US, Mexico to announce new plans on cartels
CHICAGO (AP) — Top U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials will unveil new plans to combat Mexican drug cartels Wednesday in Chicago alongside members of the Mexican government, military and federal police, DEA officials told The Associated Press.
The announcement at a joint news conference will be a public display of bilateral cooperation amid ongoing tensions over President Donald Trump’s trade and immigration policies, including over his vow to build a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border.
The new plans include putting greater emphasis on attacking cartels’ financial infrastructure. Plans also call for a new enforcement group based in Chicago that will concentrate on international investigations of cartels.
Matthew G. Donahue, director for the DEA’s North and Central American Region, told the AP on Tuesday that the U.S. wants to rely more on changes in the Mexican legal system in recent years designed to make evidence gathering and prosecutions more efficient.
“The new game plan is ... pick up the speed and arrest more people, faster,” Donahue said. “That’s what we’re really trying to push — the cooperation that we currently have with Mexico to be a little more efficient, a little bit more aggressive.”
He said the U.S. also intends to do more to help stem the flow of guns into Mexico that contributes to deadly violence in the country. Donahue said around 31,000 people were killed in Mexico last year, a record for a single year.
According to the DEA, the Mexican officials attending include Mexico’s acting attorney general, Alberto Elías Beltrán; Mexico’s chief director for the Criminal Investigations Agency, Omar Hamid García Harfuch; and Brigadier General Chief of Staff at Mexico’s Ministry of Defense, Oswaldo Iván Galicia Galicia.
Donahue said the targeting of top cartel brass will remain a core component of bids to disrupt the powerful syndicates. The biggest trophy in this long-standing kingpin strategy was Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, extradited to New York in 2017 to face U.S. trafficking charges.