Mexican troops guard the border at the banks of the Bravo River to prevent migrants from entering the United States from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, on June 4, 2024. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
THE WATCH STAFF
The Mexican Armed Forces had a busy two-week stretch in June 2024 with nearly 420,000 Soldiers, Sailors and National Guardsmen deployed across the country to stem the flow of illegal drugs, migrants and other criminal activity at the U.S. southern border, said the country’s Secretary of National Defense during a news conference at the presidential palace in Mexico City on June 25, 2024. The update on military activity signals a renewed effort from a key partner to address security challenges to the U.S. and Mexican homelands.
Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval González reported that between June 11 and June 24, the government deployed 221,106 troops: 64,686 from the Mexican Army and Air Force; 38,697 from the Secretariat of the Navy; and 117,723 from the National Guard; according to a news release from the ministry. While their assignments included missions such as curbing black market fuel sales, much of their work involved more familiar issues along the U.S. border, including stemming the flow of undocumented migrants to the U.S. and seizing drugs, guns and other contraband.
Drug raids yielded 19,102 kilograms of methamphetamine, 4,451 kilograms of cocaine, 428 kilograms of marijuana, and smaller amounts of heroin and fentanyl. Those raids also resulted in the confiscation of nearly 46,000 rounds of ammunition, 291 firearms and eight grenades. Mexican Armed Forces also impounded 382 vehicles, $1.6 million pesos and $646,154 in U.S. dollars, Sandoval said. Troops also destroyed 18 hectares of marijuana plants, 329 hectares of poppy plantations and shut down 16 clandestine laboratories used to make methamphetamine. Six people were arrested in the raids from three criminal organizations “with a presence in the country,” the release stated.
Nearly 4,500 Mexican National Guardsmen manned 21 border customs offices and 11 more in the interior. In addition, 3,264 Guardsmen carried out 14,257 inspections at 76 airports and 27 airfields, the release stated. Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador created the National Guard in 2019. He placed Guardsmen at the forefront of the Mexican effort to reduce illegal crossings of its border with the U.S. Since a high in December, illegal crossings have fallen dramatically with Mexican authorities stopping three times as many migrants trying to cross into the U.S. in May 2024 as they did a year earlier, according to NBC News. In June, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents processed 84,000 illegal migrants, the lowest monthly total since January 2021, according to CBS News.
In December 2023, high-ranking U.S. officials led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Mexico. An agreement was reached for Mexico to resume its efforts to remove migrants from the border into the interior of the country and to redouble its efforts to keep illegal migrants away from the border. The dramatic fall in illegal migration began soon afterward. “We were more careful about our southern border. We spoke with the presidents of Central America, with the president of Venezuela and with the president of Cuba. We asked them for help in curbing the flow of migrants,” Lopez Obrador told CBS News in March 2024.