Mexico just deployed 1,800 federal troops to Sinaloa—a state where cartels control territory, pipelines, and local government—and for ordinary Americans, this proves yet again that our border security cannot be outsourced to a captured neighbor's PR stunts.
The numbers tell the story. More than 3,100 murders and at least 5,000 forced disappearances in Sinaloa over the past two years, according to law enforcement and human rights groups cited by Breitbart—and the true toll is expected to be far higher. That is not a security challenge. That is a failed state. And the fentanyl, the human trafficking, the cartel operations that flow out of Sinaloa end up in American communities, killing Americans.
Mexico's top security official, Omar García Harfuch, announced the deployment this week: 1,800 troops including 1,000 Mexican Navy infantrymen, headed to the port city of Mazatlán and the state capital of Culiacán. According to Breitbart, the move comes as Mazatlán sees a high number of murders each day from the ongoing turf war between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel—Los Chapitos and La Mayiza.
On Monday, the same day the deployment was making headlines, a U.S. citizen was murdered outside a seafood restaurant in Mazatlán. An American dead on cartel-controlled soil—and the response is 1,800 troops spread across an entire state that cartels have operated with impunity in for decades.
The root of the current bloodshed traces back to a stunning act of betrayal inside the cartel itself. Breitbart reports that the turf war began when Los Chapitos kidnapped Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and flew him to Texas into the hands of U.S. agents. That perceived betrayal ignited a rift between El Mayo's family and Los Chapitos that has consumed Sinaloa ever since. The cartels are at war with each other—and the Mexican government is an afterthought.
This is the regime Washington expects to partner with on border enforcement. The same government that cannot secure a single state from cartels is supposed to be a reliable partner in stopping fentanyl and illegal crossings at our shared border. Breitbart covered the deployment and the carnage in detail; the other two outlets in this week's review focused on a symbolic village referendum in England over asylum housing—a telling editorial choice that buries the cartel war next door in favor of a quirky overseas human-interest piece.
The bipartisian failure here is familiar. Both parties have spent years pretending that diplomatic handshakes with Mexico City amount to border security. They do not. Mexico's government is outgunned and outmaneuvered by organizations that assassinate police chiefs, control local economies, and move industrial-scale quantities of poison into the United States. A 1,800-troop deployment—after prior deployments failed to stop the bleeding—is theater.
The question isn't whether Mexico can fix Sinaloa. The evidence says it cannot. The question is when Washington will stop pretending otherwise and build an American enforcement architecture that doesn't depend on a neighbor that cartels have already captured.
