Mexico advances new limits for DEA

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Senate has approved a proposal from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to restrict U.S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity. The bill still must be approved by the lower house.

It requires all foreign agents, from any country, to provide all information they gather to Mexican authorities.

The bill passed in the Senate on Wednesday on a 72-to-14 vote with only minor modifications, including a vague promise to keep confidential any information Mexico receives.

Mexico has traditionally both relied on U.S. agents to generate much of its intelligence information on drug gangs, while often leaking such information; some corrupt officials have at times given it to drug cartels.

The bill did include an acknowledgment that foreign agents would be allowed to carry weapons in Mexico; it “authorizes them to carry such weapons as the Defense Department sees fit.”

The proposal submitted by Lopez Obrador would require Drug Enforcement Administration agents to hand over all information they collect and require any Mexican officials they contact to submit a full report to Mexican federal authorities.

In most countries, the chief DEA agent often has full diplomatic immunity and other agents have some form of limited or technical immunity. The bill would eliminate all immunity.

Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, predicted that the information is “going to be leaked, it’s going to compromise agents, it’s going to compromise informants.”

The history of leaks is well documented. In 2017, the commander of a Mexican police intelligence-sharing unit that received DEA information was charged with passing the DEA data to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in exchange for millions of dollars.

The proposed changes also specify that any Mexican public servant — state, federal or local — who has as much as a phone call or text message from a U.S. agent would be required “to deliver a written report to the Foreign Relations Department and the Public Safety Department within three days.”

“It’s just going to make a burdensome system,” Vigil said, adding, “It is going to hinder bilateral operations, it is going to hinder bilateral exchange of information. This is going to be much more detrimental to Mexico than to the United States.”