Mexico City: The Mexican government is clearly unhappy with the manner in which America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is carrying out operations against drug cartels on its soil.
While the two governments do have an arrangement to share intelligence on the activities of cartels, some of the CIA operations go against Mexico’s constitution.
The operations include alleged targeted killings and expanded intelligence-driven missions, according to a CNN report.
Earlier this year, an alleged Sinaloa Cartel operative, Francisco Beltran – also known as “El Payin” – was killed in a car explosion on a highway near Mexico City, the report claims.
Beltran was a mid-level cartel member, Mexican authorities said. While not much is being revealed, sources familiar with the case claimed the attack was a targeted assassination involving CIA operatives.
Mexico’s attorney general reportedly confirmed that an explosive device had been placed inside the vehicle. The operation was part of an expanded and previously unreported CIA campaign inside Mexico aimed at dismantling cartel networks, CNN reported.
It cited multiple sources as saying the agency’s elite Ground Branch unit has been involved in a broader push against organised crime groups.
“The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up,” one source told CNN, adding, “It’s a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico.”
CIA involvement in operations has varied from intelligence-sharing support to direct participation in alleged assassination missions, it has been reported.
After publication of the report, CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons said: “This is false and salacious reporting that serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk.”
The report also said that CIA activities in Mexico are modelled on counterterrorism-style operations used in the Middle East, aimed at dismantling entire cartel networks by targeting both leadership and lower-level operatives.
The report claims that CIA operatives have recently supported both lethal and non-lethal operations, including intelligence assistance that led to arrests of cartel figures in coordination with Mexican forces.
Mexican officials denied this.
“The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any version that seeks to normalise, justify, or suggest the existence of lethal, covert, or unilateral operations by foreign agencies on national territory,” the country’s secretary of security, Omar Garcia Harfuch, said in a post on X.
Concerns have also been raised that such operations may not always be fully coordinated with the Mexican federal government, raising questions over legality under Mexican constitutional provisions that restrict foreign participation in law enforcement activities.
Tensions have increased between US and Mexican authorities over counter-cartel operations, even as both sides continue cooperation in intelligence sharing and targeted arrests, it has been claimed, as reported by ANI.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum expressed strong opposition after a separate incident involving US personnel, stating, “There cannot be agents from any US government institution operating in the Mexican field”, the report further says.
A US state department spokesperson has, however, been quoted as saying: “The United States and Mexico continue to take decisive bilateral action to disrupt and dismantle the transnational cartels that threaten communities on both sides of the border.”
