The Mexican authorities has disbanded an anti-narcotic investigative unit that labored intently with the US Drug Enforcement Administration for greater than twenty years — dealing a blow to America’s means to focus on drug cartels and cease the circulate of unlawful medicine throughout the border, in line with a report on Tuesday.
The elite squad of about 50 officers was one among various Delicate Investigative Models educated by the DEA in about 15 international locations to assist dismantle smuggling rings and bust drug lords, Reuters reported.
The Mexican unit took half in a few of the nation’s most celebrated circumstances, together with the 2016 seize of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration formally notified the DEA a yr in the past that it was shutting down the unit, the report stated.
Reuters stated it couldn’t decide why the closure, which has not beforehand been reported, was not introduced publicly by the Mexican authorities when it occurred.
“They strangled it,” a DEA agent informed the wire service. “It shatters the bridges we spent many years placing collectively.”
A second unit, primarily based contained in the Mexican lawyer normal’s workplace and impartial of Lopez Obrador’s authorities, continues to function, the outlet added.
The DEA and Mexico’s Public Safety Ministry didn't reply to Reuters’ requests for remark.
The unit, created in 1997, performed a crucial function within the DEA’s means to share leads about drug shipments and different suggestions with the Mexican authorities.
Members of the group, who needed to bear a complete vetting course of, together with taking polygraph exams, had been educated by the DEA at Quantico, Va., on the most recent in surveillance and policing strategies.
Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of worldwide operations, informed Reuters that the closure of the unit “will imply extra medicine going to america and extra violence in Mexico.”
In fiscal yr 2021 — which ended Sept. 30 of final yr — Customs and Border Safety officers seized 11,201 kilos of fentanyl, the artificial opioid that's tearing by American communities and is likely one of the main causes of overdoses.
The closure of the unit is the most recent instance of a breakdown in cooperation between the DEA and Mexico since Lopez Obrador took workplace in 2018 amid vows to overtake safety, the report stated.
The Mexican president pledged to take a much less extreme strategy to policing than his predecessors, focusing extra on the foundation causes of violence, equivalent to poverty, reasonably than concentrating on drug cartels.
Lopez Obrador additionally made it harder for companies just like the DEA to function in Mexico.
In December 2020, the Mexican authorities eliminated diplomatic immunity from international brokers and required Mexican officers to put in writing experiences on their interactions with safety officers from overseas.
“That was the nail within the coffin,” a DEA agent informed Reuters.
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