President seeks tight restrictions on U. S. drug agents
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has tossed another hot potato to U. S. Presidentelect Joe Biden with a proposal that would restrict U. S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity.
The proposal submitted last week by Lopez Obrador would require Drug Enforcement Administration agents to hand over all information they collect to the Mexican government, and require any Mexican officials they contact to submit a full report to Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department.
“The proposal is that foreign agents will not have any immunity,” according to a summary of the plan to the Mexican Senate published Friday. In most countries, the chief DEA agent often has full diplomatic immunity and other agents have some form of limited or technical immunity.
“The proposal requires that foreign agents give Mexican authorities the information they gather,” according the proposed changes.
Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, said of the handover of all information, “That is not going to happen.”
“Sadly, there is endemic corruption within the ( Mexican) government. It’s going to be leaked, it’s going to compromise agents, it’s going to compromise informants,” Vigil said.
The history of leaks is well documented. In 2017, the commander of a Mexican police intelligencesharing unit that received DEA information was charged with passing the 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.”
The proposal appears to reflect Mexico’s anger about the arrest of former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos on drug charges in Los Angeles in October.
Under the pressure of Mexico’s implicit threats to restrict or expel U. S. agents, U. S. prosecutors dropped their case so Cienfuegos could be returned to Mexico and investigated — though he has not so far been charged — under Mexican law.