force. This gives the cartel extraordinary power over local governance.
In 2020, the cartel attempted to assassinate the chief of police in Mexico City. That chief survived and is now head of federal security. But other CJNG assassinations have been successful, including against a sitting judge, former state governor, and state security secretary. The group has massacred up to 35 citizens at a time. CJNG is rightly designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization.
The cartels have held territory in Mexico since the 1980s, when they started smuggling Colombian cocaine to the United States. CJNG is particularly strong in central Mexico, where it operates from coast to coast. It specializes in cocaine smuggling and controls ports on both sides of the country that give it easy access to precursor chemicals from China for illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine production. It can transport the precursors and cocaine across the country from port to port and beyond. Now that El Mencho is dead, his lieutenants will likely get into territorial fights with each other for these lucrative ports, smuggling routes, and production facilities.
The Mexican government has been soft on the cartels, so the Trump administration is publicly pressuring its leaders by suggesting that U.S. military operations could extend across the border to capture cartel bosses and terminate cartel labs. U.S. strikes could use armed drones as deployed against terrorists throughout the Middle East. The United States is already assisting Mexican authorities with intelligence, likely including through surveillance drones over Mexican airspace.
More help is needed. The cartel operates throughout Mexico and globally. It has corrupted and intimidated high government officials in Mexico. The intimidation likely goes all the way to the country’s president, who does not want the kind of disruption that followed the death of El Mencho.
According to President Donald Trump, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is not doing enough. “She’s not running Mexico. The cartels are running Mexico,” he said in early January. “She’s very frightened of the cartels … I’ve asked her numerous times, ‘Would you like us to take out the cartels?'” The answer has been a resounding no—at least in public.
