Noem ends her first visit to Latin America in Mexico to discuss crime and migration

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem landed in Mexico on Friday to cap off a tour to three Latin American nations to discuss immigration, crime and deportation.

Noem's first visit to the region comes as it gains increasing importance to the Trump administration, which is attempting to scale up deportation efforts and warn against migration north. As Noem visited El Salvador and Colombia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Guyana to meet with a number of Caribbean leaders.

After being greeted at the airport by Mexico's foreign minister, Noem met with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and other top Mexican officials. The two leaders were photographed sitting next to each other in a meeting room along with other aids and together in front of American and Mexican flags.

Sheinbaum's government has been working to offset tariffs lodged by the Trump administration, which economic forecasters say could thrust the Mexican economy into a recession.

In exchange for delaying sanctions in past months, the Mexican government sent 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and reported sharp crackdowns on drug labs. It also sent 29 top cartel figures long sought by the American government to the U.S. to face justice.

After the meeting on Friday, Noem wrote on a post on the social media platform on X that the moves were “a positive step.”

“But there is still much work to be done to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into our country,” she added.

Sheinbaum, meanwhile, called the meeting “fruitful” and said Mexico and the U.S. “maintain a good relationship within a framework of respect for each other’s sovereignty.”

Despite 25% tariffs on auto parts announced by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week, Sheinbaum said ahead of the meeting that the focus of her conversation with Noem would largely be about security and migration, adding that she would emphasize Mexico's sovereignty in the meeting.

“More that informing, we're going to share with her what is being done and also the coordination and collaboration that has been established with the United States,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing. “It is going to be a cordial meeting on coordination.”

While other leaders have taken a more confrontational approach with Trump and imposed reciprocal tariffs, Sheinbaum has walked a fine line with the Republican U.S. president, and the government has taken a collaborative approach to offset the economic blow. On Wednesday, Sheinbaum said Mexico would seek “preferential treatment” to Trump's auto tariffs.

Sheinbaum's managing of the relationship with Trump has been met by soaring approval in Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ends her three-country tour as she walks towards a plane at the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in Zumpango, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, right, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum look toward photographers as they speak at the National Palace in Mexico City, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, left, arrives to meet with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at the National Palace in Mexico City, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, right, walks with Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente at the National Palace in Mexico City, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives at the Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA) in Zumpango on the outskirts of Mexico City, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump has just started his second term, his last one permitted under the U.S. Constitution. But he's already started talking about serving a third one.

“There are methods which you can do it,” Trump insisted to NBC News in a telephone interview on Sunday.

That follows months of Trump making quips about a third term, despite the clear constitutional prohibition on it. “Am I allowed to run again?” Trump joked during a House Republican retreat in Florida in January. Just a week after he won election last fall, Trump suggested in a meeting with House Republicans that he might want to stick around after his second term was over.

This time, Trump said Sunday, “I'm not joking.” But even some allies don't believe that. “You guys keep asking the question,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Monday. And Trump is just “having some fun with it,” he said, “probably messing with you.”

Trump's musings often spark alarm among his critics even when they're legally impossible, given that he unsuccessfully tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and has since pardoned supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But Trump, who will be 82 when his term ends, has also repeatedly said that this will be his last term. Trying for another also would flatly violate the Constitution. The current gambit seems more like a termed-out president trying to convince his party and the public that he could still be in power four years from now.

Here are some questions and answers related to Trump's occasional comments about a third term:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” begins the 22nd Amendment, adopted after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times in a row. He was last elected in 1944.

It's a fairly straightforward ban on serving more than two terms. Some Trump supporters argue the language is meant to apply only to two consecutive terms because Roosevelt's terms were consecutive, but notably that's not what the amendment says.

Others contend that because the ban is just on being “elected" more than twice, Trump could run as the next president's vice president and, if the ticket won, could simply replace that person if he or she resigns, a possibility the president himself floated on Sunday.

To put it mildly, that would be quite a complex plan to pull off, in no small part because Trump would be 82 during the next election, a year older than former President Joe Biden was during last year's campaign. Also, the Constitution says only people qualified to be president can be vice president, which would seem to bar Trump from pursuing the scheme.

At least one Republican in Congress has been bold enough to propose a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to seek another term. It has no chance of going anywhere, given the high bar for amending the Constitution, and has yet to move in the new Congress' first months.

Even assuming Trump would attempt another run, a combination of election officials and courts would virtually ensure that he stayed off the ballot.

State officials have long kept would-be candidates off presidential ballots if they didn't meet the basic constitutional criteria, such as being a natural-born U.S. citizen or being at least 35 years old. They would do the same with someone clearly violating the limit on presidential terms.

A version of this unfolded in 2023, when a few states tried to keep Trump off the ballot because they found he violated the 14th Amendment's ban on officials who engaged in insurrection. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed those decisions because no one had ever used the insurrection clause on a presidential candidate before and there were a lot of legal questions about its implementation.

There would be no similar questions about the meaning of the 22nd Amendment, said Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

“You would not have the factual disputes, so it would be much wider,” Muller said of the number of states keeping Trump off their ballots. “I'm not persuaded the Supreme Court is going to roll over.”

Trump has a long history of taunting his critics to flex his power, but there also could be a strategic reason for his keeping the third-term discussion alive.

Trump is a lame duck president in his final term. Because termed-out politicians will never be on the ballot for the same office again, their political clout usually wanes quickly. The third-term flirtation is a way to try to convince people that Trump will be around in the future.

Trump's aggressive actions at the start of his new term shows that he knows his time is dwindling, Muller said.

“He's governing like he's a lame duck right now, with nothing to lose,” he said.

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Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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