President Claudia Sheinbaum said Saturday that she had rejected an offer from US President Donald Trump to send American troops to Mexico to help combat drug trafficking.
“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale,'” she said at a public event, referring to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.
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The report, she said, was “true… but not as described.”
During a call, Sheinbaum said, Trump had asked how he could help fight organized crime and suggested sending US troops.
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She said she declined, telling him that “we will never accept the presence of the United States Army in our territory.”
Sheinbaum said she did offer to collaborate, including through greater information-sharing.
At the same time, the Mexican leader said she had urged Trump to stop the cross-border arms trafficking that has contributed to a wave of violence lasting nearly two decades, claiming more than 450,000 lives in Mexico.
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She said Trump issued an order Friday “to ensure that everything necessary is in place to prevent weapons from entering our country from the United States.”
The US president has complained repeatedly about cross-border drug smuggling and has pressured Mexico to crack down on criminal cartels.
Trump angered Mexicans in early March when he said America’s southern neighbor was “dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture and exercise total control… posing a grave threat to (US) national security.”
The two countries, meantime, have been in an ongoing diplomatic dance over trade tariffs imposed by Trump.
Mexico, as the largest US trade partner and the second-largest economy in Latin America, is considered one of the most vulnerable countries to the US president’s expansive round of import duties.
