President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that her government had reached an agreement with its U.S. counterpart for the Mexican Navy to intercept vessels suspected of transporting drugs in international waters off Mexico’s coast.
Her remarks came 18 days after the U.S. military carried out at least one strike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs in international waters off Mexico’s southern Pacific coast.
The U.S. military has conducted at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean since September, killing a total of 83 alleged traffickers who the U.S. says were attempting to get narcotics to the U.S.
On Thursday, Sheinbaum noted that there are joint Mexico-U.S. “work protocols” to “avoid” the bombing of suspected drug boats when they are detected in international waters off Mexico’s coast. She also said there are international treaties aimed at stopping such strikes from occurring.
“So, what the navy minister set out is that these treaties be complied with, and in principle they said yes,” Sheinbaum said, referring to U.S. authorities.
“So that is the first agreement. In other words, … if there is information that comes from U.S. agencies or from the Southern Command itself, it will be the Mexican Navy who intercepts these boats that are allegedly carrying drugs,” she said.
Sheinbaum didn’t specify which U.S. authority or authorities she was referring to.
On October 29 — two days after the U.S. military killed 14 people in three strikes on alleged drug boats in the Eastern Pacific — the president said that Navy Minister Raymundo Pedro Morales and Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente had met with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, and that the ambassador had “agreed in principle” with Mexico’s view that alleged drug vessels should be intercepted rather than bombed.
Sheinbaum condemns US boat strikes near Mexico’s waters: Wednesday’s mañanera recapped
On Thursday, it was unclear whether Sheinbaum was referring to the agreement from Johnson on that point or from another U.S. authority at a subsequent meeting. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) didn’t respond to its request for comment.
Asked whether the United States had failed to comply with the agreement not to bomb alleged drug boats off Mexico’s coast, Sheinbaum said that “recently” it had not.
With regard to such boats “off the Mexican coast,” even if they are in international waters, strikes by the U.S. military are “no longer” happening, she said.
Sheinbaum previously spoke out in favor of arresting suspected drug traffickers at sea, rather than killing them.
“We have a model, a protocol, that has produced a lot of results. If, in international waters, the United States sees a boat that is allegedly carrying drugs, an agreement is reached and either the Mexican Navy or U.S. government institutions [should] intervene to arrest the alleged criminals,” she said Oct. 29.
The Mexican Navy frequently seizes drugs off Mexico’s Pacific coast, but associated arrests are seldom reported. It carried out a search mission aimed at rescuing a survivor of the Oct. 27 U.S. military strikes, but failed to locate him.
The New York Times has reported that “a broad range of experts in laws governing the use of armed force have said” that the U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats are “illegal.”
The Times also wrote that the Trump administration “has offered tenuous legal rationales” for its attacks “while releasing little evidence to support its smuggling allegations.”
The most recent strike occurred last Saturday and was reported by the U.S. Southern Command on Sunday.
“On Nov. 15, at the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Southern Command said on social media.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics. Three male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed. The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific and was struck in international waters,” the post stated.
Where in the Eastern Pacific the strike occurred was not specified.
The United States has designated various Western Hemisphere criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, including six Mexican drug cartels.
Mexico News Daily
