Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with President Claudia Sheinbaum, after she pressed the Trump administration not to take unilateral action in Mexico.
That seemed to indicate that the Trump administration could limit unilateral cross-border actions against suspected criminals. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico had made clear that any U.S. incursions would be unacceptable.
The announcement came in a joint statement after Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Ms. Sheinbaum at her office in Mexico City on Wednesday morning, along with Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s foreign minister, and its security minister, Omar García Harfuch.
The statement lacked details, except to say that the governments would form a bilateral “high level” group to coordinate actions.
Mr. Rubio praised Mexico for arresting dozens of people whom the U.S. government considers to be “high-value targets” and transporting them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges.
“There’s no other government that’s cooperating as much with us in the fight against crime as Mexico,” Mr. Rubio said.
Ms. Sheinbaum wrote on social media later on Wednesday that she had had a “cordial meeting” with Mr. Rubio, and that the two governments had reached an understanding on security cooperation after months of discussions.
Mr. de la Fuente praised the joint anti-crime efforts between the two countries, while saying there are “particularly sensitive and complex” issues in the relationship that the nations needed to handle carefully. He said that as long as the governments respect “each country’s sovereignty, each country’s territorial integrity,” the cooperation would be fruitful.
Ms. Sheinbaum also aims to show that her administration is willing to investigate powerful political figures in Mexico who have been linked to the drug trade.
Mr. Rubio is making his third trip to Latin America as secretary of state and has scheduled meetings in Mexico and Ecuador. While representing Florida as a Republican senator for 14 years, he tried to shape policy across Latin America, taking a hard line on Cuba, where his parents are from, and on Venezuela.
Mr. Rubio praised the U.S. military’s lethal strike on Tuesday against a boat in the Caribbean. Mr. Trump said that the boat was being used by drug traffickers traveling from Venezuela and that 11 people had been killed.
At the news conference in Mexico City on Wednesday, Mr. Rubio said that the boat’s eventual destination was the United States, and that destroying such vessels was necessary to stop drug shipments.
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump aimed to “wage war” on drug cartels.
Mr. Rubio said criminal groups and the traffickers working for them, including those on the boat on Tuesday, “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period.” Mr. Trump can use any means to end the threat, he said.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders,” he said, the United States blew up the boat. “And it’ll happen again.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio say Mexico must crack down harder on drug cartels, even though law enforcement agencies under Ms. Sheinbaum have made many more arrests compared to those of recent administrations. Mr. Trump has said the cartels are responsible for the fentanyl addiction problem in the United States.
Several large Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel, are among the criminal groups in Latin America that the State Department in February designated foreign terrorist organizations.
And citing what he called the Mexican government’s weak actions against cartels, Mr. Trump threatened to impose a tariff of 30 percent on goods shipped from Mexico. American companies importing Mexican goods would pay the tariff and would most likely pass on the costs to American consumers.
Ms. Sheinbaum and her aides have insisted for months that any security arrangement between the two nations guarantee that the United States respects Mexico’s sovereignty, meaning the U.S. military would not take unilateral action in Mexico against people or cartels.
Mexican officials have been watching the Pentagon’s deployment of thousands of U.S. troops to the border between the two nations, and they are worried that the U.S. military could conduct drone strikes in Mexico.
Mexican officials are asking their American counterparts to clamp down on the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico. Mexican cartels are using military-grade weapons in combat with one another and against law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Rubio said on Wednesday that ending the arms shipments would be one focus of the new coordination group.
