Why many Mexicans welcome U.S. strikes on drug cartels despite sovereignty concerns

A woman holds a sign outside the National Palace in Mexico City

A protester at a national vigil in March for the thousands of Mexicans who have been forcibly disappeared.

(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

Kate Linthicum

and

Jared Olson

Dec. 5, 2025

3 AM PT

8 min

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Despite Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s opposition to foreign intervention, polls show some Mexicans support U.S. military action against drug cartels operating in Mexico.

Decades of escalating violence and failed security strategies have left many Mexicans skeptical that their government can battle cartels without U.S. help.

Experts question whether U.S. strikes would succeed, pointing to past crackdowns that fractured cartels into smaller, more violent rival groups.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly insisted that she will not allow the U.S. military to fight drug cartels inside her nation’s borders.

“It’s not going to happen,” Sheinbaum said last month after President Trump yet again threatened such an operation. “We don’t want intervention by any foreign government.”

But while Sheinbaum passionately defends her nation’s sovereignty, recent polls and interviews from across Mexico show that a significant number of people here in fact welcome more American involvement in their country’s battle against organized crime — including having U.S. boots on the ground.

Slightly more than half of Mexicans surveyed by polling firm Mitofsky said they believe “U.S. authorities should enter Mexican territory to fight organized crime and arrest its leaders.” A third of respondents to a poll by El Financerio newspaper said they support the deployment of the U.S. military to Mexico to combat cartels.

Let the Americans come, so this hell that so many families in Mexico are experiencing can finally end.

— Ricardo Marcial Pérez, Mexico City resident

“It’s very embarrassing to say that Mexico can’t do it alone,” said José Santillán, a 38-year-old graphic designer in Mexico City. “But the situation with the drug cartels has clearly spiraled out of control. A powerful army is needed to confront them. And the United States has one.”

The U.S. has already unleashed its military on suspected drug traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean, killing at least 83 people. For months Trump and his team have been floating the prospect of U.S. strikes on suspected criminals and drug laboratories in Mexico.

“We know the addresses of every drug lord,” Trump said in November. He wouldn’t say whether he would conduct strikes unilaterally, without Sheinbaum’s permission.

Protesters are silhouetted against fumes in Mexico City.

Protestors calling for stonger security policies clash with police in the Zocalo.

(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

Those threats incense many in Mexico, where resentment lingers over past American invasions, including during the 1846 war, which ended with Mexico ceding more than half of its territory, including California, to the United States.

Yet others here are so desperate for peace that they are willing to consider any proposals.

Nearly two decades since Mexican soldiers were first deployed to confront cartels, drug trafficking today continues at record levels, violence has spread to previously peaceful parts of the country, and crimes such as extortion have exploded.

“Organized crime has extended its reach and is affecting a larger percentage of the population,” said Jorge Buendía, a political scientist.

Many Mexicans view their own officials as too corrupt or too weak to combat organized crime.

“People want security — the means are secondary,” Buendía said.

“People live in constant fear,” said Ricardo Marcial Pérez, 42, who said that people in his hometown in Guerrero state must pay protection fees to criminal groups or risk being killed. “Let the Americans come so this hell that so many families in Mexico are experiencing can finally end,” he said.

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Polls throughout the Americas show that many are warming to hard-line security strategies and support more punitive measures for suspected criminals. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has gained fans regionally for his unforgiving approach to lowering crime: locking up tens of thousands of people he says are gang members without due process.

Carlos Manzo, a mayor in Mexico’s violence-plagued Michoacán state, gained a national following and drew comparisons to Bukele when he called for local law enforcement to use lethal force against suspected criminals who resisted arrest.

Manzo’s shocking public assassination last month by suspected cartel members drew condolences from top Trump administration officials and turned him into a martyr across Mexico. For some here, his slaying was another sign that only U.S. intervention can pull Mexico’s out of its security quagmire.

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“The assistance of the United States… would help a lot to eradicate all these problems,” said a public official in Michoacán who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But, he cautioned, any U.S. assistance should be limited in scope: “We don’t want a foreign invasion. We want them to help us.”

Americans have been involved in Mexico’s fight against organized crime for years, with a smattering of soldiers and CIA and law enforcement agents deployed here to assist their Mexican counterparts with intelligence. Washington sent some $3 billion in security aid under a 2007 bilateral agreement known as the Mérida Initiative, donating helicopters, training police and helping redesign Mexico’s notoriously broken justice system.

Sheinbaum’s predecessor as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, broke with Mérida, saying Mexico didn’t need cooperation “in the use of force” but rather “for development.”

Under a strategy called “hugs, not bullets” López Obrador sought to address poverty and other causes of violence and directed his military to mostly avoid direct confrontation with cartels. Sheinbaum has continued elements of that strategy but has taken a harder tack against organized crime. She has also rekindled cooperation with the Americans, sending dozens of suspected cartel members to the U.S. for prosecution and granting access to Mexican airspace for U.S. surveillance drones.

Homicides have dipped under Sheinbaum, although reports of forced disappearances have risen. Crime continues to be a top concern here, with 75% of Mexicans saying they live in states that are unsafe, according to the 2025 census.

Some of Sheinbaum’s conservative critics have embraced threats of American intervention. Opposition Sen. Lilly Téllez applauded the White House designation of several Mexican cartels as “terrorist” groups,” which Trump aides say paves the way for strikes, and told Fox News that she supported the U.S. “sending troops and trying to help us Mexicans against the cartels.” Sheinbaum has called her a traitor.

Relatives of missing people at a vigil in Mexico City on March 15, 2025.

(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

Sheinbaum’s supporters say the U.S. has no business meddling in Mexico and say they doubt strikes would actually improve security.

The U.S.-backed “kingpin strategy” that was embraced for years here, which called for the killing or capture of drug lords, has been widely criticized for causing cartels to fracture into smaller, rival groups and causing violence to spiral.

Michoacán, where Mexico first deployed soldiers to eradicate cartels in 2006, is now contested by a patchwork of warring gangs and self-defense groups who fund their conflicts by charging steep taxes on the lucrative lime and avocado industries.

One lime farmer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he hears distant gunbattles while he waters his trees. He and others are forced to pay criminals two pesos — about 10 cents — for every kilo of fruit that they produce.

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The grower said he is in the good graces of the group that controls his region, but fears what will happen if an opposing group muscles in. Sheinbaum’s strategy, he worries, isn’t strong enough.

“We can’t wait 50 years for a prevention or intelligence strategy,” the grower said. “We need to be more frontal.” That includes, he said, limited U.S. strikes.

Still, he said, he was conflicted. Cartel hit men “weren’t monsters” and didn’t necessarily deserve to die. Most had turned to crime because of poverty.

“That’s the dilemma,” he said. “We say zero tolerance. But are we really willing to pay in terms of human lives?”

Protesters in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square, demonstrate last month against the violence in Mexico and the assassination of Carlos Manzo.

(Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

Linthicum reported from Mexico City and special correspondent Olson from Apatzingán. Cecilia Sánchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.