There’s a lot to say about the rioting and mayhem underway in Los Angeles right now, including the striking prevalence of Mexican flags among the rioters. Iconic images have been circulating online for days of masked men waving Mexico’s flag amid burning vehicles and wreckage, giving the riots a decidedly sinister flavor, as though all this is at least partly the work of foreign powers attempting to undermine the sovereignty of the United States.
In fact, that’s partially true, and it deserves some unpacking. Much of the debate and commentary in recent days has centered on the Trump administration’s response to the crisis, deploying the National Guard and the Marines to restore order in parts of L.A., and the reactions of California Democratic leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. mayor Karen Bass, who are essentially arguing that law enforcement itself is the problem. Others have speculated on various leftists groups that are in all likelihood funding and organizing these riots, similar to how BLM organized in the summer of 2020, in hopes they will spread to every major city.
But there’s another political player in this drama that’s gotten much less attention: the Mexican government’s ruling MORENA Party under the leadership of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The first thing to understand about MORENA and the Mexican political establishment is that it’s essentially a criminal enterprise that has, over the past decade, merged with the country’s major cartels. Mexico essentially lost the drug war that began in 2006, and since at least 2013 the state has been so thoroughly infiltrated by the cartels, particularly Sinaloa, that today it’s difficult to tell where one stops and the other begins.
The cartels of course are not just drug-trafficking organizations anymore. During the Biden administration they figured out how to monetize illegal immigration, which became a major source of income for their organizations and networks. Those networks now include elements of the Guardia Nacional and Instituto Nacional de Migración, the country’s federal immigration authority, both of which were key players in the cartels’ migrant-trafficking operations.
All of that is by way of brief background. On Sunday afternoon, responding to the riots over the weekend, Sheinbaum said Mexican nationals living in the U.S. are “heroes” and denounced President Trump’s attempts to enforce federal immigration law.
“We disagree with this approach to the migration phenomenon,” Sheinbaum said Sunday during a press conference, as reported by the Daily Mail. “It’s not about raids or violence, but rather working on a comprehensive reform that takes into account the Mexicans on the other side of the border,” she added. “That is our position, always a call for peace, to not exacerbate any form of violent protest.”
Sheinbaum added that Mexican nationals in the U.S. are “not criminals” but “good, honest men and women who left to seek a better life for themselves and to support their families.”
In other words, the president of Mexico has sided with the rioters waving Mexican flags over and against federal authorities attempting to enforce U.S. immigration law on American soil. (The irony here is that Mexico does not allow foreign nationals to engage in any political activities in Mexico, including protests.)
That’s bad enough in its own right, but even if Sheinbaum had not said anything on Sunday, the appearance of so many Mexican flags amid the rioting, together with a long-standing pattern of behavior by the ruling Mexican regime, raises serious questions about the role Mexican officialdom is playing in America’s immigration wars.
Just last month, Sheinbaum threatened to mobilize protests in the United States to push back against taxes on remittances from the U.S. to Mexico, which account for a substantial portion of her country’s GDP.
And now we have protests — and riots — in L.A. over an issue that intersects directly with the interests of Mexico’s ruling politico-narco class. Simply put, the Mexican flags flying in the streets of L.A. are not simply protest emblems or symbols of pride in one’s heritage, as the New York Times laughably posited over the weekend. The flags are rather an indication of an entire network of political operatives that MORENA has maintained inside the U.S. for years, first under former Mexican President (and MORENA founder) Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, and now under Sheinbaum, his successor.
For example, when the New York Times reported in February 2024 on the very robust connections between López Obrador and the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, a group of “protesters” showed up days later outside the offices of the New York Times waving signs and shouting “AMLO, you’re not alone.”
Moreover, as the Texas Public Policy Foundation has reported, the Mexican regime has become increasingly hostile to American sovereignty, repeatedly threatening to interfere in U.S. elections and target American lawmakers for attempting to secure the border and fight the cartels. The increasingly inflammatory rhetoric of the Mexican state has become, in TPPF’s estimation, “normative,” and “demonstrates the Mexican government’s willingness to wield political influence over Mexican and Hispanic populations in the United States.”
Just as the Chinese Communist Party regards every ethnic Chinese person living inside the United States as a subject of the PRC, regardless of their citizenship status in the U.S., the MORENA government in Mexico sees the presence of large numbers of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. as a strategic asset that can be, if needed, mobilized to advance its own interests.
As mentioned above, MORENA has long partnered with major cartels and drug-trafficking organizations inside Mexico that are directly implicated in the migrant crisis that unfolded during the Biden years. As I’ve written previously, if the cartels are terrorist organizations, Mexico is their state sponsor. What this means is that the cartel-state partnership in Mexico has a vested interest in ensuring the Trump administration is unable to carry out its plans to secure the border.
No wonder, then, that over the weekend — before the rioting really got underway in L.A. — Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement criticizing the Trump administration’s modest attempts to enforce U.S. immigration law, announcing the activation of “consular protection programs” for Mexican nationals detained by ICE: “The Government of Mexico will continue using all available diplomatic and legal channels to express its opposition to practices that criminalize migration and endanger the safety and well-being of our communities in the United States,” the statement said.
The interesting thing about that statement is that, as Tom Homan confirmed Monday evening, the ICE raids in downtown L.A. weren’t even immigration raids but part of an ongoing investigation into a cartel money-laundering operation. It sure looks like Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was preemptively trying to foment resistance to ICE and activate protesters to disrupt an operation aimed directly at cartel operations in the U.S.
But even if that weren’t the case, this is not the language of a partner or a friend. Rather it’s the language of an adversary who views illegal immigration as a weapon, not a problem to be solved. Now that rioting is well and truly underway in L.A. — under the banner of the Mexican flag, no less — we have to assume that Sheinbaum and MORENA will keep encouraging the lawlessness and unrest that have gripped the city, in hopes it spreads nationwide.
We don’t have to tolerate this behavior from Mexico, any more than we have to tolerate mass illegal immigration. As the American First Policy Institute noted in an X thread on Sunday, the Trump administration can assert U.S. interests as shrewdly as Sheinbaum asserts Mexico’s interests, and it can start by leveraging the reauthorization of the USMCA trade agreement:
“The number-one card we can play: USMCA reauthorization. This so-called free-trade treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, is the absolute pillar of the Mexican economy. If it goes, so too do the remnants of whatever national prosperity they have left under their narco-regime. The United States and Canada can get by without Mexico – but the reverse is not true. As it happens, this treaty must be re-authorized no later than July 1, 2026.”
The assumption in Mexico City is that USMCA reauthorization will be near-automatic, separate from all conversations about security, sovereignty, and immigration. Unfortunately, that’s also the assumption among many U.S. officials in Washington. But it shouldn’t be. If Mexico wants to enjoy free trade with the United States, it needs to become an actual partner and ally on security and immigration, and cease being a hostile actor in an irregular international conflict.
Unfortunately, there’s very little reason for optimism on that front. Given Mexico’s history of collusion with and infiltration by the cartels, its willingness to mobilize Mexican nationals inside the U.S. for its own political ends, and its blatant disregard for U.S. sovereignty, the only thing that will cause the MORENA regime to change course is the threat of economic collapse.
Fortunately, the Trump administration can credibly threaten Sheinbaum and Mexico with just that. All it would take is a temporary shut-down of cross-border commerce, or the imposition of steep tariffs on Mexican imports.
Whatever the specific measure, the regime in Mexico City should be made to understand that until they decide to becomes actual partners with the Trump administration by fighting the cartels, securing the border, and respecting U.S. sovereignty, we will take every appearance of a Mexican flag in a U.S. immigration riot for exactly what it seems to be: a declaration of war.