Mexico shutters country's top anti-narcotics unit, threatens DEA capabilities

Mexico has disbanded a select anti-narcotics unit known for working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to tackle organized crime, in a move which highlights the breakdown in cooperation between Washington and Mexico City since President Lopez Obrador assumed power in 2018.

According to an exclusive report from Reuters, the drug enforcement unit was one of Mexico’s DEA-trained Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU) – responsible for dismantling powerful smuggling rings and busting countless drug operations around the world.

The SIU’s 50+ officers were considered to be among the country’s top law enforcement officers and have, in the past, worked on some of the Aztec nation’s most important cases, including the 2016 capture of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former Sinaloa cartel chief.

The government’s decision to shutter the SIU’s operation threatens the U.S.’ ability to combat organized crime within Mexico and makes the capture and prosecution of cartel leaders much more difficult.

Although President Lopez Obrador formally notified the DEA that the unit had been shut down in April of 2021, the closure of the unit was not previously reported by the media.

"They strangled it," one DEA agent said under the condition of anonymity. "It shatters the bridges we spent decades putting together."

But as conditions along the U.S.-Mexico border continue to deteriorate, critics have warned that the closure could intensify the surge in drug-related overdoses that resulted in more than 100,000 deaths in the United States last year, linked mostly to a new wave of synthetic drugs produced by Mexican cartels.

Mexico’s elite SIU team was founded in 1997 and was the DEA’s main partner in the U.S.-led “war on drugs.” While the unit was operational, the DEA would regularly fly new Mexican officers to train at its state-of-the-art facility in Quantico, Virginia. Besides learning the latest surveillance and policing techniques, Mexican trainees would also be vetted by U.S. officials, who routinely subjected them to polygraph tests.

The DEA’s former chief of international operations, Mike Virgil, has warned that the SIU closure and Lopez Obrador’s refusal to honor Mexico’s commitment to fighting violent crime will ultimately hurt both countries.

"It will mean more drugs going to the United States and more violence in Mexico," he said.