Troops have already begun to move following Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Feb. 3 announcement that her country will deploy about 10,000 National Guard troops to Mexico’s shared border with the United States, to help stem cross-border smuggling and narcotics-trafficking operations.
By the morning of Feb. 4, Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) had shared a video on social media of Mexican troops and military vehicles gathering at a staging area. A couple of hours later, SEDENA shared further footage of a military convoy—including Humvees, light-armored pickup trucks, and larger troop transport trucks—rolling out from the rallying point.
More than 100 Mexican National Guard troops were also observed boarding a flight from the southeastern Mexican city of Merida on the morning of Feb. 4, bound for the northern border city of Juárez, which sits opposite El Paso, Texas. Additional units were scheduled to depart Cancún and Campeche, while still other troops were expected to travel north by road.
In a Feb. 3 post on social media platform X, Sheinbaum presented the troop deployment as part of a new agreement with President Donald Trump to address both security and trade concerns between the United States and Mexico.
“We had a good conversation with President Trump with great respect for our relationship and sovereignty; we reached a series of agreements,” Sheinbaum said.
White House Touts Early Border Win
In remarks outside the White House on Feb. 3, press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted the troop deployment as an early win for the new administration.
“The president is making it very clear to both Canada and Mexico that the United States is no longer going to be a dumping ground for illegal deadly drugs and illegal human beings. And you saw President Sheinbaum already conceding,” Leavitt told reporters.
Still, many questions about the Mexican troop deployment remain.
Some observers have argued that this newly announced Mexican troop deployment amounts to a reshuffling of troops that will have little impact on overall border security. In an interview with The Associated Press, Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, said the newly announced deployment “did not get the United States much at all from what it already had substantively.”
Lipsky, who worked in the Obama administration, said Trump could have achieved the same results without straining relations with Mexico by threatening tariffs.
Leavitt, in her remarks on Feb. 3, indicated that past Mexican troop deployments have been temporary, while this new deployment would establish a permanent presence on Mexico’s northern border.
Peter Navarro, Trump’s White House trade adviser, celebrated the troop deployment agreement on Feb. 4. Navarro noted that Canada had also agreed to devote more resources to secure its shared border with the United States.
“What we’ve seen is a lot of pearl-clutching when this was announced, but we’ve also seen immediate results from Mexico and Canada,” he said.
Trump’s trade adviser further said the moves that Mexico and Canada have made this week are not “minor” and left open the possibility that Trump could push for more concessions from both countries when the 30-day tariff pauses expire.
The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for additional details about the Mexican troop deployment agreement but did not receive a response by publication time.
About 2,500 U.S. troops were already attached to a federal border security effort, known as Joint Task Force North (JTF-N) before Trump took office last month.
By Jan. 22, Trump had ordered about 1,500 additional U.S. troops to the border. Those U.S. troops have since begun to arrive in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.
About 4,500 Texas National Guard troops are also deployed in Texas as part of a state-led effort dubbed Operation Lone Star.
Mexico’s Sovereignty Concerns
In a public address on Feb. 2, Sheinbaum raised concern over talk of U.S. military intervention on Mexican soil and over claims that the Mexican government is aligned with the cartels.“Sovereignty is nonnegotiable,” the Mexican president said.
“All options will be on the table if we’re dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on our border,” Hegseth said.
Américo Villarreal, governor of the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, celebrated Sheinbaum’s deal to deploy Mexican troops in exchange for a pause on Trump’s tariff order.
