Mexican president slams US ‘espionage’ after traffickers indicted

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Mexico’s president has denounced what he called US espionage and interference in Mexico, days after US prosecutors announced charges against the Sinaloa cartel for smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl into Mexico. UNITED STATES.

April 17, 2023, 4:15 p.m. ET

3 minute read

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president on Monday denounced what he called U.S. espionage and interference in Mexico, days after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against 28 members of the Sinaloa Cartel for smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl in the United States.

President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador suggested on Monday that the case was built on information gathered by US agents in Mexico, and said the foreign agents could not be in Mexico.

He called Sinaloa’s investigation an abusive and arrogant interference that should not be accepted under any circumstances.

A former top US drug enforcement official called the president’s comments unwarranted. Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Lpez Obrador incorrectly assumed that US agents must have been in Mexico gathering intelligence on the case. In fact, much of the case appears to stem from trafficking suspects arrested in the United States.

He wants to completely destroy the working relationship that took decades to build, Vigil said. “It’s going to mean more drugs reaching the United States and more violence and corruption in Mexico.

Lpez Obrador went on Monday to describe fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that causes about 70,000 overdose deaths each year in the United States, as an American problem, saying it is not made in Mexico. He suggested that American families should hug their children more or keep their adult children at home longer, to stop the fentanyl crisis.

The Mexican president also clarified that the fight against fentanyl trafficking is secondary to the fight against Mexico’s internal security problems and that Mexico helps only out of goodwill.

What we must do first is to ensure public safety in our country … that is the first thing, said Lpez Obrador, and second, to help and cooperate with the American government.

Vigil pointed out that the same fentanyl and methamphetamine cartels are behind most of the violence in Mexico. Avoiding confrontations with cartels is unlikely to bring peace, Vigil said, noting that it will have exactly the opposite effect.

The US charges announced on Friday exposed the brutal and shocking methods used by the cartel, based in the northern state of Sinaloa, to move massive amounts of increasingly cheap fentanyl into the United States.

Seemingly keen to corner the market and build a central market of addicts, the cartel wholesale counterfeit pills containing fentanyl for as little as 50 cents each.

Lpez Obrador’s own administration has acknowledged finding dozens of labs where fentanyl is produced in Mexico from Chinese precursor chemicals, mostly in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Most illegal fentanyl is squeezed by Mexican cartels into counterfeit pills designed to look like other drugs like Xanax, Oxycodone or Percocet, or mixed with other drugs including heroin and cocaine. Many people who die of overdoses in the United States do not know they are taking fentanyl.

Lpez Obrador resents US allegations of corruption in Mexico deeply and has fought tooth and nail to avoid a US trial of former Defense Secretary General Salvador Cienfuegos, accused by the United States of helping a drug gang in 2020.

Lpez Obrador at one point threatened to expel DEA agents from Mexico unless the general was fired, which he was. Cienfuegos was quickly released upon his return. Since then, the Mexican government has imposed restrictive rules on how agents can operate in Mexico and has slowed visa approvals for a while.

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