Mexico is preparing its World Cup warm‑up — paradoxically far removed from football and focused instead on its relationship with one of its partners in the tournament venture, the United States.
Recent U.S. actions have hobbled the Mexican government of Claudia Sheinbaum, which has watched helplessly as explosive accusations emerged against officials in Sinaloa, including the governor, Rubén Rocha, a member of her own party. The visit to Mexico this Thursday by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who was appointed by Donald Trump in March, was an opportunity to realign goals and messaging ahead of the second half of the year.
Sheinbaum and Mullin began their meeting shortly before noon, joined by Mexico’s Security and Citizen Protection Secretary Omar García Harfuch; the defense and navy ministers; and Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez, who arrived a few minutes late to the National Palace on a motorcycle. A day of marches and demonstrations in the capital had clogged traffic more than usual. After the meeting, Sheinbaum posted a message on her social media accounts saying, “We agreed to continue collaborating together within the framework of mutual respect between our countries.”
On the U.S. side, Mullin arrived accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson. It marked Mullin’s first trip to Mexico and his first meeting with his counterparts on Mexican soil. After the main meeting, the senior official stayed on with members of Mexico’s Security Cabinet. In a statement released later, the Foreign Ministry said Mullin and the cabinet had followed up on “the main issues of the bilateral agenda on security, the border, and migration.”
The flurry of meetings on Thursday both opened and, for now, closed Sheinbaum’s round of contacts with Trump’s revamped security team. Since January, the Trump administration has replaced the attorney general, homeland security chief, and drug czar. Earlier in the week, it was believed that the visit would also include Sara Carter, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, who was appointed in January. But Carter canceled her visit on Wednesday without announcing a new date.
Mullin’s visit appears, for now, to close a difficult month for bilateral security relations. Although the accusations against Rubén Rocha and nine other current and former Sinaloa officials — charged with aiding organized crime — fall under the Justice Department rather than Homeland Security, they had blown apart the narrative of cooperation between the two governments, a mantra of Sheinbaum’s administration. Before that, the presence of CIA agents in an operation to dismantle a drug lab in Chihuahua had already opened some rifts.
This is the landscape Mullin encountered in his first weeks heading the department. While the U.S. narrative focuses on battles against illegal migration and casts Mexico as a problem tied to drug trafficking, the senior official’s visit underscores the need to repair strained channels. Mullin — the successor to Kristi Noem and a Republican from Oklahoma — remains something of an unknown when it comes to diplomacy. The owner of a plumbing company and a former mixed martial arts fighter entered the Senate in 2023, and his rhetoric on Mexico in the upper chamber has not been particularly friendly.
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