Trump Floats Strikes Inside Mexico, Escalating His Expansive ‘Narco-War’

United States President Donald Trump is pushing the boundaries of his war-on-drugs doctrine even further, now openly suggesting he might target Mexico next.

“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways, but we know every route.”

How, when, or under what legal authority such strikes could happen remains unspoken. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has already rejected the idea outright. But Trump’s message was unmistakable: permission is optional.

This is not an isolated comment. Two weeks ago, NBC reported that the White House was already preparing early-stage planning for a joint intelligence operation inside Mexico — including drone strikes on cartel members and drug labs. Trump’s latest remarks confirm the momentum.

And he insisted the US already has targets mapped out. “We know every route. We know the addresses of every drug lord,” he said. “We know their address. We know their front door. We know everything about every one of them.”

The framing is wartime. Trump described the situation as “like a war” because cartels were killing “hundreds of thousands” of Americans through cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and fentanyl.

Trump has already laid the legal groundwork for expanding military action without Congress. By designating six cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations,” he’s reviving early-2000s logic: treat traffickers as enemy combatants, label the operations a “non-international armed conflict,” and bypass the usual war powers process.

Since September, the White House has launched at least 20 strikes on boats it says were transporting drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing at least 80 people. No public evidence of cartel ties has been released, including alleged links to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.

To supporters, this is decisive action. To critics, it’s a familiar pattern: maximalist rhetoric, expanding executive power, shrinking congressional oversight, and a blurring of the lines between law enforcement and war.