Trump Calls on Mexico to ‘Take Out the Cartels’ — But Experts Warn It’s a Nearly Impossible Task

US President Donald Trump has signaled plans to expand his anti-narcotics campaign to Mexican drug cartels, just hours after the high-profile US overthrow of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump accused of “narco-terrorism.”

“We have to do something” about America’s southern neighbor, Trump said over the weekend on Fox & Friends, noting that the Mexican government had repeatedly declined his offers to act against cartels. On Thursday, he vowed to target cartels “on land,” claiming: “We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water, and we are gonna start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels.”

Mexico is the main producer of US-bound fentanyl and a key corridor for Colombian cocaine, making it a far more significant player in the global drug trade than Venezuela. But experts say Trump’s characterization of the cartels as a small number of groups that can be quickly defeated does not reflect reality.

Fragmented and Widespread Cartels

Popular culture often depicts Mexican cartels as centralized organizations led by notorious figures like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. In the 1980s and 1990s, a handful of cartels dominated the trafficking landscape, many near the US border.

Today, the structure is far more fragmented. According to Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia Intelligence, around 400 groups of varying sizes operate nationwide. “They’re practically everywhere,” he said.

The largest cartels, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, have become sophisticated networks composed of dozens of smaller groups — 90 in Jalisco’s case, up from 45 in recent years. Guerrero explains that such fragmentation requires a “more complex, more sophisticated strategy” to weaken or dismantle them.

Past Efforts Show Limits

Even arresting top cartel leaders has proven insufficient to disrupt the flow of billions of dollars’ worth of narcotics. From 2007, Mexican authorities, backed by US intelligence and military resources, undertook a decade-long hunt for cartel “kingpins,” arresting or killing dozens of top figures. Yet other leaders quickly replaced them, and drug trafficking continued unabated.

Experts warn that any land-based military intervention in Mexico would face the same challenge: removing individuals will not dismantle a sprawling network embedded in the country’s social and economic fabric.

Trump’s rhetoric underscores the US administration’s desire to curb drug flows into America, but analysts stress that tackling the Mexican cartels is a far more complex endeavor than operations against Venezuela’s state-backed narco-networks.