Cooperation between the US and Mexico against drugs is at its lowest point in decades. What has gone wrong?

By Ken Dilanian -

WASHINGTON — It was another tense moment in a tumultuous relationship, and it didn't end well.

Senior Biden Administration officials were heading to Mexico City this month for pre-arranged talks on the fentanyl crisis when news broke that drug cartel gunmen had kidnapped four Americans in Mexico, two of whom died. shot.

But after the surviving Americans were quickly found and rescued by Mexican authorities -- with US help -- Biden officials were hopeful they could walk away from the fentanyl meeting with something good to announce.

But it was not like that.

Even before the talks began, the president of Mexico scuttled them.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared before television cameras to proclaim that fentanyl is a problem for the United States and falsely claimed that nothing of this dangerous drug is produced in Mexico.

[The opioid crisis is not just a white problem: deaths among Hispanics have skyrocketed]

Current and former US officials say this bizarre episode is symptomatic of how far the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated in what used to be called the war on drugs, at precisely the time when joint action is most needed.

“Cooperation between security forces has been minimal or non-existent,” says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a drug trafficking expert and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The Mexican government has not allowed joint raids or even observation by US security forces."

Now this blatantly false statement from the president [of Mexico].”

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Matthew Donahue, who retired last year after three decades with the DEA, agreed that cooperation was "non-existent," adding that the biggest problem is corruption. in Mexico "and how it has infiltrated many levels of your government".

“This is the worst thing that has happened in Mexico,” he said.

"The frustrating thing is that we know where the traffickers are," but the US government has been unable to persuade Mexico to act, "so all that operational intelligence gathering is wasted."

[Fentanyl is already the drug of choice for opioid users]

Andrew Rudman, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a public policy think tank, said: “If you can't cooperate with Mexico, you're not going to solve this problem, there's just no way.

It really calls into question the degree of cooperation that can really take place in the next two years if every step forward is met with a step back."

The US delegation in Mexico, including Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and White House National Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, quietly flew home from the talks and issued bland statements on paper, flatly refusing to comment. the declarations of López Obrador.

No substantial announcement was made.

The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations said on Twitter on Thursday that its government “is not only dedicating resources, dozens of lives of Mexican security forces have been lost in the fight against fentanyl.

We are not saying that we are going to stop the cooperation of Mexico.

We're not saying we won't move on.

No, the Mexican government is saying that we will strengthen our cooperation, but we will not do it under the disrespect of saying that we are not doing anything.

[The Dark Agenda Behind the “Apology” of the Gulf Cartel for the Deadly Kidnapping of Americans in Matamoros]

In a post-trip statement expressing sentiments not shared by any former official or expert consulted by NBC News, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said: "We have strong law enforcement cooperation with Mexico. , which has allowed us to take successful action against cartels, transnational criminal organizations, drug traffickers and people smugglers, and that will continue."

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Donahue, who spent two years in Mexico City and became the DEA's deputy chief of operations, said, "I wouldn't call their almost complete lack of cooperation in counternarcotics efforts 'robust'." 

Following Watson's statement, a senior Biden administration official acknowledged to NBC News that "we need to do a lot more on the enforcement side," but added: "We've found that we've made a lot more progress by having the frank discussions in private instead of moving your fingers in public."

The official said the Biden Administration has made progress after inheriting a “completely broken” relationship with law enforcement in January 2021.

[They point to 'Los Escorpiones' as responsible for the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico]

I give them a high mark for their efforts and a fail for their results,” said John Feeley, a former State Department official who spent decades fighting drug trafficking in Latin America in administrations of both parties.

A problem of decades

The multi-billion dollar illegal drug trade has long been a festering sore on the North American continent.

American demand for cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin fuels well-financed, malicious criminal organizations that thrive in a Mexico plagued by corruption and lawlessness.

The cartels use their wealth to buy US weapons and bribe US officials.

US politicians denounce the cartels but say little about where their money comes from.

Methamphetamine found in a spare tire at the Ysleta Port of Entry in El Paso, Texas on June 15, 2021.CBP

But the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is killing Americans at breakneck rates, has dramatically raised the stakes.

Washington is angry and US lawmakers are calling for military action against the cartels, which could amount to an act of war against America's neighbor and biggest trading partner.

“We are facing a game changer, and the game changer is one hundred thousand deaths a year.

Yet when we most need law enforcement cooperation and the rule of law, we have next to nothing,” Feeley said.

[The Mexican Government admits that the Army executed the five youths in Nuevo Laredo]

In 2021, 106,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States, more than 70,000 of them largely from fentanyl, according to the National Institutes of Health.

More and more people are dying because they took drugs they didn't know contained fentanyl.

No community or demographic has been spared.

US officials and international experts say the vast majority of fentanyl sold in the United States is produced in Mexico with precursors imported from China.

“The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco cartel and their affiliates control the vast majority of the global fentanyl supply chain, from manufacturing to distribution,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told Congress last month.

“The cartels purchase precursor chemicals in the PRC, transport the precursor chemicals from the PRC to Mexico, use the precursor chemicals to mass-produce fentanyl, press fentanyl into fake prescription pills, and use cars, trucks, and other routes. to transport the drugs from Mexico to the United States for distribution," he said.

[Legendary Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso dies at 98]

He said it costs the cartels as little as ten cents to produce a fake fentanyl prescription pill that sells in the United States for between $10 and $30. 

“The cartels are carrying out a deliberate and calculated betrayal to deceive Americans and foster addiction in order to obtain greater profits,” he said.

When he took office in 2018, López Obrador announced that his policy towards drug cartels would be "hugs, not bullets."

Last week, he told reporters: "We don't produce fentanyl here and we don't have fentanyl consumption."

He blamed the overdose crisis in the United States on the "social decay" of American society, adding: "We are deeply sorry for what is happening in the United States, but why don't they fight the problem ... and, what is More importantly, why don't you take care of your youth?

Pills of fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs seized in Tempe, Arizona, on February 23. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes/Twitter

It wasn't always like this.

The relationship has slowly declined from its high point, when joint US-Mexico operations became commonplace in the 2000s under Presidents George Bush and Felipe Calderón.

They had begun to wane when Enrique Peña Nieto took office in 2013. After the United States arrested Mexico's defense minister on corruption charges in October 2020, López-Obrador largely ended what little cooperation remained, even making it harder for DEA agents to stay in the country, Feeley and other experts said. 

[They find five men handcuffed with a message that links them to the kidnapping of the four Americans in Matamoros]

Mexico was so outraged by the arrest that then-Attorney General William Barr eventually dropped the case and returned the minister to Mexico, which exonerated him despite evidence that he was working on behalf of a violent drug cartel.

Officials on both sides were furious over the whole affair, current and former US officials say.

a complicated relationship

Privately, US officials say that in his comments on fentanyl, López Obrador was reacting to comments by Republican lawmakers in recent weeks calling for military action against drug traffickers in Mexico and proposing to designate drug cartels as organizations. terrorists.

“We are going to unleash the fury and might of the United States against these cartels,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who called on the president to “give the military the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist.”

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The idea of ​​unilateral US military action against cartels inside Mexico is anathema to almost any Mexican politician, let alone one who stakes his identity on challenging the United States. 

The reality is that the United States urgently needs Mexico's cooperation on a number of issues, according to experts, including the massive immigration crisis on the southern border of the United States.

Mexico is the United States' largest trading partner and most popular tourist destination, and home to the largest community of expatriate Americans.

The possibility of a US president taking military action in Mexico against the wishes of his administration seems extremely remote.

[Cosmetic surgery in Mexico: cheaper prices but risks that go beyond even the operating table]

“We are not contemplating military action against Mexico,” Watson, the NSC spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Everyone recognizes that the Biden Administration is in a tough bind.

He needs Mexico's help in the fight against fentanyl, but he doesn't get much and has very little influence to do anything about it.

A DEA spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.

But the DEA's Milgram recently detailed to Congress how Mexico refuses to share even basic data. 

“We have not received information on the seizures of chemical precursors,” he said.

“We are very concerned about clandestine laboratories throughout Mexico, and we have offered and continue to offer and are willing to work collaboratively with the Mexican authorities to jointly dismantle and take down these clandestine laboratories throughout Mexico and to be of any service that we can.” he explained.

In addition, Mexico is stalling dozens of extradition requests from the United States.

“One of the things we are looking for is for Mexico to arrest and extradite more individuals to the United States,” he said.

“Last year, Mexico extradited 24 drug-related defendants to the United States, but there are 232 drug-related defendants awaiting extradition,” he said.

[Mexico quickly found the Americans, but there are 100,000 missing]

Donahue said corruption runs so deep in Mexico that Mexican security forces spend more time watching DEA agents than cartel members.

The problems are obvious.

Much less clear is how to solve them.

One proposal, embraced by some Republican lawmakers and some experts such as Feeley, is to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Barr, a former attorney general, recently argued that the US should use the military to take down the cartels, though he did not make it clear whether he was saying the US should do so even without Mexico's permission, which could be characterized as an act of war.

Feeley says the US can't take unilateral action in Mexico, but he and others argue that a terrorist designation would allow prosecutors to more easily go after Americans who help cartels, using a charge of "material support of terrorism." which carries much more stigma than a drug offence.

The White House opposes the terrorism designation, according to a senior administration official, but does not reject expanding legal authority to target cartels.

“I think the Biden Administration has been pretty patient with Mexico,” said Rudman of the Wilson Center.

"Maybe sometimes too patient," he added.