'What are they doing here?': US soldiers carry out joint training exercises in Juárez

It was a rare sight in the Borderland, as a U.S military helicopter hovered over the Benito Juarez Olympic Stadium in Juárez as an emergency basket slowly was brought up to the open door.

The presence of a U.S. military vehicle over the industrial city just on the other side of the Río Grande generated a stir among residents.

“We saw the helicopter from the United States,” Manuel Ángel Cruz, a resident of Juárez, told the El Paso Times as he looked on at the exercises. “We asked, what are they doing here? What are they looking for?”

Another young observer, Ángel Cruz Ríos, added, “It was like in the XBox video games.”

The helicopters were part of a bi-national exercise with the Mexican military for the 2024 “Fuerzas Amigas,” or the “Friendly Forces” in Spanish, a disaster relief exercise that ran from June 24 to 29 in the border city.

The yearly exercise is a collaboration between the United State's Defense Support of Civil Authorities and Mexico’s National Defense Plan-III to prepare for natural disaster response and relief. It brought together 220 U.S. soldiers from the Joint Task Force Civil Support of the U.S. Army’s Northern Command based in Fort Eustis, Virginia, with 280 Mexican soldiers.

The soldiers jointly drilled through disaster scenarios, including what would occur if a devastating 7.5 earthquake shook the region; pulling people from cars, lifting the injured in baskets hanging from the hovering helicopters. Other exercises put soldiers through what would occur in a train derailment resulting in a chemical spill, or if part of an airport collapsed.

According to the U.S. Northern Command, U.S. forces deployed two UH-60 Blackhawks and one CH-47 Chinook to Mexico, along with essential life saving equipment. Army engineers also brought key tools for rescue missions, including breaching and breaking equipment, rope rescue, and jaws of life. A unit specialized in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense (CBRN) with the 2D Chemical Battalion, brought personal equipment meant for responding to a simulated chemical spill.

Military leaders took these exercises to stress the importance of this binational cooperation and collaboration.

“The main purpose of (these exercises) is to improve our procedures,” Mexican General Rubén Zamudio, the Mexican commander of the Fifth Military Zone, told the media on June 25 as the exercises began. “Our teams are working together to perfection. Year after year, we will continue to improve.”

His U.S. colleague, Brig. Gen. Tomika Seaberry, celebrated the cooperation.

“The Mexican Army is our partner, it is our friend,” she told reporters . “It is rewarding for us to save the lives of our citizens and use our combined resources to do that.”

The exercises come to an end on June 29. U.S. and Mexican armed forces will be training in another set of exercises in Chihuahua, Mexico in July 2024.

A spokesperson for the United States Northern Command said that they are already in the process of organizing the “Fuerzas Amigas” exercises for 2025, but these plans have not been finalized.

Sensitive issue in Mexico

The presence of U.S. military troops and aircraft on Mexican territory historically remains a sensitive topic in Mexico.

According to Miguel A. Levario, the author of the book Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy and associate professor at Texas Tech University, the tensions date back to before the Mexican-American War of 1846, which contributed to Mexico losing half of its territory in what is known across Mexico as "La Invasión Estadounidense," or "La Invasión Norteamericana," meaning the "U.S. invasion."

But Levario points out the unease with the presence of U.S. soldiers in Mexico would rise again during the Mexican revolution, with the 1916 “punitive expedition” led by General John Pershing, which deployed into Mexico in pursuit of revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

According to Mexico’s law, the country’s Senate must approve the entrance of any foreign soldiers into the country. The permissions for the June 2024 exercises were approved in April 2024, with the Senate overwhelmingly approving the bi-national operation and permitting U.S. soldiers to arrive for another training exercise in July 2024.

But in spite of the unease with the presence of U.S. soldiers on Mexico’s soil, for decades the two countries have become close critical allies, closely collaborating on a number of issues and exchanging experiences.

“(This type of collaboration) is now very common in Mexico,” Gerardo Rodríguez, a National Security expert and professor at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, said. “It is no longer taboo.”

'Fuerzas Amigas,' 'Friendly Forces'

Similar disaster relief exercises have taken place yearly since 2011, a spokesperson from the U. S. Northern Command said.

But the June 2024 exercises are unique. As Mexican General Rubén Zamudio pointed out to the press at the beginning of the week, the 2024 “Friendly Forces” simulation is the first exercise to be held outside of a military base.

The bi-national exercises were temporarily suspended in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disaster relief exercises were renewed in October 2022 at the Campo Militar Reynosa in Reynosa, Mexico. Another disaster relief exercise was held in Tijuana, Mexico over two days in August 2023.

The exercises have contributed to mutual support between the two countries during times of disasters, as well as across the hemisphere.

“Fuerzas Amigas has enhanced humanitarian assistance and disaster response capabilities for both nations,” a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command said. “In recent years, the U.S. has assisted Mexico in responding to earthquakes and hurricanes, while Mexico has assisted the U.S. with wildfire operations.”

But in spite of the collaborations, in recent years Republican politicians have floated the idea of deploying U.S. soldiers into Mexico to fight cartels or bombing the border region to fight criminal groups. These calls have come from far-right politicians such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and freshman U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who have suggested that a “war on Mexico” is the only way to win the war on drugs.

Professor Levario chalks this language as, “nothing but political theater.”

Outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador previously stated his opposition to permitting U.S. soldiers to enter the country to fight cartels. And both Levario and Raúl Benitz Manuat, an expert on Mexican National Security and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico point out, any unilateral military action would be a direct violation of Mexican sovereignty, and lead to a wider crisis.

“Mexico would never accept (the deployment of U.S. troops),” Benitz Manuat said. “It would be impossible.”

But for those looking on at the June 2024 exercises in Juárez, the presence of the U.S. military vehicles didn’t bring any concerns.

“It is okay that they are here,” Cruz said. “It causes no problem.”

Omar Ornelas from The El Paso Times contributed to this reporting

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: US, Mexico military forces carry out joint training in Juárez