A top Senate Democrat said Wednesday he’s running out of patience with Mexico’s lagging efforts to uproot cartels and stop the flow of deadly fentanyl, saying the U.S. is “working with kid gloves” when it comes to its southern neighbor even as tens of thousands of Americans die.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez criticized Mexico’s efforts after the Drug Enforcement Administration singled out that country’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels as the biggest criminal drug threat America has ever faced.
Specifically, concerns about a politicized Mexican judiciary and reports of Mexican security forces colluding with drug cartels are making it difficult to work with Mexico, the New Jersey Democrat said.
“If the good overtures to try to get them to act is not working, then there have to be other considerations,” Mr. Menendez said. “I don’t know how many more lives have to be lost for Mexico to get engaged. If this was in the reverse, they’d be all over us.”
President Biden recently pressed Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a North American summit to address fentanyl. The Mexican leader pointed to a series of efforts, including putting the navy secretariat in charge of ports.
Todd Robinson, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Mr. Menendez that the U.S. ambassador to Mexico is engaged on the issue. He said Mexico created a watch list to flag chemicals, often from China, that can be diverted to fentanyl creation and recently expanded the list from 14 to 69 chemicals.
“We hope Mexico will invest more in combating this synthetic drug threat,” Mr. Robinson said.
Mr. Menendez said he is skeptical.
“I have to be honest with you, I don’t see it. I just don’t see it,” the senator said. “I don’t see the willingness, I don’t see the urgency. I don’t see the commitment. I don’t see the actions that would indicate that Mexico is being a good partner.”
While the rate of U.S. drug overdose deaths declined slightly in 2022, the annual death toll of more than 100,000 is far above the toll seen a decade ago.
Roughly 70,000 of the 107,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021 were tied at least in part to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid often made in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China.
Pharmaceutical fentanyl is approved for treating pain in cancer patients and others, yet illegal forms of the drug are made in clandestine labs and shipped as powder, pressed into fake pills and cut with other drugs.
“We know who is responsible. The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco, or CJNG — both cartels in Mexico — are responsible for the vast majority of fentanyl that is coming into the United States. It is why the DEA has made defeating those two cartels our top operational priority,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told the committee Wednesday.
For his part, Mr. Lopez Obrador has said Mexico is working on the problem “in an organized manner.”
“We are avoiding the entrance of those chemical substances, and we are destroying labs,” he said at the North American summit in January.
But Ms. Milgram said the U.S. needs three things from Mexico: more information about seizures of fentanyl and precursor chemicals in Mexico, better cooperation in dismantling and taking down clandestine labs within Mexico, and the extradition of drug traffickers to the U.S.
She said Mexico sent 24 defendants to the U.S. last year, but 232 are awaiting extradition.
Ms. Milgram said Mexico worked “relentlessly” from 2012 to 2015 to disrupt the violent Los Zetas cartel.
“We want Mexico to do the same thing here, to make their top operational priority also to defeat the two cartels that we believe are responsible for the fentanyl — as well as the methamphetamine — that is responsible for the loss of American lives today,” she said.
Sen. James Risch, Idaho Republican, said the same cartels are driving the migrant crisis at the border, so the Biden administration needs to rethink its “weak” approach.
“It’s time the administration wakes up,” he said. “We have a serious threat at the border, and the president needs to be serious about addressing it.”
He also faulted the White House for failing to mention fentanyl in a readout of Mr. Biden’s November meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“If China is complicit in supplying fentanyl when it comes to the United States, then we need to consider an appropriate sanctions regime,” Mr. Risch said.
Likewise, Mr. Menendez said the U.S. should find new ways to pressure China on fentanyl shipments.
“It’s time for the United States to build a multilateral coalition to hold China accountable for failure to meet its international obligations to stop illicit drug trafficking,” he said.
Administration officials said they are pushing China to enact know-your-customer rules that track the flow of precursor chemicals to Mexico and other places.
If Beijing fails to cooperate in good faith on indictments or money-laundering probes, the U.S. will have to expand sanctions or impose visa restrictions on Chinese people, said Mr. Menendez.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said many counties are cooperative on fentanyl, but working with the communist government of the People’s Republic of China is more challenging.
“There is no excuse for inaction,” Dr. Gupta said, “and the U.S. will continue to lead in the global coalition against illicit fentanyl with or without the PRC.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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