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NOGALES, Sonora — A Mexican National Guard official walked towards us, across five lanes of idling cars, and I prepared for an argument.

But no, he didn’t want to stop us from taking photos of them at the downtown Nogales port of entry — he just wanted us to stay on the sidewalk and behind a waist-high fence while we did so. Then, lo and behold, about a half-dozen National Guard members and two soldiers with face masks and long guns started searching cars right near us, making it easy to watch and photograph them in action.

A month ago, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, resolved a threat of 25% U.S. tariffs by promising to put 10,000 National Guard members on the border. It happened — National Guard officials are visible across the Mexican side of the U.S. line, with about 1,500 newly assigned to Sonora’s border with Arizona.

But as President Trump again threatens tariffs on Mexico, saying he will impose them on Tuesday, it all looks more like a show than anything substantial.

The president threatens tariffs, flexing his power over our weaker neighbors by making them perform security theater. Through this performance, they avoid tariffs that would devastate the border region’s economy and raise prices in both countries.

On the ground, though, the National Guard’s deployment often looks like a simple show of strength responding to a show of strength.

More efficient inspections

Photographer Mamta Popat and I began last week on the Mexican side of the Lukeville Port of Entry, in Sonoyta, Sonora. That’s where the most dramatic changes have occurred since the National Guard was deployed in early February. Over the President’s Day weekend, National Guard officers were checking every vehicle before it left Mexico and entered U.S. Customs, causing an hours-long wait for beachgoers returning home.

This forced abrupt changes in cross-border travel. Shuttle driver Juan Cruz told me his line, Nenas Shuttle, stopped driving across the border because they had to wait so long in line. Instead, one driver takes passengers from Puerto Peñasco to the border at Sonoyta, where they walk through the port of entry, then another driver takes them from Lukeville to Phoenix.

By the time we arrived on Sunday, though, local officials had intervened, prevailing upon the National Guard to make the inspections more efficient. While we were there Sunday afternoon, the line never got longer than about 20 cars, as a group of more than a dozen National Guard members increased and decreased the intensity of the searches with the flow of traffic.

What they’ve accomplished beyond increasing wait times and showing force is unknown. I tried to ask those officers, and I put questions specifically about Sonoyta and Lukeville to a pair of Mexican National Guard spokesmen, as well as a CBP spokesperson, but I could get no details on their impact.

In Agua Prieta, too, National Guard officers are making a visible presence amid northbound traffic, Mark Adams of the border group Frontera de Cristo told me. Usually, there are at least a dozen around, pinching traffic down to a lane and searching some vehicles, he said.

Border ‘extremely quiet’

At a huge new shelter in Nogales, Sonora’s sports complex, Lieutenant Jose Miguel Medina Gutierrez explained the officers’ operations in the area.

“We have several roles here in Nogales: Carrying out patrols, providing security in the shelter and security in the ports of entry,� he said in Spanish.

He leads the force providing security at the shelter, which has had relatively slow traffic since being set up by Sheinbaum’s order after Trump’s inauguration. This slow traffic has been common on the Mexican side of the order, as from sites across the Mexican side of the order.

Still, National Guard troops escort buses taking deported Mexicans to their home states, and they escort buses taking migrants from other countries to Villahermosa, Tabasco, a city in Southern Mexico.

“In this border area, migrants go north and south,� Medina Gutierrez said, standing outside the shelter. “To guard them after their arrival in Mexico, and to be sure smugglers don’t get a hold of them, we keep them guarded here.�

The National Guard units deployed to Nogales, he said, come mostly from the south of the country or southern Sonora. Ciudad Obregon, in southern Sonora, is one of the most violent cities in Mexico now. Another agent I spoke with was from Guanajuato, a state suffering from a long-term crime wave.

In other words, units are being diverted from parts of Mexico that need police help to guard a relative few migrants and deported people or go through the motions looking at outbound vehicles at ports of entry in border areas that are remarkably calm.

A CBP spokesman acknowledged to me that the border is extremely quiet right now but noted it began before Mexico’s National Guard arrived. They have no evidence, yet, of any impact the National Guard has had in its 3-4 week week deployment.

Putting on a show

When Trump threatened to impose tariffs originally, he said the reason was to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States. That is a big issue, as we see daily on the streets of Tucson, but it was a questionable justification, because Trump threatened equal tariffs of 25% on Mexico, the source of most of our fentanyl, and Canada, the source of almost none.

Just as likely, Trump has a thing for tariffs, a sweeping power granted to the president by Congress that he hopes will enrich the country rather than impoverish us, and that at minimum serves as a lever he can pull to win concessions. But for what?

There is no sign that increased patrols on the border have decreased the supply of fentanyl. The price on the streets of Tucson remains about the same. A Mexican agent in Nogales told me they made a seizure of fentanyl two weeks ago. The Washington Post reported Saturday that agents had seized 150 pills — a tiny amount — in Nogales, Sonora.

And 50 years of Drug War experience tell us that trying to choke off supply usually forces it to come in another way, or to be made in the United States. The only long-term solution is to reduce demand for the drug, which requires long, arduous work on ourselves.

But the show has always been a big part of the Drug War. Indeed, during a radio interview I did Wednesday with Nubia Uriarte, a Nogales, Sonora, journalist, she recounted an incident from earlier last week.

“A few days ago there was foreign press here, personnel from the Washington Post,� she said in Spanish. “And they (the National Guard) put on a show, in the sense that if indeed there are inspections at the entrance to the port of entry, if before they had three (inspectors) instead they put nine — for the photos, and so our colleagues could document their inspections.�

“The next day, that was all over.�

If the imposition of tariffs would be damaging, and if what we get from the threat of tariffs is a hollow show of force, one might question why we’re engaging in this theater in the first place.