Sheinbaum

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is barred from Peru after her government granted asylum to Peruvian ex-premier.

Peru has declared Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a “persona non grata” who is unable to enter the country, days after severing ties with Mexico amid an escalating diplomatic dispute.

Peru’s Congress voted 63 to 34 on Thursday in favour of symbolically barring Sheinbaum from the country after her government granted asylum to former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chavez, after she fled to the Mexican embassy in Peru’s capital Lima.

The designation of “persona non grata” is typically reserved for foreign diplomats and compels them to leave a host country, and is seen as a rebuke to their government.

President of Peru’s Congress Fernando Rospigliosi said the move was a show of support for the government and its decision to break off relations with Mexico, according to Mexico’s El Pais newspaper.

During a debate on Thursday, Ernesto Bustamante, an MP who sits on Peru’s Congressional Foreign Relations Committee, also accused Sheinbaum of having ties to drug traffickers.

“We cannot allow someone like that, who is in cahoots with drug traffickers and who distracts her people from the real problems they should be addressing, to get involved in Peruvian affairs,” Bustamante said, according to El Pais.

Chavez, who is on trial for her participation in an alleged 2022 coup attempt, earlier this week fled to the Mexican embassy in Lima, where she was granted political asylum.

Peru’s Foreign Minister Hugo de Zela called the decision by Mexico City an “unfriendly act” that “interfered in the internal affairs of Peru”.

Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has maintained that it was acting in accordance with international law, and the move in “no way constitutes an intervention in Peru’s internal affairs”.

Lima has yet to offer safe passage for Chavez to leave the embassy and travel to Mexico.

Chavez, a former culture minister, briefly served as prime minister to President Pedro Castillo from late November to December 2022.

Charges against the former minister stem from an attempt by President Castillo in December 2022 to dissolve the Peruvian Congress before he was quickly impeached and arrested.

Chavez, who faces up to 25 years in prison if found guilty, has denied involvement in the scheme. She was detained from June 2023 until September of this year, and then released on bail while facing trial.

Nov. 5 (UPI) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she has filed a complaint against the man seen in video groping her on a Mexico City street.

“If I don’t report it — besides the fact that it is a crime — then what position are all Mexican women left in?” she asked during a Wednesday press conference.

“If this can happen to the president, what can happen to all the young women in our country?”

Video of the Tuesday incident circulating online shows Sheinbaum speaking to people on a crowded Mexico City street. As she turns to speak with people to her right, a man comes up from behind her left side, puts his arm around her right shoulder and appears to lean in to try to kiss the president on the cheek.

As another man, whom Sheinbaum identified as Juan Jose of her staff, approaches, the suspect’s left hand is seen sliding up the president’s side and appears to grope her before Jose intervenes and moves him away.

Sheinbaum told reporters Wednesday that the man has been arrested.

“I had to go to the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office because it’s a local offense. I filed the complaint, and it turns out this same person later went on to harass other women on the street,” she said.

“First of all, this is something that should never happen in our country. I’m not saying this as the president, but as a woman, and on behalf of all Mexican women: it should not happen.”

She explained they decided to walk from the National Palace to the Ministry of Public Education on Tuesday because the drive would have taken 20 minutes, when by foot it would only take them a quarter of the time.

Many people greeted them en route without problems, until “this totally drunk person approached,” she said.

“That’s when I experienced this incident of harassment. At that moment, I was actually talking with other people, so I didn’t realize right away what was happening,” she said, adding it was only after watching the video that she realized she had been accosted.

“I decided to file a complaint because this is something I experienced as a woman, and it’s something women across our country experience. I’ve lived through this before, back when I wasn’t president, when I was a student, when I was young,” she said.

“Our personal space — no one has the right to violate it,” she continued. “No one. No one should violate our personal space. No man has the right to do so. The only way that’s acceptable is with a woman’s consent.”

The type of harassment the president was the victim of is not a crime in all states, she said, adding that she has called for a review to see where it is a criminal offense.

They are also launching a campaign to encourage women to be respected “in every sense” and to promote that harassment is a crime.

Sheinbaum calls for nationwide review of sexual harassment laws, as attack shines light on Mexico’s poor record on women’s safety.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for sexual harassment to be made a crime nationwide after being groped on the street while greeting supporters near the presidential palace in Mexico City.

Sheinbaum, 63, said on Wednesday that she had pressed charges against the man and would review nationwide legislation on sexual harassment following the attack by a drunk man who put his arm around her shoulder, and with the other hand touched her hip and chest, while attempting to kiss her neck.

Mexico’s first woman president removed the man’s hands before a member of her staff stepped between them. The president’s security detail did not appear to be nearby at the moment of the attack, which was caught on camera.

The man was later arrested.

“My thinking is: If I don’t file a complaint, what becomes of other Mexican women? If this happens to the president, what will happen to all the women in our country?” Sheinbaum told her regular morning news conference on Wednesday.

In a post on social media, the president said the attack was “something that many women experience in the country and in the world”.

Presenté una denuncia por el episodio de acoso que viví ayer en la Ciudad de México. Debe quedar claro que, más allá de ser presidenta, esto es algo que viven muchas mujeres en el país y en el mundo; nadie puede vulnerar nuestro cuerpo y espacio personal.

Revisaremos la… pic.twitter.com/jcs6FweI6q

— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) November 5, 2025

Translation: I filed a complaint for the harassment episode that I experienced yesterday in Mexico City. It must be clear that, beyond being president, this is something that many women experience in the country and in the world; no one can violate our body and personal space. We will review the legislation so that this crime is punishable in all 32 states.

Sheinbaum explained that the incident occurred when she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk the route in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.

She also called on states across Mexico to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated”.

Mexico’s 32 states and Mexico City, which is a federal entity, all have their own criminal codes, and not all states consider sexual harassment a crime.

“It should be a criminal offence, and we are going to launch a campaign,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had suffered similar attacks in her youth.

The incident has put the focus on Mexico’s troubling record on women’s safety, with sexual harassment commonplace and rights groups warning of a femicide crisis, and the United Nations reporting that an average of 10 women are murdered every day in the country.

About 70 percent of Mexican women aged 15 and over will also experience at least one incident of sexual harassment in their lives, according to the UN.

The attack also focused criticism on Sheinbaum’s security detail and on her insistence on maintaining a degree of intimacy with the public, despite Mexican politicians regularly being a target of cartel violence.

But Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people following the incident.

At nationwide rallies in September to mark her first year in power, the president allowed supporters to embrace her and take selfies.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she does not agree with US strikes on boats off the coast of South America, when asked about the recent deadly attacks on what the US has claimed are drug traffickers.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday called Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip a “genocide,” marking a decisive shift in her government’s stance on the conflict — and putting it at odds with the United States.

Sheinbaum, who is one of a handful Jewish heads of state, has come under increasing pressure from members of her leftist coalition to more forcefully condemn Israel’s assault on the small Palestinian enclave, where at least 65,000 people have died and more than half a million are trapped in famine.

Speaking to journalists at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said Mexico stands “with the international community to stop this genocide in Gaza.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic.

Her comments came amid a meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly, where several countries, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have formally recognized Palestine as a state. Mexico has formally supported Palestinian statehood for years.

Sheinbaum, 63, is the first Jewish leader of Mexico, a nation that is overwhelmingly Catholic. She grew up in a secular household and rarely talks about her Jewish identity.

Sheinbaum, who entered politics from the world of leftist activism, has long supported the Palestinian cause. In 2009, she wrote a letter to Mexican newspaper La Jornada fiercely condemning Israel’s actions in an earlier war with Gaza, where 13 Israelis and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians and militants had been killed.

Sheinbaum evoked the Holocaust, saying “many of my relatives … were exterminated in concentration camps.”

“I can only watch with horror the images of the Israeli bombing of Gaza,” she wrote. “Nothing justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians. Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child.”

The latest conflict broke out in 2023 after Hamas fighters broke through a border fence encircling Gaza and killed more than 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians.

Israel responded with a punishing assault on Gaza from air, land and sea, displacing nearly all of the strip’s 2 million people and damaging or destroying 90% of homes.

Since taking office last year, Sheinbaum has repeatedly called for a cease-fire and reiterated Mexico’s support for a two-state solution in the region, but until Monday she had refrained from categorizing what is unfolding in Gaza as a genocide.

That was possibly to avert conflict with the United States, which has given more foreign assistance to Israel than any other country globally in the decades since World War II, and which has supported the war on Gaza with billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid.

Sheinbaum, whose nation’s economy depends heavily on trade with the U.S., has spent much of her first year in office seeking to appease President Trump on the issues of security and migration in order to avoid the worst of his threatened tariffs on Mexican imports.

Her comments on Gaza come amid growing global consensus that Israel is committing genocide.

The world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The International Assn. of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution that says Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition as spelled out in the United Nations convention on genocide.

And this month, a U.N. commission of inquiry also found Israel has committed genocide.

An Israeli flag waves over debris in an area of the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel last month. Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed at least 65,000 people.

(Maya Levin / Associated Press)

“Explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities and the pattern of conduct of the Israeli security forces indicate that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group,” the commission wrote.

It added that under the Genocide Convention, other nations have an obligation to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide.”

Israeli officials dismissed the report as “baseless.”

MEXICO CITY — A day after President Trump dramatically stepped up his administration’s military role in the Caribbean with what he called a deadly strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is meeting the president of Mexico, who has voiced fears of the U.S. encroaching on Mexican sovereignty.

Rubio will sit down with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday to stress the importance the U.S. places on cooperating with Washington on Western Hemisphere security, trade and migration. Rubio will visit Ecuador on Thursday on his third trip to Latin America since taking office.

Trump has alienated many in the region with persistent demands and threats of sweeping tariffs and massive sanctions for refusing to follow his lead, particularly on migration and the fight against drug cartels. Likely to heighten their concerns is the expanded military footprint. The U.S. has deployed warships to the Caribbean and elsewhere off Latin America, culminating in what the administration said Tuesday was a lethal strike on an alleged Tren de Aragua gang vessel that U.S. officials say was carrying narcotics.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!” Trump said of the strike, which he said had killed 11 gang members.

Rubio, defending the strike, made clear that such operations would continue if needed. Though it was a military strike, America’s top diplomat tweeted about it around when Trump announced it at the White House and then spoke to reporters about the operation.

“The president has been very clear that he’s going to use the full power of America and the full might of the United States to take on and eradicate these drug cartels, no matter where they’re operating from and no matter how long they’ve been able to act with impunity,” Rubio said Tuesday. “Those days are over.”

Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, has spoken out against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and other Latin American leftist governments, notably in Cuba and Nicaragua, for years and supported opposition leaders and movements there. Just before leaving for Mexico, he attended an award ceremony in Florida for a Cuban dissident who he said was an inspiration for freedom-loving people everywhere.

In Mexico, Trump has demanded, and so far won, some concessions from Sheinbaum’s government, which is eager to defuse his tariff threats, although she has fiercely defended Mexico’s sovereignty.

“There will be moments of greater tension, of less tension, of issues that we do not agree on, but we have to try to have a good relationship,” she said shortly before Rubio arrived in Mexico City on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, in a State of the Nation address marking her first year in office, she said: “Under no circumstance will we accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is detrimental to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the country.”

Sheinbaum has gone after Mexican drug cartels and their fentanyl production more aggressively than her predecessor. The government has sent the National Guard to the northern border and delivered 55 cartel figures long wanted by U.S. authorities to the Trump administration.

Sheinbaum had spoken for some time about how Mexico was finalizing a comprehensive security agreement with the State Department that, among other things, was supposed to include plans for a “joint investigation group” to combat the flow of fentanyl and the drug’s precursors into the U.S. and weapons from north to south.

Last week, however, a senior State Department official downplayed suggestions that a formal agreement — at least one that includes protections for Mexican sovereignty — was in the works.

Sheinbaum lowered her expectations Tuesday, saying it would not be a formal agreement but rather a kind of memorandum of understanding to share information and intelligence on drug trafficking or money laundering obtained “by them in their territory, by us in our territory unless commonly agreed upon.”

On the trip, Rubio would focus on stemming illegal migration, combating organized crime and drug cartels, and countering what the U.S. believes is malign Chinese behavior in its backyard, the State Department said.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

MEXICO CITY — Security, sovereignty, tariffs, trade, drugs and migration — all hot-button issues for the Trump administration and its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere — will top Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s agenda this week on his third trip to Latin America since becoming the chief U.S. diplomat.

In talks with leaders in Mexico and Ecuador on Wednesday and Thursday, Rubio will make the case that broader, deeper cooperation with the U.S. on those issues is vitally important to improving health, safety and security in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Yet, President Trump has alienated many in the region — far beyond the usual array of U.S. antagonists like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — with persistent demands, coupled with threats of sweeping tariffs and massive sanctions for not complying with his desires.

Mexico has been a focus for Trump

Mexico, the only country apart from Canada to share a border with the U.S., has been a particular target for Trump. He has demanded, and so far won, some concessions from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, which is eager to defuse the tariff threats.

Just a few hours before Rubio’s arrival Tuesday, Sheinbaum was set to lead a meeting of the country’s most important security forum, which brings together all 32 governors, the army, navy, federal prosecutor’s office and security commanders to coordinate actions across Mexico.

Sheinbaum had been talking for weeks about how Mexico was finalizing a comprehensive security agreement with the State Department that, among other things, was supposed to include plans for a “joint investigation group” to combat the flow of fentanyl and the drug’s precursors into the U.S. and weapons from north to south.

“Under no circumstance will we accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is detrimental to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the country,” she said Monday in her State of the Nation address marking her first year in office.

Last week, however, a senior State Department official downplayed suggestions that a formal agreement — at least one that includes protections for Mexican sovereignty — was in the works.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview Rubio’s meetings, said sovereignty protections were “understood” by both countries without having to be formalized in a document.

Sheinbaum lowered her expectations Tuesday, saying during her morning news briefing that it would not be a formal agreement but rather a kind of memorandum of understanding to share information and intelligence on drug trafficking or money laundering obtained “by them in their territory, by us in our territory unless commonly agreed upon.”

Mexico’s president touts keeping close ties with the U.S.

Of her meeting with Rubio on Wednesday, she said it was always important to maintain good relations with the United States.

“There will be moments of greater tension, of less tension, of issues that we do not agree on, but we have to try to have a good relationship, and I believe tomorrow’s meeting will show that,” Sheinbaum said. “It is a relationship of respect and at the same time collaboration.”

To appease Trump, Sheinbaum has gone after Mexican cartels and their fentanyl production more aggressively than her predecessor. The government has sent the National Guard to the northern border and delivered 55 cartel figures long wanted by U.S. authorities to the Trump administration.

The Trump-Sheinbaum relationship also has been marked by tension, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announcing a new initiative with Mexico to combat cartels along the border that prompted an angry denial from Sheinbaum.

Despite American officials singing her praises, and constantly highlighting collaboration between the two countries, Trump glibly said last month: “Mexico does what we tell them to do.”

Migration and cartels are a focus of Rubio’s trip

In announcing the trip, the State Department said Rubio, who has already traveled twice to Latin America and the Caribbean and twice to Canada this year, would focus on stemming illegal migration, combating organized crime and drug cartels, and countering what the U.S. believes is malign Chinese behavior in its backyard.

He will show “unwavering commitment to protect [U.S.] borders, neutralize narco-terrorist threats to our homeland, and ensure a level playing field for American businesses,” the department said.

Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state was to Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, during which he assailed Chinese influence over the Panama Canal and sealed deals with the others to accept immigrant deportees from the United States. Rubio later traveled to Jamaica, Guyana and Suriname.

The senior State Department official said virtually every country in Latin America is now accepting the return of their nationals being deported from the U.S. and, with the exception of Nicaragua, most have stepped up their actions against drug cartels, many of which have been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S.

The official also said progress has been made in countering China in the Western Hemisphere.

Lee and Janetsky write for the Associated Press. AP writer María Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denied reports that her government is teaming up with the United States for a “major new initiative” to combat drug-trafficking cartels.

In her Tuesday morning news conference, Sheinbaum addressed the initiative, dubbed “Project Portero”, which was touted in the US as an effort to “strengthen collaboration between the United States and Mexico”.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had unveiled the initiative only one day prior.

“I want to clarify something. The DEA put out a statement yesterday saying that there is an agreement with the Mexican government for an operation called Portero,” Sheinbaum said.

“There is no agreement with the DEA. The DEA puts out this statement, based on what we don’t know. We have not reached any agreement; none of the security institutions [have] with the DEA.”

Sheinbaum emphasised that only her administration, not individual government agencies, would be announcing such an agreement on behalf of Mexico.

She also emphasised that the DEA needed to follow established protocols for making joint announcements.

Project Portero is part of an ongoing push under US President Donald Trump to stamp out cross-border drug trafficking and aggressively pursue the cartels and criminal networks that profit from such trade.

In its statement on Monday, the DEA called Project Portero its “flagship operation” aimed at shutting down drug-smuggling corridors along the border.

It described its partnership with Mexico as “a multi-week training and collaboration program” that would bring Mexican investigators together with US enforcement officials at an intelligence site on the southwest border.

Part of their task, the statement said, was to “identify joint targets” for the two countries to pursue.

“Project Portero and this new training program show how we will fight — by planning and operating side by side with our Mexican partners,” DEA administrator Terrance Cole said in the statement

“This is a bold first step in a new era of cross-border enforcement.”

But Sheinbaum said no such bilateral action was planned, though she speculated that the DEA might be referring to a small training exercise involving four Mexican police officers.

“The only thing we have is a group of police officers from the Secretariat of Citizen Security who were conducting a workshop in Texas,” she explained.

She did, however, point out that her government was actively working with the Trump administration to cement a border security agreement, based on mutual acknowledgements of sovereignty and respectful coordination.

Since taking office for a second term in January, Trump has repeatedly pressured the Sheinbaum government to stem the flow of immigrants and drugs across their countries’ shared border.

That includes through the threat of tariffs, a kind of tax imposed on imports. In late July, Trump announced he would keep tariffs on Mexican products at their current rate for 90 days.

Previously, he had threatened to hike the tariff rate to 30 percent on the basis that fentanyl was still reaching US soil.

“Mexico still has not stopped the Cartels who are trying to turn all of North America into a Narco-Trafficking Playground,” Trump wrote in a letter to Sheinbaum earlier that month.

Even with the 90-day pause, Mexico still faces a 25-percent tax — which Trump calls a “fentanyl tariff” — on all products that do not fall under the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA).

Still, Trump has expressed warmth towards Sheinbaum, and the Mexican leader has largely avoided public confrontations with the US since taking office in October 2024.

Recently, Sheinbaum’s government coordinated with Trump’s to transfer 26 high-profile drug-trafficking suspects to the US for prosecution.

In February, she made a similar deal, sending 29 alleged cartel leaders from Mexican prisons to the US shortly before Trump threatened to impose tariffs on her country’s imports. It was Mexico’s largest prisoner transfer to the US in years.

But Sheinbaum has also faced scrutiny over her handling of Trump’s aggressive foreign policy platform.

Earlier this month, for instance, Trump’s State Department issued travel warnings for 30 of Mexico’s 32 states, warning Americans of “terrorist” activities in those areas.

Trump has also designated multiple Latin American criminal groups as “foreign terrorist organisations”, and he reportedly signed an order authorising military action to combat them.

Critics fear that order could translate into a military incursion on Mexican soil. But Sheinbaum has repeatedly downplayed those concerns, saying, “There will be no invasion of Mexico.”

Still, she has nevertheless asserted that any unauthorised US action on Mexican land would be considered a violation of her country’s sovereignty.

Aug. 9 (UPI) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum won’t allow U.S. troops to target drug cartels in Mexico that President Donald Trump has designated as terrorist groups.

Sheinbaum responded to a New York Times report indicating Trump directed the military to target drug cartels in Mexico.

The Trump administration is considering using military force against Mexican drug cartels, including launching missiles from U.S. Navy destroyers to target cartels and their infrastructure.

“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military,” Sheinbaum said on Friday, as reported by The New York Times.

“We cooperate [and] we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion,” Sheinbaum said. “That is ruled out — absolutely ruled out.”

Sheinbaum said U.S. military action in Mexico “is not part of any agreement.”

“When it has been brought up, we have always said ‘no,'” she added.

Despite objections from Mexican officials, Trump directed the U.S. military to target drug cartels that are designated as terrorist organizations, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Although reports suggest the Pentagon is evaluating possible military strikes, it’s unlikely that Trump would okay such operations, The Washington Post reported.

An anonymous U.S. official who is familiar with the matter told the Post that it’s unlikely such military actions would be carried out.

Another said the Pentagon would not use troops on the ground and instead would consider employing drone or naval assets to carry out surgical strikes on cartel targets.

No military strikes are likely to occur soon and possibly never will happen, according to The Washington Post.

The ultimate goal is to protect U.S. citizens against violent crime and deadly drugs, such as fentanyl, that originate from south of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Trump administration.

“President Trump’s top priority is protecting the homeland, which is why he took the bold step to designate several cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Washington Post.

Trump earlier this year designated eight drug cartels, including six in Mexico, as terrorist organizations.

Sheinbaum at the time said the United States can’t use the terrorist designation as a pretext for undertaking military operations in Mexico.

Mexican authorities have worked with the Trump administration to lessen the amount if drugs and “migrants” crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Ronald Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, in a prepared statement said the United States is working with Mexican officials to oppose drug cartels.

“We stand together as sovereign partners,” Johnson said on Friday in a social media post.

“We face a common enemy: The violent criminal cartels,” Johnson said. “We will use every tool at our disposal to protect our peoples.”

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has denied that her government has any evidence linking Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal network based in her country.

Sheinbaum’s statements on Friday were prompted by an announcement one day earlier that the United States would double its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, putting the current reward at $50m.

The administration of US President Donald Trump claimed Maduro was “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world” and that he had direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as two other Venezuelan gangs.

Sheinbaum was asked about those allegations in her morning news conference on Friday. She answered that this week was the first time she had heard of such accusations.

“On Mexico’s part, there is no investigation that has to do with that,” Sheinbaum said. “As we always say, if they have some evidence, show it. We do not have any proof.”

A history of ‘maximum pressure’

Mexico has long maintained diplomatic relations with Venezuela, while the US has broken its ties with the government in Caracas over questions about the legitimacy of Maduro’s presidency.

Instead, the US has recognised candidates from Venezuela’s opposition coalition as the country’s rightful leaders, and it has also heavily sanctioned Maduro and his allies.

Trump, in particular, has had a rocky relationship with Maduro over his years as president. During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump pursued a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Maduro, which included an initial reward of $15m.

That amount was later raised to $25m during the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s presidency, in reaction to Maduro’s hotly contested re-election to a third term in 2024.

Election observers said that the vote had not been “democratic“, and the opposition coalition published raw vote tallies that appeared to contradict the government’s official results.

But as Trump began his second term on January 20, critics speculated that the Republican leader would soften his approach to Maduro in order to seek assistance with his campaign of mass deportation.

Venezuela has a history of refusing to accept deportees from the US.

Since then, Trump has sent envoy Richard Grenell to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and secured deals that saw US citizens released from Venezuelan custody. Venezuela has also accepted to receive deportation flights from the US in recent months.

But the Trump administration has maintained it has no intention of recognising Maduro’s government.

Legitimising claims of an ‘invasion’

The accusations against Maduro further another Trump goal: legitimising his sweeping claims to executive power.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has invoked emergency measures, including the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to facilitate his policy goals, including his campaign of mass deportation.

Trump was re-elected on a hardline platform that conflated immigration with criminality.

But in order to use the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, Trump had to show that either the country was engaged in a “declared war” or that it faced an “invasion or predatory incursion” from a foreign nation.

To meet that requirement, Trump has blamed Venezuela for masterminding a criminal “invasion” of the US.

On Thursday, Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi also accused Maduro of working hand in hand with the cartels to profit from their drug-smuggling enterprises.

“Maduro uses foreign terrorist organisations like TdA [Tren de Aragua], Sinaloa and Cartel of the Suns to bring deadly drugs and violence into our country,” Bondi said in a video.

“To date, the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] has seized 30 tonnes of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, with nearly seven tonnes linked to Maduro himself, which represents a primary source of income for the deadly cartels based in Venezuela and Mexico.”

But in May, a declassified intelligence memo from the US government cast doubt on the allegation that Maduro is puppeteering gang activity in the US.

“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the memo said.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil responded to Bondi’s claims on Thursday by calling them “the most ridiculous smokescreen ever seen”.

The US has closed its ports of entry to Mexican cattle for fear of the parasitic, flesh-eating worm spreading north.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denounced a decision by the United States to once again suspend imports of her country’s cattle over a flesh-eating parasite called the screwworm.

On Thursday, Sheinbaum used her morning news conference to call fears of the worm overblown. She pointed out that a single case in the eastern state of Veracruz had prompted the import pause.

“From our point of view, it is a totally exaggerated decision to close the border again,” Sheinbaum said.

At the centre of the cross-border debate is the New World screwworm, a species endemic to the Caribbean and parts of South America. It had previously been eradicated from the northernmost part of its range, in Central and North America.

The US, for instance, declared it eliminated from the country in 1966.

But the parasite may be making a comeback, leaving the US government alarmed about its potential impact on its cattle and beef sector, a $515bn industry.

The New World screwworms appear when a variety of parasitic flies, Cochliomyia hominivorax, lay their eggs near wounds or sores on warm-blooded animals. Most commonly, its hosts are livestock like horses or cattle, but even household pets or humans can be infested.

Each female fly is capable of laying hundreds of eggs. When the eggs hatch, they release larvae that tunnel into the flesh of their hosts, often causing incredible pain.

Unlike maggots from other species, they do not feed on dead flesh, only living tissue. If left untreated, infestations can sometimes be deadly.

The fear of New World screwworms expanding northwards has caused the US to halt shipments of Mexican cattle several times over the past year.

In late November, it put in place a ban that lasted until February. Then, on May 11, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the US would once again bar entry to Mexican cattle after the “unacceptable northward advancement” of the bug.

A port of entry in Arizona was slated to reopen to Mexican cattle starting on Monday. But that plan was suspended under a new announcement on Wednesday, which implemented the cattle ban once more, effective immediately.

“The United States has promised to be vigilant — and after detecting this new NWS [New World screwworm] case, we are pausing the planned port reopening’s to further quarantine and target this deadly pest in Mexico,” Rollins said in a statement.

The statement explained that the US hopes to eradicate the parasite, pushing its encroachment no further than the Darien Gap, the land bridge in Panama that connects South and Central America.

It also asserted that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was “holding Mexico accountable by ensuring proactive measures are being taken”.

Part of its strategy will be to release male flies — lab-raised and sterilised through radiation — from airplanes in Mexico and the southern US. Female flies can mate only once, so if they pair with a sterile fly, they will be unable to reproduce.

The same strategy has been deployed in the past to control the New World screwworm, as an alternative to more hazardous methods like pesticides that could affect other animals.

In a social media post on June 30, Rollins touted gains in recent weeks, including “over 100 million sterile flies dispersed weekly” and “no notable increase” in screwworm cases in eight weeks.

She thanked her Mexican counterpart, Julio Berdegue, for his help.

“He and his team have worked hand in hand with our @USDA team since May 11 to get these ports reopened. We are grateful,” she wrote.

US immigration agents arrested Chavez earlier this week, with authorities alleging ties to Mexican cartel.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced she expects boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr to soon be deported from the United States to serve a sentence for arms trafficking and organised crime.

Sheinbaum explained on Friday that Mexico has had an arrest warrant for the boxer since 2023, stemming from an investigation initiated in 2019. But Chavez had not previously been arrested because he spends most of his time in the US.

““The hope is that he will be deported and serve the sentence in Mexico,” Sheinbaum said, adding: “That’s the process the attorney general’s office is working on.”

Her statement comes two days after Chavez was detained in Los Angeles by US immigration authorities, after they determined he made fraudulent statements in a 2024 application for permanent residency.

The son of a boxing legend, Chavez appeared last weekend in a sold-out match in Anaheim, California. But he lost to 28-year-old influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul in a unanimous decision after 10 rounds.

Alleged ties to cartel

Following his arrest, the US Department of Homeland Security said that Chavez is suspected of having ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

The US has designated the group and several other Latin American cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations” as part of a wider effort to staunch cross-border crime.

The administration has also sought to surge deportations in recent years, to make good on US President Donald Trump’s campaign promises.

Michael Goldstein, a lawyer for Chavez, said more than two dozen immigration agents arrested the boxer at his home in the Studio City area of Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“The current allegations are outrageous and appear to be designed as a headline to terrorise the community,” Goldstein said.

Chavez’s family in Mexico said in a statement that they “fully trust his innocence”.

His wife, Frida Munoz Chavez, was previously married to the son of the former Sinaloa Cartel leader, who is serving a life sentence in a US prison, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. That son, Edgar, was assassinated in Culiacan, Mexico, in 2008.

Speaking on Friday, Sheinbaum said she did not know if the boxer had any ties to the cartel.

The son of Mexican world champion fighter Julio Cesar Chavez, Chavez had won the WBC middleweight championship in 2011. He lost the title the following year.

However, his career has been largely overshadowed by controversies, including a suspension after testing positive for a banned substance in 2009 and a fine and suspension after testing positive for marijuana in 2013.

Republicans have proposed the remittance tax as part of a broader push to crack down on undocumented immigration.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denounced a provision in a tax bill being considered in the United States Congress that would impose duties on remittances — a term used to describe the money people send abroad for non-commercial reasons, often as gifts to family and loved ones.

On Thursday, during her morning news conference, Sheinbaum addressed the tax bill directly, calling the remittances proposal “a measure that is unacceptable”.

“It would result in double taxation, since Mexicans living in the United States already pay taxes,” she said.

She added that her government was reaching out to other countries with large immigrant populations to voice concern about the US proposition.

“This will not just affect Mexico,” she said. “It will also affect many other countries and many other Latin American countries.”

According to World Bank data from 2024, India is the top recipient of international remittances, with $129bn coming from abroad, followed by Mexico with more than $68bn.

In Mexico, in particular, experts estimate that remittances make up close to 4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

But a far-reaching tax bill championed by US President Donald Trump includes language that would impose a 5-percent excise tax on remittances sent specifically by non-citizens, including visa holders and permanent residents.

That bill would affect nearly 40 million people living in the country. US citizens, however, would be exempt from the remittance tax.

Trump has led a campaign to discourage immigration to the US and promote “mass deportation” during his second term in office, as part of his “America First” agenda.

Proponents of that platform say taxing remittances would serve as clear deterrence to immigrants who come to the US looking for better economic opportunities for themselves and any loved ones they hope to support back home.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, told The Associated Press news agency that he believes barriers to remittances can help curb undocumented immigration to the US.

“One of the main reasons people come here is to work and send money home,” Krikorian said. “If that’s much more difficult to do, it becomes less appealing to come here.”

Under the bill being weighed in the House of Representatives, the 5-percent tax would be paid by the sender and collected by “remittance transfer providers”, who would then send that money to the US Treasury.

But President Sheinbaum and other leaders have called on Republicans in Congress to reconsider that provision, given the unintended consequences it could create. Sheinbaum even suggested that the tax could be seen as unconstitutional in the US.

“This is an injustice, apart from being unconstitutional,” she said on Thursday. “But in addition, it is the tax on those who have the least. They should charge taxes to those at the top, not those at the bottom.”

Critics of the measure point out that remittances can help stabilise impoverished areas abroad, thereby limiting the likelihood of undocumented migration from those areas.

Additional barriers to sending remittances could create economic setbacks for those communities, not to mention make the process more difficult for US citizens who are exempted from the proposed tax.

Still, even if the tax bill is defeated or the provision on remittances removed, the Trump administration has signalled it plans to move forward with other measures designed to discourage migrants from sending funds abroad.

On April 25, Trump posted on his media platform, Truth Social, a list of “weekly policy achievements”.

On the final page, the top bullet point under “international relations” was “finalizing a Presidential Memorandum to shut down remittances sent by illegal aliens outside the United States”. Trump called the document a “MUST READ”.