As Trump threatens to strike cartels, Mexico's president says violence is plummeting

A Mexican Army soldier stands guard at the scene of a fatal shooting in Celaya, Mexico, in 2025. The murder rate in Mexico declined that year, according to authorities.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Kate Linthicum

Staff Writer

Jan. 8, 2026

2:08 PM PT

4 min

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President Claudia Sheinbaum credited a new law enforcement strategy that focuses on intelligence gathering and improving coordination among agencies for a 40% drop in homicides.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled new data on Thursday showing daily homicides have dropped 40% nationwide since she took office, a major reduction that she has highlighted in part to show the Trump administration that Mexico is making gains in its fight against organized crime.

Some security analysts, however, said the data do not present the full story, and noted that other indicators of violence, such as kidnappings and forced disappearances, are up.

In a presentation at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said there had been an average of 87 daily homicides recorded in September 2024, the month before she assumed the presidency. In December of 2025, there were 52 daily killings. Homicides, she said, had fallen to their lowest levels in a decade.

In 2025 Mexico had 17.5 homicides per 100,000 residents, according to the government. Conversely, there were 29.1 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2018 and and 25.4 homicides per 100,000 in 2024.

The U.S. had a homicide rate of 4 killings per 100,000 people last year, according to preliminary data.

Sheinbaum credited a law enforcement new strategy that focuses on intelligence gathering and improving coordination across the various agencies that work on public security.

She has touted that strategy, and a big increase in arrests and drug seizures, as evidence that she is serious about cracking down on the criminal groups that control the country’s drug market and other industries, including parts of the agriculture sector.

FILE - Soldiers patrol near the hamlet Plaza Vieja in the Michoacan state of Mexico, Oct. 28, 2021. The Mexican army acknowledged for the first time on Aug. 2, 2024, that some of its soldiers have been killed by drug cartel bomb-dropping drones in the western state of Michoacan, without providing fatality numbers. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

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For months, Sheinbaum has sought to ward off threats of U.S. military action in Mexico by President Trump, who says Mexico is “governed by the cartels” and that Sheinbaum has not done enough to confront them.

Fears of a U.S. incursion into Mexico have grown in the days since U.S. special forces launched a surprise attack on Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump had repeatedly accused of drug trafficking.

But while supporters of Sheinbaum celebrated the new data, security experts cautioned against putting too emphasis on homicide statistics.

Armando Vargas, a security expert at the policy think tank Mexico Evalúa, noted that forced disappearances and femicides — the killing of women on account of their gender — are rising. The percentage of Mexicans who say they feel unsafe is also up, according to many polls.

“It’s impossible to say that that the country is being pacified,” said Vargas, who said authorities should consider data from a range of what he called “lethal crimes” to accurately measure violence.

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 03: President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum points during the Daily Morning Briefing at National Palace on November 03, 2025 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Juan Abundis/ObturadorMX/Getty Images)

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Seizures of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen in recent years, while seizures of cocaine have risen. Cartel-related violence continues to make headlines here, particularly in northern Mexico, where factions of the Sinaloa cartel are warring for supremacy, and in western Michoacán state, where the Cartel de Jalisco New Generation is warring with smaller criminal groups for control of drug trafficking routes and control of the avocado and lime industries.

Last year, thousands of Mexicans took to the streets to demand an end to the violence after the brazen public assassination of Carlos Manzo, a mayor in Michoacán who had called on Sheinbaum and other authorities to take a harder tact against criminal groups. Sheinbaum responded to his killing by sending troops to the state and announcing a new plan to tackle violence there.