Pete Hegseth threatened Mexico with military action if America’s neighbor to the south doesn’t concede to Donald Trump‘s demands over border security. 

The Secretary of Defense insisted that Mexico deal with collusion between their government and drug cartels or the US would take action. 

The move ‘shocked and angered’ Mexican officials on the call, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

However, on that same day, Hegseth admitted he had discussed the strategy with President Trump.

Trump is now threatening 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada that will go into effect on Tuesday. 

Trump has demanded that Mexico strengthen its protocols regarding cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production. He has designated six Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations. 

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said ‘we still have three days’ when asked how they were dealing with the tariff threat. 

They attempted to appease Trump by extraditing 29 drug cartel members to the United States earlier this week. 

Earlier in his presidency, Sheinbaum bought herself a month on Trump’s demands by sending 10,000 troops to the border. 

However, Trump seems unimpressed with the progress Mexico has made on the border and the cartels.

On Thursday, he wrote on Truth Social: ‘Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.’

He again promised the tariffs because ‘we cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA.’ 

Mexico has reportedly suggested that they will propose equaling the US’ tariffs on China. 

The country sent ministers to the United States to meet with Hegseth on the matter this past week. 

Trump has long took issue with the criminal rings and he vowed during his campaign ‘to wage war on the cartels.’

For their role in producing deadly drugs bound for the U.S., like fentanyl, the president has said he would take the fight to the cartels to halt the drugs flowing into America. 

Speaking with his former Fox News colleagues on January 31, Hegseth revealed that Trump is instructing him to make available any resources needed to go after the cartels. 

Host Brian Kilmeade asked Hegseth: ‘If we find that they continue to fire at Border Control and they continue to put fentanyl into our country, as a secretary of defense, are you permitted now to go after them in Mexico or where they are?’

‘Brian, I don’t want to get ahead of the president and I won’t,’ the secretary started.  ‘That’s ultimately going to be his decision.’

‘But let me be clear,’ he 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 also noted that the U.S. military is also shifting its posture to better defend the country at home, including from threats emanating from Mexico. 

‘The military is orienting, shifting toward an understanding of homeland defense on our sovereign territorial border,’ Hegseth told Kilmeade. ‘That is something we will do and do robustly.’

‘Should there be other options necessary to prevent the cartels from continuing to pour people, gangs and drugs and violence into our country — we will take that on. So the president will make that call.’

Since 2019, the number of Americans who have died annually to fentanyl has nearly tripled, rising from 31,000 overdose deaths to 87,000 in 2023, according to federal data. 

The synthetic opioid – which is typically produced in Mexico using ingredients from China – is responsible for roughly 80 percent of overdose deaths nationwide. 

The substance is do deadly that fentanyl poisoning was the leading cause of death of Americans aged 18 – 45 in 2022. 

‘I will deploy all necessary military assets, including the U.S. Navy, to impose the full naval embargo on the cartels,’ Trump pledged in 2023.  ‘We will guarantee that the waters of the western hemisphere are not used to traffic illicit drugs to our country.’

‘Furthermore, I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.’

The Republican also classified the cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a federal designation that could lead to real consequences for the criminal groups.

The real number of Americans who have perished due to fentanyl, however, ranges in the hundreds of thousands, not tens millions.

Cartels have been increasingly hostile towards the U.S. in recent years.