Trump Threatens US Ground Troops in Mexico: 'If They Are Not Going to Do the Job, We Are Going to Do the Job'

President Donald Trump escalated US rhetoric against Mexico on May 7, 2026, explicitly threatening to send US ground troops into Mexico if the Mexican government fails to eliminate cartel operations — including the Sinaloa Cartel factions. Trump stated: 'If they (Mexico) are not going to do the job, we are going to do the job,' directly responding to President Claudia Sheinbaum's Cinco de Mayo speech on May 5 in which she invoked Mexican sovereignty and declared the country would never be subordinated to foreign military intervention. The threat came the day after Trump signed a new National Counterterrorism Strategy prioritizing the elimination of Western Hemisphere cartels — a direct culmination of weeks of escalating US pressure that included the April 30 SDNY indictment of Governor Rocha Moya and nine other Sinaloa officials. Sheinbaum's office pushed back immediately, reiterating that Mexico's constitution prohibits foreign military operations on national soil. The episode deepened the diplomatic tension between Washington and Mexico City that the Rocha Moya indictment had already inflamed. Security analysts noted that the threat raises the prospect of unilateral US action using the existing foreign terrorist organization designation of the Sinaloa Cartel — a designation the Trump administration formalized in 2025 — as the legal justification. North Carolina federal prosecutors also sentenced Emmanuel Martimiano Leon-Soto, a high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel member from Naco, Mexico, to 336 months (28 years) in prison on the same day for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine across multiple US states, plus 240 months concurrent for money laundering — one of the longest sentences handed to a Sinaloa member in 2026.