Mexico expands kingpin raids against cartels, Sheinbaum answers Trump pressure with extraditions and military operations, families report violence spikes after leader takedowns

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Members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel pose with their weapons in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, on July 1, 2021 [Stringer/Reuters]Members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel pose with their weapons in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, on July 1, 2021 [Stringer/Reuters] aljazeera.com

A soldier stands guard in front of a charred vehicle in Cointzio, Michoacan, after the death of 'El Mencho' on February 22, 2026 [Armando Solis/AP Photo]A soldier stands guard in front of a charred vehicle in Cointzio, Michoacan, after the death of 'El Mencho' on February 22, 2026 [Armando Solis/AP Photo] aljazeera.com

On March 2, pedestrians in Puerto Vallarta walk past the charred wreckage of vehicles used in a series of blockades after the killing of 'El Mencho' [Stringer/Reuters]On March 2, pedestrians in Puerto Vallarta walk past the charred wreckage of vehicles used in a series of blockades after the killing of 'El Mencho' [Stringer/Reuters] aljazeera.com

Mexico’s government has authorised a renewed wave of military operations aimed at capturing cartel leaders, leaning back into the “kingpin strategy” that has defined much of the country’s drug war for two decades. The shift comes as President Claudia Sheinbaum faces escalating pressure from Washington, including tariff threats and repeated suggestions from President Donald Trump that the United States could act directly against cartels on Mexican soil, Al Jazeera reports.

The logic of decapitation is simple: remove the leadership and the organisation collapses. The record in Mexico is messier. Al Jazeera traces how high-profile arrests and killings have repeatedly triggered internal succession fights, splinter groups and localised wars as factions compete for routes, extortion rackets and territory. In Sinaloa, activists searching for the disappeared say the July 2024 arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in Texas preceded a sharp rise in violence and missing-person reports. Homicides in the state jumped from 44 in August to 142 in September, and 2025 ended with 1,657 killings, according to figures cited by Al Jazeera.

For families, the metric is not how many leaders are removed but whether daily coercion eases. María Isabel Cruz, whose group Sabuesos Guerreras searches for missing people in Culiacán, describes a pattern in which the “bottom” of the criminal economy remains intact: extortion continues, drug dealing persists, and ordinary residents absorb the costs of cartel fragmentation. Former security commissioner Bernardo León Olea tells Al Jazeera that leadership strikes often create more armed actors rather than fewer, as breakaway cells fight for revenue streams.

Sheinbaum’s incentives are different. Trump has framed cartel violence as a US national-security problem and has argued that Mexico is failing to control its territory. Al Jazeera notes that Sheinbaum has responded by extraditing nearly 100 suspected cartel members to the US since 2025 and by green-lighting operations against senior figures—moves that can be presented in Washington as measurable action. The alternative is a bilateral relationship increasingly shaped by threats: tariffs on Mexican exports and the open possibility of US military involvement.

That dynamic can push Mexico toward visible, short-horizon wins. A captured leader produces photos, press conferences and a headline; dismantling a criminal organisation requires years of financial investigations, local policing, witness protection and functioning courts. The latter is expensive, politically risky and slow. The former can be done by the armed forces and advertised as progress.

Al Jazeera’s reporting suggests the trade-off is becoming harder to ignore in places like Sinaloa: the state can remove a name at the top, but it cannot prevent the violence that follows when the vacancy is contested.

In Culiacán, Cruz says disappearances have climbed into the thousands since mid-2024. The arrests keep coming, and the lists keep growing.