Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) urged President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday to cut back on ties with Mexico’s government over its link to drug cartels and communist regimes.
The chairman of the House Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security made his remarks ahead of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement discussions, which are slated to begin in 2026.
“My message is clear: the United States cannot continue doing business as usual with a Mexican government that refuses to confront corruption, empowers narco-terrorist elements, and fails to uphold its most basic responsibilities to its own citizens,” Gimenez wrote in a letter to the administration officials.
Gimenez then accused Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum of holding Mexico “hostage” to narco-terrorists, adding that her administration “is part of the problem, not the solution.”
Drug cartel-related homicides have risen by 400% in Mexico this year alone after having reached record high numbers in 2018, a CNN analysis found.
However, despite Mexico’s cartel violence, Trump created the USCMA agreements during his first term, which designated Mexico as America’s largest trading partner.
Because of the USMCA, Mexico has become one of America’s most important suppliers, which signals his desire to keep talks with Sheinbaum stable.
Gimenez previously sent a letter on Oct. 30 to President Trump’s administration expanding on his claims against Mexico’s government.
The Florida Republican accused the government of sustaining “deep operational ties to Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles,” the Venezuelan regime’s drug cartel designated by the Trump administration as a foreign terrorist organization on Sunday.
The representative also accused Mexico’s government of aiding Cuba’s communist regime with over $3 billion worth of oil this year alone.
If Trump were to move forward with negotiations, Gimenez said the United States would be allowing its “closest trading partner” to continue to finance “regimes that harbor, finance, and or enable transnational criminal terrorist organizations.”
Gimenez laid out demands for the Trump administration, including revisiting the USMCA’s framework and requiring Mexico to “step up” anti-trafficking efforts, end its oil shipments to Cuba, and end “trafficking” of Cuban medical professionals.
Anti-trafficking efforts have been a focal point of the Trump administration’s since September, when he conducted the first strike on alleged drug smuggling boats in the waters off of Venezuela. Since then, there have been 20 strikes and 60 people killed. So far, the administration has not provided evidence that the boats were smuggling drugs.
The United States moved the world’s largest aircraft carrier from the Mediterranean to the waters off of Venezuela last week, in an effort to intensify military presence around the country’s narco-communist regime.
The president on Monday expressed his desire to intensify his efforts on the international war on drugs, by specifically targeting Mexico’s drug operations.
While he insisted no decisions have been made about land strikes on Mexico or Venezuela, he said strikes in Mexican waters, like the ones seen in the Southern Caribbean, are “okay” with him.
TRUMP SAID HE’D ‘BE PROUD’ TO TARGET DRUG TRAFFICKERS IN MEXICO
“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” the president said. “Look, I looked at Mexico City over the weekend. There’s some big problems over there. If we had to, would we do there what we’ve done to the waterways? You know, there’s almost no drugs coming into our waterways anymore.”
Similarly, Rubio told reporters in Canada last week that the United States would be open to aiding Mexico’s government with resources to ramp up the drug war, which was one of the demands Gimenez outlined in his letter weeks before.