The vital importance of President Donald Trump‘s strategy to confront Mexican drug cartels was bloodily underlined this week after two separate incidents, barely 24 hours apart, showed that Mexico is a nation in crisis, and that the drug cartels hold the strategic initiative. As a nation, we must do more to stop Americans who buy the drugs that fuel the bloody misery in Mexico, but we also must escalate against the cartels responsible for the misery they inflict on both sides of the border.
Fortunately, the Trump administration has abandoned the American tolerance of the past. Last week, the State Department revoked the visas of numerous high-level Mexican officials who were complicit in the drug trade. The Washington Examiner understands that these actions were predicated on U.S. intelligence showing close links between numerous members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena Party and the powerful Sinaloa cartel. These links extend directly to former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The horror out of Mexico this week only underscored the urgency of Trump’s action.
First, a group of youths were murdered early on Monday morning following an event organized by the Catholic Church. As they celebrated in the small town of San Bartolo de Berrios, seven innocent souls were shot by a gang of gunmen. Taunting graffiti messages left at the scene indicated that the relatively small Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, which is engaged in a provincial turf war with the Jalisco New Generation cartel, was responsible for the attack.
Next, in an even more dramatic signal of perceived impunity on Tuesday, a private secretary and top adviser to Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada was shot dead in the Mexican capital. As Ximena Guzman stopped to pick up Jose Munoz at his home, CCTV shows a man walking by Guzman’s car and, after identifying his targets, raising a hidden handgun and shooting both individuals before escaping. While Mexican authorities are currently denying that there is any link between the assassinations and drug cartels, the involvement of the CJNG must be considered. The cartel has targeted top security officials in Mexico City in brazen assassination attempts. And it is a fact that the CJNG resents the close relationship between the Morena Party, of which Brugada is also a member, and the Sinaloa cartel.
It’s time for the Trump administration to escalate its existing covert action against the cartels. It should do so with or without Sheinbaum’s approval, even if it causes near-term controversy.
Because of its dominance of the fentanyl smuggling trade and expansive territorial control along the U.S. southern border, the Sinaloa cartel must be a priority focus for more aggressive American action. We’re not talking about any old organized crime group here. On the contrary, the Sinaloa cartel is so powerful that it has co-opted the United States’s NATO ally, Albania, as a partner for money laundering and drug trafficking in Europe. There is evidence to suggest that Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama is directly involved in this conspiracy.
The CJNG must also be a particular target of Trump’s crackdown.
Holding its power base in central Mexico’s Jalisco province and bordering areas, CJNG is led by Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho.” A former police officer who once served prison time in the U.S., El Mencho has subsequently established the CJNG’s reputation for near-psychopathic brutality. Torturing and killing competitors and their families, El Mencho has corralled numerous other cartels and their operatives under his control. But CJNG isn’t just a bunch of thugs. The group is also renowned for its highly skillful money laundering under Abigael Gonzalez Valencia. Valencia, also known as “Los Cuini,” has resisted extradition to the U.S. from a Mexican prison cell for 10 years. That Sheinbaum has been willing to extradite other top drug traffickers since Trump’s election, but not Los Cuini, illustrates an important point: namely, her concern that CJNG’s power is so great that Los Cuini’s extradition would see an even worse explosion of violence. Put simply, the Mexican state is being held hostage by one of its own prisoners.
The CJNG plainly poses a rising and grave threat to U.S. security. The group is exerting increasing control over the Tijuana border crossing into San Diego. But the group has also benefited from a civil war in the Sinaloa cartel that began last year. That war followed the arrest of acting Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada alongside one of El Chapo’s sons last July. That began a war between followers of El Mayo and followers of El Chapo’s son, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar. Crucially, however, when El Mayo’s supporters gained the upper hand, Ivan formed an alliance with the CJNG to bolster his position. This portends CJNG’s ability to become the dominant cartel in Mexico.
As the DEA noted in its annual threat assessment released last week, this dynamic “could result in a significant disruption to the existing balance of criminal power in Mexico and could serve to increase northbound drug flow and southbound weapons trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border.” The DEA added that the “CJNG is one of the most significant threats to the public health, public safety, and national security of the United States.” Only the Sinaloa cartel has the same DEA description.
Since Mexico has proven it is unable to deal with its cartel crisis alone, and the fentanyl trade is killing over 45,000 Americans a year, Trump must adopt a more forceful strategy.
The alternative is to allow the Sinaloa cartel to regenerate, the CJNG to grow ever more powerful, and to see even more misery brewed in Mexico exported into the U.S. Unchecked, the cartels could one day grow so powerful that they are able to co-opt American politicians and police forces as they already do in Mexico. We cannot allow that to happen.
