From Reuters:
“EXCLUSIVE Mexico shuts elite
investigations unit in blow to U.S. drugs cooperation”
(Soldiers keep watch during a
security operation to prevent kidnapping and assaults on travellers on their
way through the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Sabinas Hidalgo, on the
outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico June 27, 2021. Picture taken June 27, 2021.)
Mexico has disbanded a select
anti-narcotics unit that for a quarter of a century worked hand-in-hand with
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to tackle organized crime, two
sources said, in a major blow to bilateral security cooperation. The group was
one of the Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU) operating in about 15 countries
which U.S. officials tout as invaluable in dismantling powerful smuggling rings
and busting countless drug lords around the globe. The units are trained by the
DEA but under the control of national governments. In Mexico, the over 50
officers in the SIU police unit were considered many of the country's best and
worked on the biggest cases such as the 2016 capture of Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman, then the boss of the powerful Sinaloa cartel. The closure
threatens to imperil U.S. efforts to combat organized crime groups inside
Mexico, one of the epicenters of the multi-billion dollar global narcotics
trade, and make it harder to catch and prosecute cartel leaders.
President Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador's government formally notified the DEA in April last year that the unit
had been shut down, according to a DEA agent with knowledge of the matter who
declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak about the issue. A
second source familiar with the situation confirmed the closure of the unit. Mexico's
Public Security Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The
DEA declined to comment. The closure of the unit was not reported before.
Reuters was unable to find out why the Mexican government did not announce it
publicly at the time. "They strangled it," the agent said, referring
to the unit. "It shatters the bridges we spent decades putting
together." The closure could prove costly on U.S. streets, where
authorities are battling to reduce a surge in overdoses that last year led to
more than 100,000 deaths mostly linked to a new wave of synthetic drugs
produced by Mexican cartels.
The elite team, founded in 1997,
was the main conduit for the DEA to share leads on drugs shipments and tips
obtained on U.S. soil with Mexico's government. The DEA would fly new Mexican
entrants to its state-of-the-art facility in Quantico, Virginia, to train them
on latest surveillance and policing techniques. U.S. officials also vetted
them, including with polygraph tests. A second Mexican SIU unit, based inside
the Attorney General's Office and independent of Lopez Obrador's government,
continues to operate. For Mike Vigil, the DEA's former chief of international
operations, the SIU closure and Lopez Obrador's curbing of security cooperation
will hurt both countries. "It will mean more drugs going to the United
States and more violence in Mexico," he said.
SHOOTING ITSELF IN THE FOOT The
SIU's closure is the latest example of the breakdown in cooperation between the
DEA and Mexico since Lopez Obrador assumed power in 2018 and vowed to overhaul
the country's security policy. Angered by the soaring bloodshed he
blamed on the heavy-handed tactics of his predecessors, Lopez Obrador sought to
implement a less confrontational policing style and pledged to tackle what he
claims are the root causes of the violence, such as poverty, instead of hunting
down cartel chiefs. The president also made it harder for foreign
security officials to operate inside Mexico, rebuking the DEA over its modus
operandi which he said equated to trampling on Mexico's sovereignty.
Privately, U.S. officials say
Mexico's vital role in blocking the flow of migrants from Latin America - a
priority for Washington - leaves them with limited leverage to pressure Lopez
Obrador on other issues, such as security cooperation. Though the SIU's
reputation was damaged when its former chief, Ivan Reyes Arzate, was detained
in 2017 and pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to taking bribes to leak tips to a
drug gang, the unit was seen as vital by DEA officials who needed Mexican
officers to help their investigations in the country.
Alarm bells for the future of the
unit rang in 2019, when Lopez Obrador mothballed the Federal Police - inside
which the SIU was based - to create a new force called the National Guard. DEA
agents kept working with Mexican counterparts for a while, especially in Mexico
City's airport where SIU officers were intercepting smuggled fentanyl, a
hyper-potent synthetic drug blamed for soaring overdoses in the United States. But
security cooperation between the DEA and Mexico plummeted to a fresh low in Oct.
2020 when U.S. security officials in Los Angeles detained Mexico's former
defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos, alleging he colluded with a drug cartel. U.S.
prosecutors swiftly released Cienfuegos, citing "sensitive" foreign
policy considerations, but Lopez Obrador accused the DEA of having "little
professionalism" and of fabricating evidence in the case. In Dec. 2020,
Lopez Obrador's government stripped foreign agents of diplomatic immunity and
forced Mexican officials to write reports on interactions with security
officers from abroad. "That was the nail in the coffin," the DEA
agent said. Months later the SIU was shut down. By the time the unit was
formally wound up it had, according to the DEA agent, already been inoperative
for some time as Mexico's National Guard prioritized the deterrence of violence
over investigations of drug cartels. But with more than 33,000 homicides
recorded in Mexico last year, Vigil, the ex-DEA agent, said closing an elite
unit that goes after organized crime groups responsible for most of the murders
doesn't make sense. "Mexico is shooting itself in the foot," he said.
^ This is one of the worst ideas
Mexico has had in recent years. Drug-Related Crime, Violence, Kidnapping and
Murder are extremely high in Mexico right now and to get rid of a very
effective Anti-Drug Unit doesn’t make any sense. I think the Mexican Officials
are being threatened or Blackmailed by the Drug Cartels to stop going after
them and this is part of that – it’s the only thing that makes any sense in all
of this. ^
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