Trump’s designation of cartels as terrorists ends the fiction that Mexico is a trustworthy ally

Trump’s action exposes the inconvenient truth: Mexico, under Presidents Andrés Manuel López Obrado and Claudia Sheinbaum, is deeply compromised by cartel corruption and control.

Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, was elected to the California legislature, is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and the author of the new book, "Crisis of the House Never United."

Official Washington has long peddled the comfortable fiction that Mexico is an honest partner in the fight against drugs and human trafficking. This myth persists, despite decades of overwhelming evidence that the Mexican government is at best willfully negligent, and at worst, in active collusion with the criminal networks destroying lives on both sides of the border – cartels that Trump just called out by name.