In 2020, during the final stretch of Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, Washington was already sounding the alarm about the fentanyl epidemic among its population and the phenomenon’s connection to Mexican cartels. At that time, the U.S. indicated that criminal organizations were manufacturing the synthetic opioid from precursors shipped from China and demanded stronger action from Mexico to contain the problem. The Mexican government’s campaign against the drug began during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency, but the results were not immediately tangible as the number of overdose deaths in the United States multiplied, reaching almost 74,000 in 2022. It wasn’t until 2024-2025, between López Obrador’s departure and the first year of Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency, that the government campaign intensified and managed to reverse the tragic trend. For the first time in years, the trafficking of fentanyl into the U.S., and overdose deaths related to the drug, have decreased.

The UN had already highlighted this downward trend in mid-2025. The strategy and its results have a more or less clear explanation: Trump’s return to the White House a year ago was accompanied by increased pressure on Mexico. The Republican magnate used the demand for greater security results from Mexico as leverage to soften the imposition of tariffs on exports from his southern neighbor. The agreement involved reinforcing the border between the two countries with military personnel, reducing irregular migrant crossings, and cracking down on drug trafficking, with an emphasis on fentanyl. The Sheinbaum administration launched Operation Northern Border, a strategy specifically aimed at combating criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking to the U.S., which has severely damaged the Sinaloa Cartel, the largest producer and importer of fentanyl to the north.

One year after its implementation, the figures demonstrate that the strategy has yielded clear results in all areas covered by the negotiations, despite the criticism expressed this week by Washington regarding the “gradual progress,” which it deemed “unacceptable.” From October 2024 — when Sheinbaum assumed the presidency — to the present, Mexican security agencies have seized 1.8 tons of fentanyl, destroyed nearly 1,900 drug production labs, and captured almost 41,000 people allegedly linked to organized crime, including key leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). This is in addition to the unprecedented summary extraditions of major drug lords to the United States.

According to official data obtained by EL PAÍS, the Mexican army alone seized a third of all fentanyl confiscated in 2025 (559 kilos), a figure 65% higher than that seized in 2024 (340.7 kilos), the final year of López Obrador’s six-year term. During the same period, the army also saw increases in seizures of methamphetamine (176%), marijuana (12%), heroin (82%), and opium gum (132%). These figures are complemented by seizures carried out by other agencies within the Security Cabinet. For example, in December 2024, a few months after Sheinbaum took office as president and a month before Trump’s inauguration, the Mexican Navy seized 1.5 tons of fentanyl, the largest haul of that drug ever confiscated.

The effect of the crackdown on fentanyl production in Mexico has resulted in a sharp drop in its trafficking into the United States. According to figures from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, in 2025 — excluding December — 4.5 tons of fentanyl were seized at U.S. borders, 52% less than the previous year, when 9.5 tons were confiscated. This decline had been ongoing since 2023, the year in which 11.3 tons of the synthetic opioid were seized. Cocaine seizures also saw a 14% decrease: in 2025, CBP confiscated 29.4 tons, compared to 34.4 tons the previous year. There was, however, a 9% increase in methamphetamine seizures, rising from 72 tons in 2024 to 78.8 tons a year later. In the case of marijuana, 77 tons were confiscated in 2024, and 87 tons in 2025 (11% more).

Fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States dropped dramatically starting in 2024, during the final months of López Obrador’s presidency in Mexico and Joe Biden’s term in the U.S. That year, there were 47,735 deaths from this cause, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This figure is 35% lower than in 2022, the worst year of the crisis since the beginning of the millennium, when there were 73,838 fentanyl-related deaths. This reduction in fatalities had not been seen since 2019.

Irregular migration is another area where there was a positive balance — in accordance with Trump’s demands. As of November 2025, the last month for which official records are available, Mexico detained 4,305 migrants, 95% fewer than in 2024, when immigration authorities apprehended 96,563 people in an irregular situation, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.

It is true that the main reason fewer migrants are transiting through Mexico is due to the tightening of the policy against undocumented immigrants decreed by Trump, as this newspaper has extensively documented. However, CBP apprehension statistics at the border with Mexico confirm that fewer migrants are attempting to cross into the United States. In 2025, there were only 4,300 arrests by the Border Patrol, 88% fewer than in 2024, when 37,816 apprehensions were recorded, according to data from that agency. This reduction could be due to the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops to the border ordered by Sheinbaum in February of last year with the aim of curbing the illegal entry of drugs and migrants.

As a consequence of Mexico’s fight against the cartels, the number of murders has also decreased. In 2025, there were 22,415 intentional homicides, a figure 27% lower than the previous year, when 30,063 homicides were recorded. This is the lowest figure in a decade. Many of the murders are linked to drug trafficking, and the decrease cannot be explained without the government’s shift in approach to combating the cartels.

Under López Obrador, security forces were limited to patrolling and violence deterrence. Arguing that direct confrontations should be avoided to protect the civilian population — the “hugs, not bullets” paradigm — the cartels assumed they had free rein to commit crimes. Sheinbaum has implemented a fundamental qualitative shift: using force with precision strikes, investing heavily in investigation and intelligence, and in coordination among all security agencies, with Omar García Harfuch, the president’s right-hand man in the fight against drug trafficking, at the helm. This has been accompanied by an intense campaign to communicate daily official operations involving drug seizures, dismantling of laboratories and weapons, and arrests of suspected criminals.

Sheinbaum has cited official figures from both countries to argue that Mexico has fulfilled its part of the agreement, despite Washington’s disdain. The Mexican president believes that, in contrast, the United States has not done enough to contribute to solving shared problems. Sheinbaum has maintained that the U.S. government should dismantle the criminal networks that enable drug distribution in the country and implement preventative strategies to address the addiction crisis among its population, especially young people. Trump explains the problem of drug trafficking and addiction in the U.S. with the same argument he applies to other complex phenomena: that they come from abroad. With the reduction in migration and Mexico’s ongoing crusade against fentanyl, there are few external factors left to blame.

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Yoselin López arrived in Ciudad Juárez on a “bad day.” On January 20, 2025, this young Honduran woman, holding her two-year-old son Mateo’s hand and seven months pregnant, set foot on this border. Three days later, she had her appointment to request asylum in the United States. They had left Tegucigalpa and arrived frozen to the bone on the train that crosses Mexico, known to all as La Bestia (The Beast). They were greeted by a city with sub-zero temperatures, holding its breath. At midday, the shock hit. In the first minutes of his return to the White House, Donald Trump canceled the asylum application platform and initiated what everyone already knew he wanted: a United States without migrants. A year later, Mateo runs around in a dinosaur-themed jacket at the entrance of the cathedral, Santiago stares wide-eyed from his mother’s arms, and Yoselin, now only 23, waits for a humanitarian flight to repatriate them to Tegucigalpa. That may be saying a lot, but the worst is over.

The border is not a strip of land. It looks like a shared brain, a moldable matter torn by a metal wall. One single territory split in two; both sides coil and squeeze each other. The initial blow landed here. Donald Trump was signing his first set of presidential measures in Washington, and Colombian migrant Margelis Tinoco collapsed at the entrance to the border bridge that connects Juárez with El Paso, watching her future shatter into pieces. The Republican president made threats from his new throne — tariffs, the elimination of birthrights, military interventions and mass deportations — and in Juárez, migrants, business owners, and government officials trembled. It was understood quickly on the border: the world had changed.

A year later, now that fear has subsided, the feeling is different: a lot has happened, but it could have been worse. “You realize that the border adapts, that the effects will be seen more in the long term. The political battle is now between Washington and Mexico City; Juárez is left adrift, wondering what might happen between them,” notes Rodolfo Rubio, a researcher in population and migration at the Colegio de Chihuahua. In this way, the expert believes, this city of almost a million inhabitants, which has weathered every economic and security crisis, demonstrates its resilience. The industrial fabric has been reconfigured, deportees have not arrived, migrants have moved on, and efforts are focused on containing kidnappings and murders. In short, the border has held its ground against Trump in his return to the White House.

Neither deportees nor migrants

It is night on the El Paso Norte border bridge. Amid the lights, a man walks slowly, wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. He stops in front of a camera and raises a document. He is Alfonso, a 46-year-old Mexican from Zacatecas, although he has no family there or anywhere else in Mexico, the country where he was born and which he left three decades ago. He must show his deportation papers. He was detained in El Paso, where he has lived and worked all this time. He was feeling unwell and called U.S. emergency services, but instead of sending an ambulance, they sent the police. This type of operation, explains Enrique Serrano, head of the State Population Council of Chihuahua, has begun to appear in recent weeks in El Paso. “Raids are happening where they didn’t before,” he notes. Alfonso will stay in Juárez, with a goal he makes no secret of: he wants to return as soon as he can to the place where he built his life over the past 30 years.

The figures from the Migration Policy Unit, which depends on the federal Ministry of the Interior, do not lie: in 2025, the lowest number of Mexicans in the past decade has been deported. The total is 144,000 — 62,000 fewer than the previous year and almost half the number in 2022. Trump’s announced mass deportations, so far, have not yet happened. As a result, the emergency tents that the government set up on the border exactly a year ago were left standing empty. They had the capacity to house 5,000 deportees — Mexicans — at the same time. “Over the entire year they must have sheltered around 3,000,” sums up Serrano, who also served as mayor of Ciudad Juárez. “They were taken down in December because there was no longer any need.”

That was, fortunately, one of the president’s unfulfilled threats. But Trump did eliminate the CBP One app used to apply for asylum, as well as the humanitarian parole program, effectively making it impossible to seek refuge in the United States. Fear and the Republican’s militarized approach have taken care of illegal crossings. Border Patrol figures show a drop of more than 90% in migrant apprehensions, mirrored by the numbers on the Mexican side. In all of 2025, Mexico’s Interior Ministry recorded 145,000 undocumented migrants, compared with more than 1.2 million just a year earlier.

“People no longer approach the border,” says Rodolfo Rubio. “Every route into the United States has been shut down.” “All flows from the south are frozen,” sums up José Fierro, pastor of the El Buen Samaritano shelter. In his facility, which has capacity for 260 people, there are now exactly five. Even during Trump’s first presidency, he says, the numbers were never this low. Back then, he acknowledges, the dynamics were different — and so were hopes for the future.

The Maduro effect

Cristina Coronado, who coordinates the cathedral’s humanitarian space, estimates that around 1,500 migrants remain in Ciudad Juárez, most of them in the process of regularizing their status in Mexico. Some are hoping to cross in three years, when Trump leaves office; others have settled with the aim of returning to their home countries with more than empty hands.

That is the case of Almary Ruiz, 45, from San Antonio, Venezuela, who is saving up for a motorcycle she can use for work when she goes back. “I was already thinking about returning, but then what happened with [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro…” says the woman, who now lives in Juárez with her seven-year-old daughter. “Trump closed the door on a lot of us trying to enter the United States, but look — he opened Venezuela.” Like Antonio and Nerleschka, also from Venezuela, she is aware that the situation is changing, but that it is still “a process.”

They are among the last ones left. Ninety percent of those who were once in the border city have moved on — either returning to their countries of origin or retracing their steps and waiting somewhere in southern Mexico. Those who remain in Juárez survive on small jobs in factories, shops, or construction. Nerleschka Silva, 17, from Yaracuy, Venezuela, thinks about the lives other teenage girls lead while she packs chilies when called in — earning 600 pesos a day (about $30).

Most migrants have managed to leave the shelters and now live in rented apartments, where they can pay as much as 2,400 pesos (around $120) just to sleep in a kitchen. That was Sol Petit’s situation until she regularized her status and moved into a small apartment of her own. From there, she sews, takes care of an emotional-support dog, and waits for the chance to reunite with her children, who crossed to the other side of the border just before Trump returned. “Staying wasn’t what I wanted — it wasn’t my goal — but that’s what happened. Not all of us achieve the American dream, but you have to keep fighting,” she says.

That has been the greatest challenge for humanitarian organizations. “The initial shock has passed,” says Cristina Coronado, “but this year we first had to process, together with the migrants, a reality we weren’t fully prepared for.” The standstill exposed shortcomings that went unnoticed when people were only passing through — from untreated tumors to cases of child sexual abuse. “They’ve suffered beyond what anyone should, because the government lacked the capacity to control the situation and left migrants in the hands of drug traffickers,” says the coordinator of this faith-based aid space.

Over the past year, they have organized to provide weekly food baskets, legal counseling to regularize immigration status, job-training workshops, help finding dignified housing, and medical care, as well as enrolling all children in school. An achievement acknowledged by both aid organizations and the government. “Even if they don’t have papers, state public schools have instructions to accept them,” notes Enrique Serrano, who criticizes, for example, the federal policy of leaving them in a “limbo”: “They don’t remove them from the country, but they don’t grant them permission either — they leave them in complete legal uncertainty.”

“If they don’t get them across, they kidnap them”

Both humanitarian groups and the government acknowledge that migrants are no longer being targted by the National Migration Institute, but one crime continues to pursue them: kidnapping. Since 2021, according to data from Mexico’s Security Ministry, 1,700 migrants have been rescued. Many others — like the Guatemalan women Francisca and Mercedes — escaped on their own after spending months in the grip of organized crime and do not appear in any official statistics. Now, with the border closed, these kidnappings have become the current modus operandi of human traffickers, according to both humanitarian organizations and government officials.

“They’re the same gangs that used to smuggle migrants, but as their business has slowed, they now deceive people by telling them there’s still a chance to get across — and then they kidnap them. It’s the only thing left for them to do, because they can’t charge for crossings anymore,” Serrano explains.

“Right now, crossing is almost unthinkable, but they [the coyotes] keep operating. They bring migrants almost in secret all the way to the U.S., and if they fail to get them across, they kidnap them,” adds José Fierro.

The Security Ministry has identified the same new tactic. “Migrant smuggling is still happening. People arrive having already paid between $10,000 and $15,000, and once they get here they’re taken to safe houses. That’s where the extortion of their families begins,” says Jorge Muro, director of the C7 Command Centers.

The police officer says they now have three hours to produce results in cases of kidnapping and other priority crimes. “Before, a kidnapping was the same as saying someone was dead,” he admits. Now, he says, the numbers are more encouraging thanks to a platform called Centinela and the 10,000 cameras associated with it, a third of them trained on Ciudad Juárez. This mass surveillance has led sources in the area to rename the massive Centinela Tower the next Eye of Sauron.

A sentry on the border

On a plot of land abutting the train tracks, in the midst of Ciudad Juárez’s decaying downtown, stands the border’s new security gamble. The Centinela Tower rises 25 stories above ground — counting the helipad — and as many below. “This is desert land, so the engineers dug down and found nothing but sand and more sand,” explains Jorge Muro, director of the C7 Command Centers. They had to change plans and, much like the pilings supporting a stretch of the Maya Train in the Caribbean, opt for concrete-filled pillars instead. These anchor the building that will concentrate all of the state’s security intelligence.

Its location is no coincidence. All the Chihuahua state government offices are headquartered in Chihuahua, about four hours from the border, except for the Public Security Secretariat. “That’s because 60% of the crime is concentrated in Ciudad Juárez,” says Muro. And within the city, the downtown area remains a red zone. This is where the network of disappearances and sexual trafficking that scarred the city in 2008 operated, in full view — and with the neglect — of the military forces of Operation Joint Chihuahua, which effectively placed the city under siege. At that time, Juárez was the most violent city in the world, a label it has since shed — though not its history of femicide. Murders, and particularly the killing of women, remain priority crimes for the government. Over the past four years, more than 4,700 intentional homicides have been recorded in the city, according to state figures — still more than three a day.

Representatives from U.S. agencies will also work in the Centinela Tower. Personnel from the DEA, Border Patrol, ATF, the Texas and New Mexico District Attorneys’ offices, and the El Paso Police Department will set up on the 18th floor of the tower. “We won’t be sharing databases. They’ll work with their own tools, but from here,” explains Muro. “Right now we coordinate, but we have to call them, and then while they consult, time is lost. Having them here, side by side, means it will be in real time.”

This collaboration comes amid Trump’s push for a potential military intervention in Mexico — a warning that has also affected criminal groups on the border, according to researcher Salvador Salazar of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez. “Organized crime is still present, but the groups are also acting as if in a sort of containment and caution, given the rhetoric of a possible direct U.S. intervention,” he notes.

Regarding the thousands of uniformed officers that Sheinbaum sent to the border last year, Salazar considers their presence largely “symbolic”: “They’re deployed in certain areas outside the city, intended to act as a containment for drug trafficking or the flow of people toward the U.S. But it’s more about sending a message — the Mexican government wants to show the U.S. government that action is being taken — than it is about a forceful intervention.”

And what about tariffs?

Right after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day,” economist Felipe Galán started preparing reports for his clients: what had really happened with tariffs amid the spectacle the Republican president had staged? Galán, director of Information and Statistics for Labor Competitiveness, now says that knowing exactly what’s happening with tariffs is “a charade.” The professor does know, however, how this trade battle has impacted Ciudad Juárez: “The tariff structure, above all, has reconfigured our industrial fabric.” For example, “the automotive industry is undergoing a deep technological reform,” and 85% of the city’s total exports are electronics, because in the global battle over computing capacity, Trump still refuses to give up his cheapest manufacturers.

“All of their policy is oriented that way. So anything having to do with chips, computing, servers for data centers — they’ll find a way to produce it at the lowest possible cost, and Mexico continues to be that location,” Galán explains. As a result, Juárez hasn’t seen the closure of large factories, but there has been a reduction in operations, the economist acknowledges. Maquiladoras account for 60% of the city’s formal employment, so any contraction there is a contraction of the entire economy. “Since we reached the peak in April 2023, employment in Juárez has been almost in free fall,” the professor says. “Export-manufacturing jobs have lost more than 64,000 positions since then — that’s almost 20% of the jobs that existed at the time.”

“But was this stagnation caused by tariff policy, or was it the natural dynamics of an industry that was already readjusting?” asks researcher Rodolfo Rubio, who advocates opening new discussions about the city’s economic direction. “Is this condition Juárez has experienced over the last 40 years — relying heavily on the maquiladora — the city’s future? The city should be considering alternative paths for its economic structure, so it isn’t dependent on global crises or the policies that Trump uses.”

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Donald Trump’s return upended all the assumptions of a government that was only beginning to outline its National Development Plan. Since January 20, 2025, the volatility of the U.S. president has put the Mexican government to the test. Trump’s explosiveness has become the main challenge for President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is known for her meticulous planning and discipline. One year after Trump took up residence in the Oval Office, the president herself summed up her strategy for dealing with him in a single phrase: “It’s not just a matter of today.”

She explained this on Monday, January 12, just minutes after concluding her most recent phone call with the U.S. president, in which the main topic was his remarks about a possible incursion by U.S. troops into Mexican territory. “We must seek dialogue in these tense moments; it is the best time for dialogue,” said Sheinbaum, summarizing the strategy she has followed in the face of the worst specter of her administration: Trump and mass deportations; Trump and tariffs; Trump and fentanyl; Trump and the review of the USMCA trade agreement; Trump and the invasion of Venezuela; Trump and the threat of a military intervention on Mexican soil.

The magnate’s return to the White House a year ago forced Sheinbaum to rethink her governing plan, redefine her priorities, and align security strategy, economic policy, and domestic policy with the bilateral relationship — the only one that stands out in an otherwise blurred foreign policy. It is an uncomfortable but unavoidable relationship, built day by day, one that cannot be resolved through hours of work between governments, 15 phone calls between leaders, or a single meeting, no matter how cordial it may have been.

This is ongoing. We have been working with President Trump for almost a year now, and there have been moments… it’s not just a matter of today, it’s ongoing communication, coordination, defending the people of Mexico here and there.

“This is ongoing,” Sheinbaum explained at her January 12 morning press conference. “We have been working with President Trump for almost a year now, and there have been moments… it’s not just a matter of today, it’s ongoing communication, coordination, defending the people of Mexico here and there [in the U.S.]”

After a year of bilateral relations, Sheinbaum has refined her strategy and rhetoric around four pillars: respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; shared but differentiated responsibility; mutual respect and trust; and cooperation without subordination.

The reality is that today everything is filtered through Trump’s actions. From the design of the Plan México (a strategy for investment and the development of the domestic market), to the ongoing extradition of cartel leaders sought by U.S. justice, a long chain of drug seizures, the deployment of National Guard troops along the southern border, the establishment of migrant shelters on the northern border, and even the organization of the FIFA World Cup.

Calm, patience, and a cool head

Since November 6, 2024 — the day after Trump won the U.S. presidential election for the second time — Sheinbaum has had to address the issue of Trump, striking a cautionary tone.

“To all Mexicans: there is no reason to worry,” she said at the beginning of her morning press conference that day, the 26th of her administration. “To our fellow citizens, to their families, to Mexican business owners: there is absolutely no reason to worry. Mexico always pulls through; we are a free, independent, sovereign country, and there will be a good relationship with the United States, I am convinced of it,” she insisted, adopting a line of rhetoric that would become a constant —one that she herself compared to the tactic of Kalimán, the popular Mexican adventurer superhero who always appealed to “calm and patience.”

Two days after Trump’s election victory, Sheinbaum called him to congratulate him. He appreciated the gesture, but did not soften the anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican tone that had characterized his campaign — the same one that carried him to the White House for a second time. As Inauguration Day, scheduled for January 20, 2025, drew closer, the Republican became increasingly radical, focusing on his three main issues: immigration, Mexican cartels, and the free trade agreement.

Eight days before Trump’s inauguration, President Sheinbaum led a massive rally marking her first 100 days in office. The packed Zócalo square served to demonstrate popular support for the government in the face of Trump’s return to the White House and his explicit threat to deport thousands of immigrants. Flanked by members of her cabinet, governors, and lawmakers from the ruling coalition, Sheinbaum mounted a firm defense of Mexican migrants and their contribution to the economies of both countries. From that rally came another of the phrases that has become a banner in her relationship with the U.S. president: “We will always hold our heads high. Mexico is a free, independent, and sovereign country. We coordinate, we collaborate, but we do not subordinate ourselves.”

The following day, Sheinbaum gathered business leaders at the Museum of Anthropology to present Plan México, which, she announced, included a portfolio of domestic and foreign investments totaling $277 billion. A week later, with Trump just installed in the Oval Office, he began acting on his warnings, signing and publishing a series of decrees that seriously affected Mexico: the declaration of an emergency at the border, the reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” program, the imposition of tariffs, and the designation of drug cartels as terrorist organizations. “It is important to keep a cool head,” Sheinbaum responded on January 21.

Trump’s threats loomed over Mexico’s economy and politics for two weeks, during which Sheinbaum had to respond to dozens of questions about how she planned to handle them. “A cool head, calm, and patience,” she repeated several times. On February 2, Sheinbaum and Trump had one of their most important calls. It lasted 45 minutes, during which they reached a first agreement to postpone the implementation of tariffs on Mexican products until April.

In March, the government and Sheinbaum’s party Morena called for a new popular mobilization in the Zócalo, in anticipation of the imminent implementation of the tariffs. But another call with Trump defused the alert, and on March 9, in front of thousands of supporters, Sheinbaum recalled: “As you know, this assembly was convened in case we did not reach an agreement, with the purpose of announcing a strategy and actions we had prepared months in advance. Fortunately, dialogue has prevailed, and above all, respect between our nations… and the tariffs that were being applied to products we export to our neighboring country have been lifted.”

‘The cartels control Mexico’

Since then, the calls have followed one after another: April 17, May 1, May 22, June 17, July 31, October 25… Almost all were requested by President Sheinbaum through Ambassador Ronald Johnson, and always to address an emergency arising from a statement or action by the U.S. president — like the one in June, after Trump returned from a G-7 summit in Canada, where he was meant to have his first in-person meeting with the Mexican president.

The slight at the G-7 was resolved with another phone call, a couple of social media messages, and Trump’s apparent cordiality toward Sheinbaum, whom he has praised extensively, highlighting her intelligence, kindness, and character. These compliments are always accompanied by criticism, threats, and the assertion that the Mexican government fears the cartels. “She’s a good woman, but the cartels control Mexico. She doesn’t control Mexico,” he has said dozens of times.

Paradoxically, Sheinbaum’s government has found in Trump the perfect nemesis to rally her supporters and boost her popularity. In addition to the January and March gatherings, the U.S. relationship featured prominently in her October speeches, when she celebrated one year in office, and in December, when Morena once again filled the Zócalo to mark seven years of the Fourth Transformation. According to an Enkoll and EL PAÍS survey, Sheinbaum’s handling of the relationship with Trump is one of the policies most supported by the public. Sheinbaum’s approval rating has remained above 74% throughout her term, reaching 83% in May after she succeeded in postponing the implementation of tariffs.

It wasn’t until December 5th that Sheinbaum and Trump finally met face-to-face, at the draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup held in Washington, D.C. Before the eyes of millions of television viewers around the world, Sheinbaum and Trump — with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as a witness — spoke directly for several minutes while the tournament groups were being drawn. Both described the meeting as cordial and friendly. “He was very kind; there was no rudeness at any point,” said Sheinbaum. Afterward, they had a private meeting, in which the three leaders agreed to stay in touch regarding the review of the USMCA, scheduled for 2026.

A month later, Trump decided to attack Venezuela to capture president Nicolás Maduro, and relations became strained once again. Mexico condemned the military intervention, and Sheinbaum defended the principles of national self-determination and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The attack on Venezuela set the stage for new threats from Trump, this time including the possibility of a U.S. incursion into Mexican territory.

After 10 days of statements and warnings, Sheinbaum requested another call with Trump, which took place on January 12. “We requested the call because he had brought up the issue three times in one week, and the worst thing one can do is say, ‘Well, we only communicate through what we say publicly, in the morning press conferences, at rallies, at assemblies.’ No, we must always seek dialogue, communication, so that the position and the joint work being done are clear,” she explained that day, after the call.

Hours later, despite the call, new warnings came from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key figure in the Trump administration. And there were new responses from Sheinbaum, including announcements of seizures, criminal arrests, and the dismantling of laboratories. Nearly one year into Trump’s return to the White House, Sheinbaum has also proposed a final measure: a popular mobilization, which is already being discussed in Morena circles. “If it’s necessary to call a mobilization, to do something, we will do it,” the president has said.

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