MEXICO CITY, April 30, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - President Donald Trump has boosted the US military presence along the border with Mexico and left open the possibility of drone strikes against drug trafficking groups that he designated terrorist organizations.

In March, he vowed in Congress to "wage war" on Mexican drug cartels that he said posed a grave threat to national security.

How far is Trump willing to go to curb drug flows from a country he says is run by the cartels?

- What steps is Trump taking? -

After returning to office in January, Trump declared an emergency along the 3,100-kilometer (1,900-mile) border and ordered the deployment of thousands of troops to beef up security.

In March, he ordered the deployment of two warships to support the border mission.

Trump also announced the creation of a "national defense area" stretching more than 170 miles (270 kilometers) along the frontier to enable the army to support border patrols.

"I think they need help," Trump said last week in an interview with The Blaze, a conservative media outlet, referring to Mexico.

Asked whether he would take military action even if Mexico did not want it, Trump said: "You could say at some point, maybe something's going to have to happen."

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institute, thinks that "the threat of air strikes or drone strikes is very realistic. It was very popular among Republican politicians," she said.

"That said, it also serves as a coercive technique" to encourage Mexican action against drug trafficking, she told AFP.

Raul Benitez, an expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, sees Trump's warnings as a "show of force."

"They are not immediate or direct threats" against Mexico, he said.

- How is Mexico responding? -

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said she would oppose US military attacks on cartels, while ordering thousands more troops to the border to fight drug trafficking.

She also confirmed that the United States had been operating drones spying on Mexican cartels as part of a collaboration that has existed for years.

The flights were "gathering a large amount of information that will help develop a target inventory," said Inigo Guevara, an expert at defense intelligence company Janes.

In February, Mexico extradited some of its most notorious imprisoned drug lords to the United States in a bid to avert Trump's tariffs.

Eager to highlight its efforts to reduce trafficking, Sheinbaum's government has announced the seizure of 144 tons of drugs, including two million fentanyl pills, since October.

It has also underscored a sharp fall in migrant arrivals at its northern border.

At the same time, Sheinbaum pushed a reform through Congress that means foreign agents engaging in covert actions in Mexico are at risk of imprisonment.

- Would US strikes work? -

US drone strikes are unlikely to be very effective and would be politically explosive because they would undermine cooperation between Mexico and the United States, Felbab-Brown warned.

"They can destroy labs, but they are very easy to resurrect. They could take out high value targets, but that's no different than Mexican forces taking them down," she said.

Guevara said US strikes "would be a leap back of more than a hundred years," referring to a 1916 invasion by US troops to capture revolutionary Pancho Villa after he carried out a cross-border raid.

Despite the resentment generated by Trump's remarks in Mexico, experts point to the close ties between the two countries' militaries, including the training of Mexican officers in the United States.

"Trump's rhetoric usually begins exaggeratedly high to create alarm and force his counterpart into swift action," Guevara said.

But at the operational level, cooperation with the United States was expected to give Mexico an "unparalleled capability" to fight organized crime, he added.