Mexico is Sending 23 Agents to United States to Help Prevent Arms Trafficking

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The United States government accepted that Mexico sent up to 23 agents to supervise the fight against arms trafficking and establish reciprocities in binational security cooperation.

Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Relations (SRE), reported in the plenary session of the Senators of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) on the progress in the requests of the administration headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for which the Mexican Foreign Ministry is working in coordination and the Security Cabinet.

"Just as we have a presence, and we have it regulated in the National Security Law, which you approved in 2020, of agents of the United States, we will also have agents in the United States for the issue at hand, which is weapons, mainly, but not only, but mainly."

Since mid-October of last year, it was reported that Mexico was requesting the intervention of at least a dozen officials in US territory in exchange for granting visas to the same number of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents. Two months later, President López Obrador reported that they had already been authorized, but no progress was reported on his government's request.

According to the foreign minister, what he described as a bitter disagreement after the arrest in Los Angeles of the former head of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena), Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, has already been overcome. Now, the governments of Joe Biden and López Obrador relaunched the binational security agreement with the Bicentennial Understanding, as reported by Borderland Beat.

With the then President of the United States, Donald Trump, the DEA led investigations against the general and he was secured in October 2020, but there were negotiations with the SRE that allowed him to be returned from New York to Mexico to be prosecuted by the Attorney General's Office. República, an instance that finally ruled out links with the drug trafficker.

In response, the Mexican government expressed its annoyance because information reserved by a Grand Jury was not shared about the investigations into the former head of the Sedena in alleged links with the H-2 Cartel, derived from the Beltrán Leyva. Hence, from Morena, a reform was promoted to monitor foreign agents in Mexico, especially those of the DEA.

And it was until January 2021 that the so-called Cienfuegos Law that limits foreign agents came into force. Mexican authorities handed the reins to a new surveillance group called the High-Level Security Group headed by Marcelo Ebrard. Every month, Mexican officials from any group must report if they maintain communication in the national territory or abroad with security forces from other countries.

Before the senators of Morena, the party in power, the head of the SRE also highlighted the meeting on January 26 where Mexico and the United States created the Working Group on Arms Trafficking, as reported by Borderland Beat. This agreement seeks to increase arms and ammunition seizures that end up in the hands of organized crime, in addition to ensuring the prosecution of traffickers.

Mexico's priority is to reduce violence in our country, therefore arms trafficking to our country has to be reduced, and the United States is assuming that this Mexican priority has the same status as their priorities regarding fentanyl, which also we are very concerned, of course, and then the Understanding is starting to work

Since August 2021, the Foreign Ministry has been leading the lawsuit against a dozen US arms manufacturers and suppliers in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts. Ebrard presumed that it is something historic and that Mexico will win the trial. On February 1, delegations from both countries will meet again to advance in the relaunch of the binational agreement that includes five more working groups.

All this, after the first formal arrest of Facundo Rosas Rosas, former Federal Police commissioner and one of the seven implicated in the failed Fast and Furious operation, a program that authorized the illegal entry of 2,500 weapons from the US to Mexico with intended to be traced, but ended up in the hands of cartels.

Source Infobae