More controls at customs to reduce fentanyl trafficking.
That has been the agreement reached this Thursday by Mexico, the United States and Canada at the security summit held in Washington.
The Mexican delegation promised to reinforce the entry gates to chemical precursors both by sea and by land.
More Army surveillance at customs and even the creation of a special unit of the Prosecutor's Office dedicated specifically to investigating synthetic drug trafficking.
“The main objective is to drastically reduce the flow of chemical precursors to Mexico and the US that facilitate the production of fentanyl,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced upon leaving the meeting.
The meeting at the White House culminates several weeks of tension caused by the attacks by the radical wing of the Republican party that, in the midst of a serious public health crisis in his country and with the horizon already set on next year's electoral campaign, it has placed the powerful synthetic drug at the center of its confrontational strategy with Mexico.
In addition to fentanyl, the second leg of the summit has been arms trafficking, an issue marked in red on the Mexican agenda and with more space, at least on paper, in the new binational security framework, the so-called Bicentennial Understanding.
Both countries promised to create a special group in the most hot spots on the border to monitor the entry of weapons from the north on a weekly basis.
“This has already been discussed a lot with the United States, but now a very specific measure was proposed to them and they said yes,” Ebrard stressed.
Three years ago the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador handed over the management of the ports and customs to the Army.
The decision, framed by its anti-corruption policy, was already justified by the increase in the illegal trade of synthetic precursors to the Mexican Pacific ports.
“The teams of the Ministry of National Defense will be increased to 287 for the supervision of land customs, in order to prevent the development of illegal activities, the illegal trafficking of arms and synthetic drugs.
And the exhaustive supervision of containers with chemical substances by the Secretary of the Navy and Cofrepris in the seaports will be doubled, ”says the statement from the Secretary of Security.
Led by the adviser to President Joe Biden on Security, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, and by Attorney General Marrick Garland, the Mexican delegation was also made up of the first swords in the security field.
In addition to Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, the Secretaries of Defense, the Navy, the Secretary of Security, the head of the National Intelligence Center and even the Attorney General of the Republic, Alejandro Gertz, were present.
The unit under him undertook to create a special unit.
"This will allow for more criminal intelligence information regarding new synthetic drugs, criminal groups, concealment methods, packaging, seals, as well as physical presentations of substances and chemical precursors used in the production of fentanyl and methamphetamine," the statement details.
Mexico took advantage of the summit to once again present its results on seizures and seizures of synthetic drugs. So far in the six-year term, from December 2019 to March 2023, the Mexican authorities have seized 6,115 kilos of fentanyl, which represents an increase of more than 1,000% compared to the previous government.
López Obrador usually draws chest from these figures, despite the fact that consumption has been increasing exponentially in recent years, in response to the attacks from the Republican side, which little less than blame Mexico for orchestrating a conspiracy to spread the fentanyl epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year.
The tension of recent weeks has even reached China, the country from which most of the precursors necessary for the manufacture of the powerful synthetic opioid come.
López Obrador, who has activated all the machinery available to counter the Republican campaign, announced last week in one of his morning conferences that he had sent a letter to the Chinese president requesting his collaboration and information to stop the traffic of fentanyl.
The arguments of the Mexican government also focus on insisting that the essential compound of the drug comes from Asia, that 86% of those imprisoned for drug trafficking in the United States are citizens of there and in the tons seized in Mexico, as well as well as the destruction of clandestine laboratories where the opioid is processed.
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