Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.

Costa Rican President Laura Fernández has left the door open to possible US ground operations on her country’s soil, saying they would benefit national security if they targeted transnational crime.

Getting into it: Fernández made the comments in a Reuters interview, after a reporter asked her directly about US boots on the ground. “It would obviously be very good for national security if it were about pursuing a common objective against transnational crime, transnational drug trafficking, transnational terrorism,” she said. She said the topic had already come up with the United States months back.

The two countries already work together, but at sea. Both have run counter-drug patrols in the same waters since the 1990s. This past December, lawmakers signed off on as many as 195 US vessels docking for counter-narcotics work through 2026. Costa Rica also helped launch Shield of the Americas, the anti-cartel bloc Trump put together at a Miami summit in March.

Despite all of this, the constitutional hurdle remains. Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly is the only body that can let foreign troops into the country, and clearing that vote takes 38 of the 57 deputies, according to legislative analysts. Her Pueblo Soberano party controls 31 of those seats, more than any governing party has held since 1982, but that still leaves her seven short.

The timing tracks with a wider US push. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Panama on Aug. 13 that Washington plans to take its campaign against suspected traffickers off the water and onto land, with help from partner governments. He named Ecuador and Colombia, and said Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had signed on to joint operations inside their own borders. Guatemala says it agreed to nothing of the sort.