Two US officials who died after Mexico drug raid reported to be CIA agents | Mexico
Mexico launched an investigation into a possible violation of the constitution after it was reported that two US embassy officials who died in a traffic accident while returning from a raid on a pharmaceutical laboratory with local officials in the border state of Chihuahua were CIA agents.
The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday as authorities were returning from the scene of the raid. The vehicles went off the road and crashed into a 200-meter valley in the mountains near the border with Chihuahua’s Sinaloa state.
Since then, state officials have made conflicting statements about whether and how Americans participated in the raid, while Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said neither she nor her cabinet was aware of the operation. Mexico’s national security law prohibits joint operations without prior approval from the federal government.
Although the US embassy acknowledged the deaths of embassy personnel on Sunday, it has not yet commented on subsequent reports that they were from the CIA.
“We are investigating what these people were doing and what agency they were from,” Sheinbaum said at Tuesday’s daily news conference. “The information we have so far is that they are working together.” [with the state government]and therefore the attorney general will have to investigate to find out whether this violates the constitution and the national security law.”
The incident comes at a tense time in U.S.-Mexico relations, with Donald Trump demanding Mexico do more to stop drug smuggling into the U.S. and Sheinbaum trying to assert Mexico’s sovereignty.
Given previous interventions in the region, U.S. law enforcement activities in Mexico are a politically sensitive issue. Sheinbaum has repeatedly turned down Trump’s offer to send troops to Mexico to help fight the cartels.
Although Trump has threatened unilateral military strikes against Mexican cartels, U.S. law enforcement and the embassy in Mexico have emphasized that they are working with Mexican authorities.
Those agencies include the CIA, which has taken a much larger role in the fight against drug trafficking in the Americas since Trump returned to the White House and has designated several organized crime groups, including a half-dozen Mexican cartels, as foreign terrorist organizations.
Intelligence from the CIA reportedly He helped find “El Mencho,” one of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers, who was killed in a Mexican army operation in February.
But Sunday’s incident has put the spotlight on the precise level of CIA involvement in Mexico and whether it goes beyond intelligence sharing.
On Monday, Chihuahua’s attorney general, César Jáuregui Moreno, said US “trainers” were not directly involved in the raid and only arrived on the scene for training purposes after the operation took place. He added that Sheinbaum’s office was not notified of the raid because only Mexican agents participated in the raid.
However, this appeared to contradict the attorney general’s earlier statement that the Americans died while returning from “an operation to dismantle secret laboratories.”
“There is great cooperation and coordination” [between Mexico and the US]”However, there is no such joint operation on the ground,” Sheinbaum said. “If this investigation confirms that there was a joint operation, then the relevant sanctions should be reviewed.”
