President Sheinbaum Denies Agreement Between Mexico & DEA

ByMexico Solidarity

This article by Néstor Jiménez and Emir Olivares originally appeared in the August 19, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo clarified that no agreement has been signed between the Mexican government and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Although the U.S. agency announced on Monday the launch of a joint initiative with the Mexican government, which it called Project Portero, the President emphasized that the only agreement being worked on with the neighboring country is the one yet to be signed.

“We don’t know why they issued that statement,” Sheinbaum Pardo added, making it clear that “we don’t validate anything issued by a United States institution that hasn’t been consulted with the Mexican government.”

At the start of her Tuesday morning press conference, and without further questions, the federal executive branch clarified the information announced yesterday by the DEA in a statement.

“I want to clarify: yesterday, the DEA issued a statement saying there is an agreement with the Mexican government for an operation they call Portero. There is no agreement with the DEA. The DEA issued the statement, we don’t know on what basis; we haven’t reached an agreement with any of the security institutions or the DEA.”

He explained that “the only thing that’s there is a group of police officers from the Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection who were conducting a workshop in Texas, that’s all there is. There’s nothing else.”

Furthermore, in terms of security, “the only thing we have with the United States government is an agreement that has been in the works for several months, which is practically ready with the United States Department of State and the Mexican government, coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

Regarding the agreement about to be signed, President Sheinbaum explained that it is fundamentally based on “sovereignty, mutual trust, territorial respect—that is, everyone operates within their own territory—and collaboration without subordination. Those are the four principles.”

She added that this agreement includes a series of security proposals, and insisted: “It’s the only agreement. There is evidently communication with the Northern Command, with the Navy, and with Defense, formal communication with some of the agencies—Public Security, with Defense, with the Navy, with the National Guard—but there is no agreement for an operation that was recently agreed upon with the DEA.”

After noting that “any joint communication is done jointly,” he recalled that the relationship with agents from U.S. agencies is governed by the Constitution, with a recent reform in this area, as well as the National Security Act.

According to the DEA statement, the agency would launch a joint initiative with Mexico to dismantle drug trafficking networks used by cartels, which it blamed for “flooding American communities with deadly synthetic drugs.”