As Trump Threatens To Strike Cartels, Mexico's President Says Violence Is Plummeting - Beritaja

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled caller information connected Thursday showing regular homicides person dropped 40% nationwide since she took office, a awesome simplification that she has highlighted successful portion to show the Trump management that Mexico is making gains successful its conflict against organized crime.

Some information analysts, however, said the information do not coming the afloat story, and noted that different indicators of violence, specified arsenic kidnappings and forced disappearances, are up.

In a position astatine her regular news conference, Sheinbaum said location had been an mean of 87 regular homicides recorded successful September 2024, the period earlier she assumed the presidency. In December of 2025, location were 52 regular killings. Homicides, she said, had fallen to their lowest levels successful a decade.

In 2025 Mexico had 17.5 homicides per 100,000 residents, according to the government. Conversely, location were 29.1 homicides per 100,000 residents successful 2018 and and 25.4 homicides per 100,000 successful 2024.

The U.S. had a homicide complaint of 4 killings per 100,000 group past year, according to preliminary data.

Sheinbaum credited a rule enforcement caller strategy that focuses connected intelligence gathering and improving coordination crossed the various agencies that activity connected nationalist security.

She has touted that strategy, and a large summation successful arrests and supplier seizures, arsenic grounds that she is superior about cracking down connected the criminal groups that power the country’s supplier marketplace and different industries, including parts of the agriculture sector.

For months, Sheinbaum has sought to ward disconnected threats of U.S. subject action in Mexico by President Trump, who says Mexico is “governed by the cartels” and that Sheinbaum has not done capable to face them.

Fears of a U.S. incursion into Mexico person grown successful the days since U.S. typical forces launched a surprise onslaught connected Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump had many times accused of supplier trafficking.

But while supporters of Sheinbaum celebrated the caller data, information experts cautioned against putting excessively accent connected homicide statistics.

Armando Vargas, a information master astatine the argumentation deliberation vessel Mexico Evalúa, noted that forced disappearances and femicides — the sidesplitting of women connected relationship of their gender — are rising. The percent of Mexicans who opportunity they consciousness unsafe is besides up, according to galore polls.

“It’s intolerable to opportunity that that the state is being pacified,” said Vargas, who said authorities should see information from a scope of what he called “lethal crimes” to accurately measurement violence.

Seizures of fentanyl astatine the U.S.-Mexico separator person fallen successful caller years, while seizures of cocaine person risen. Cartel-related unit continues to make headlines here, peculiarly successful bluish Mexico, wherever factions of the Sinaloa cartel are warring for supremacy, and successful occidental Michoacán state, wherever the Cartel de Jalisco New Generation is warring pinch smaller criminal groups for power of supplier trafficking routes and power of the avocado and lime industries.

Last year, thousands of Mexicans took to the streets to request an extremity to the unit aft the brazen nationalist assassination of Carlos Manzo, a politician successful Michoacán who had called connected Sheinbaum and different authorities to return a harder tact against criminal groups. Sheinbaum responded to his sidesplitting by sending troops to the authorities and announcing a caller scheme to tackle unit there.