DEA: Mendacity & Provocation

ByMexico Solidarity

This editorial by the La Jornada editorial board appeared in the August 20, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo categorically denied the statement from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regarding a joint initiative to dismantle drug trafficking networks used by cartels.

The President emphasized that the only bilateral security agreement is the one being worked on for months with Washington and is about to be signed, but it bears no relation to the DEA’s announcement on Monday. Regarding the alleged training of Mexican personnel in the United States, only four police officers are attending a workshop in Texas, also unrelated to the agency’s claims.

According to the DEA, Project Portero targets known organized crime operators tasked with directing the flow of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine northward while ensuring the movement of firearms and large amounts of cash back south. It would involve “law enforcement, intelligence, defense, and prosecution services aligning priorities and operations to enable Washington to deploy its full capabilities against cartel networks.”

Disclosures like this constitute aggression both because of their mendacious nature and because, if true, they would have to be issued with the knowledge and consent of both parties, as required by diplomatic norms and customs. The unilateral issuance of such serious statements is a form of pressure that violates the principles of good neighborliness and unfortunately cannot be considered a slip or an error, but rather falls within the pattern of provocations characteristic of Trumpism, whose members have no qualms about issuing unsubstantiated claims. It is enough to recall the businessman’s insistence, during his first Presidential term, that Mexico had agreed to pay for the border wall that constituted the axis of his xenophobic policy at the time. This falsehood is so evident that the wall was never built, and today the fortifications are largely sidelined by the decision to shift the anti-immigrant emphasis to manhunts far from the border.

Adding to the Republican administration’s tendency to boast is the DEA’s undisguised anger toward the Fourth Transformation governments, which began when former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced their malpractice, excesses, and corruption, and put an end to the debauchery with which his agents operated in Mexican territory thanks to the subservience that prevailed during the Calderon and Peña Nieto administrations. It’s clear that the DEA, accustomed to interventionism and impunity, hasn’t fully digested the reform to the National Security Law, which has regulated its activities in Mexico since 2020, and periodically lets its discontent be seen through leaks and statements aimed at politically motivated backlash.

Despite the passage of time and the consolidation of the progressive project now led by President Sheinbaum, the DEA and other Washington agencies fail to understand that Mexico has changed and that they will no longer find the obsequious silence in the National Palace that once allowed them to do and say as they please. It would be positive if they considered the counterproductive nature of actions like the one discussed, which bring them discredit and loss of credibility, in addition to torpedoing the prospects for fruitful and respectful bilateral cooperation in matters of security.