MEXICO CITY — The United States is intensifying pressure on Mexico to allow U.S. military forces to conduct joint operations to dismantle fentanyl labs inside the country, according to U.S. officials.

The push comes as President Donald Trump presses on the Mexican government to grant the United States a larger role in the battle against drug cartels that produce fentanyl and smuggle it into the United States.

The proposal was first raised early last year and then largely dropped, officials said. But the request was renewed after U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela on Jan. 3 and has involved the highest levels of government, including the White House, according to multiple officials.

U.S. officials want U.S. forces — either Special Operations troops or CIA officers — to accompany Mexican soldiers on raids on suspected fentanyl labs, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues and military planning. Such joint operations would be a significant expansion of the United States’ role in Mexico, and one that the Mexican government has so far adamantly opposed.

The country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has repeatedly said that the two nations would work together to fight the cartels but that her government rejected the proposal of sending U.S. troops across the border.

Trump “generally insists on the participation of U.S. forces,” she said in a news conference shortly after speaking with Trump on the phone Monday morning. “We always say that it is not necessary,” she said, adding, “he was receptive, listened, gave his opinion, and we agreed to continue working” together.

The White House declined to comment. But last week, Trump told Fox News that more needed to be done in Mexico to counter the drug cartels.

“We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels,” he said, specifically those in Mexico.

Instead of joint operations, Mexican officials offered counter proposals this month, including increased information sharing and for the United States to play a greater role inside command centers, according to a person familiar with the matter. U.S. advisers are already in Mexican military command posts, according to U.S., officials, sharing intelligence to help Mexican forces in their antidrug operations.

Mexican officials are under pressure to reach an agreement, as some U.S. officials would like to see the U.S. military or CIA conduct drone strikes against suspected drug labs, a violation of Mexican sovereignty that would significantly weaken the government.

But fentanyl labs are notoriously difficult to find and destroy, U.S. officials say, and Washington is still developing tools to trace the drug as it is being produced. The labs emit less chemical traces than meth labs — which can be detected by drones — and are often cooked in urban areas with the rudimentary tools found in a family kitchen, according to current and former officials. Meth and cocaine labs, however, need much larger spaces, making them easier to detect.

Under the Biden administration, the CIA began carrying out secret drone flights over Mexico to identify possible locations of fentanyl labs, an operation that has expanded since Trump took office.

The drones are used both to find labs and track precursor chemicals as they arrive in Mexican seaports and then transported to their destinations, according to a U.S. official briefed on the operation.

That intelligence is currently handed off to Mexican military units, many of which have been trained by U.S. Special Operations forces. Mexican troops then plan and execute the raids to take out the labs.

Under Washington’s new proposal, U.S. forces would participate in the raids with Mexican forces in the lead, commanding the mission and making key decisions, according to people familiar with the talks, including U.S. officials. But U.S. forces would be in support, providing intelligence and advice to front-line Mexican troops.

Asked about the planning for Mexico, the Defense Department said in a statement that it “stands ready to execute the orders of the commander in chief at any time and in any place.”

A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment.

The success of this month’s Venezuela raid seems to have emboldened the Trump administration. Soon after that operation, Trump said regime change in Cuba was next and resurrected demands that Washington take control of Greenland.

While Washington has focused on Maduro and Venezuela as a main source of the drugs smuggled into the United States, the South American country in fact plays a minor role in the illicit trade. The majority of drugs smuggled into the United States come through the 2,000-mile border it shares with Mexico.

Fentanyl is also responsible for the bulk of overdose deaths in the United States, and is by far the most dangerous street drug.

Last year, the White House designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” and several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

The Trump administration started pushing for U.S. forces inside Mexico shortly after coming to power last year, but Mexican officials have consistently rejected those proposals, demanding that Washington respect their sovereignty.

“We have highly trained army units and special forces,” Mexico’s security chief, Omar García Harfuch, said in an interview last month. “What would they be needed for?” he added, referring to U.S. forces. “What we need is information.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maria Abi-Habib, Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager/Adriana Zehbrauskas
c. 2026 The New York Times Company