Under US pressure over fentanyl, Mexico wages “imaginary war on drugs”
with raids on inactive labs
Send a link to a friend
[December 21, 2023]
By Drazen Jorgic and Jackie Botts
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's army appears to be raiding only a
handful of active drug labs every month, despite U.S. pressure to crack
down on fentanyl trafficking, with facilities that were already out of
use accounting for 95% of seizures this year, according to defense
ministry figures obtained by Reuters.
Reuters revealed in March that Mexico had dramatically revised upward
the number of lab raids by including hundreds of inactive labs on its
seizures list since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in
2018. At the time, the news agency was unable to establish what
percentage of the raided labs were operational when they were captured.
New data obtained by Reuters in August from the Mexican Defense Ministry
(SEDENA) after a freedom of information request shows that out of the
527 labs raided by Mexico's army in the first seven months of this year,
only 24 laboratories, or less than 5%, were "active" labs.
That dataset also revealed a similar pattern in the first four and a
half years of Lopez Obrador’s administration, with inactive labs
accounting for 89% of 1,658 raids carried out by the army from December
2018 to August this year. The data did not specify how long those labs
had been out of use.
Smothering the flow of illicit fentanyl from Mexico has become a top
priority for the Biden Administration, which has ratcheted up pressure
on Lopez Obrador's government to intensify the hunt for clandestine labs
on Mexican soil.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Dec/21/images/ads/current/debbiesfloral_lda_112023.png)
Adding discoveries of inactive labs - which may have been abandoned for
years - to Mexico's tally of seizures had the effect of inflating Lopez
Obrador's record amid pressure from Washington, says Guillermo Valdes,
Mexico's civilian spy chief from 2007 to 2011.
"SEDENA is ripping up its prestige by altering the figures. Who is going
to believe them after this?" said Valdes, who has been critical of Lopez
Obrador's hands-off security strategy.
Mexico's presidency and SEDENA did not respond to multiple requests for
comment for this story.
After meeting U.S President Joe Biden in November to discuss migration
and drug trafficking, Lopez Obrador, who previously asserted fentanyl
was not a Mexican problem, said his country "is committed to continue
helping to prevent the entry of chemicals and fentanyl" into the United
States.
Nearly all the labs listed on the August SEDENA dataset were labeled
meth facilities, with no fentanyl labs reported, in line with Mexico's
statements until recently that no fentanyl was being synthesized on its
soil – a claim widely dismissed by Washington and traffickers. Mexico
had asserted the synthetic drug was brought over by drug cartels from
Asia.
The new August data featuring no fentanyl labs contradicted a video
presented by SEDENA in a government press conference in April that said
officials had located 37 sites where final-stage precursors were
converted into finished fentanyl and pressed into pills. SEDENA did not
respond to Reuters questions about why those sites do not appear in the
dataset obtained by Reuters.
A SEDENA official who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity
said that criminal organizations often leave laboratories inactive
between rounds of drug synthesis, which means that a laboratory
classified as "inactive" in the August dataset might have been used to
produce drugs again had it not been raided by SEDENA.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) forwarded Reuters'
questions about the data to the State Department, which said it was
working with Mexico to "strengthen the effectiveness of our security
cooperation" and recognizes Mexico's challenges in seizing and
dismantling labs.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Dec/21/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
A White House spokesperson told Reuters Mexico and the United States
were working side-by-side to address fentanyl trafficking and "we are
grateful for the commitment President Lopez Obrador has made to confront
this challenge through domestic efforts" and with foreign partners.
However, another U.S. government official told Reuters that Mexico does
not inform the United States how many SEDENA lab raids were conducted on
functioning labs versus raids on deserted facilities.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a
non-partisan think tank, said the Reuters reporting "just reinforces how
the data is being manipulated to placate the United States without
really serious effort to move against...fentanyl production and
trafficking."
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/122123PIX/news_z42.jpg)
A soldier keeps watch at an area where military authorities
eradicated a coca leaf plantation and dismantled a lab to process
the drug, in El Porvenir, in Guerrero state, Mexico February 22,
2021. REUTERS/Javier Verdin/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Dec/21/images/ads/current/Immanuelchurch_lda_CHRISTMAS_2023.png)
Her view was echoed by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley,
co-chairman of the senate's international narcotics control caucus.
The figures suggest Mexico is "fighting an imaginary war on drugs
designed to score political points rather than save lives," said
Grassley, a conservative Republican.
INCONSISTENT REPORTING
SEDENA's reporting of its lab raids data has been inconsistent in
recent years, with frequent modifications in the total numbers of
labs raided, according to a Reuters review of over 20 datasets
published by SEDENA via Mexico's freedom of information institute (INAI)
since early 2022.
The August dataset, which specifies that most raided labs have been
inactive, is consistent with internal military documents about
inactive labs, first reported on by Reuters in March. Reuters was
unable to find any responses to freedom of information requests
prior to the August data release in which the military indicated
that there were inactive labs among their raids.
One week after Reuters asked SEDENA to comment on the findings of
this story, INAI on Dec. 11 released an updated version of what
appeared to be largely the same data, but the column indicating
active or inactive labs was changed to show all entries marked as
"active" – contradicting the August dataset.
The pre-August lab raids presented in the new dataset, which was
requested by Reuters on Nov. 15, were otherwise nearly identical to
those presented in the August dataset, and the data included 339
additional lab raids from August through October of this year.
SEDENA did not respond to further questions about why all raids have
recently been reclassified as being on active labs. Reuters is
seeking to clarify the December SEDENA data set with INAI, and has
requested an explanation for the discrepancies in the two responses,
as well as the apparent change in classification and the criteria
used to determine whether a laboratory is active or inactive.
"FOR SHOW"
Discoveries of inactive labs are sometimes linked to collusion
between cartels and army figures, according to two current and two
former traffickers, who said they were not surprised by reports of
so many inactive laboratories being discovered.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Jul/22/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
Two active traffickers from the northern state of Sinaloa, a
fentanyl trafficking hotspot, told Reuters it was common for the
cartel to give up drugs or locations of labs to friendly soldiers
who leaked information about planned military action against
criminal groups.
One of the traffickers, who declined to be identified, said the lab
raids were often "for show."
The four traffickers said cartel members build quid-pro-quo
relationships with army commanders, bribing the soldiers as well as
helping them impress their superiors in return for cooperation over
military operations and protecting valuable assets.
Margarito Flores, a former American kingpin who was a close
associate of El Chapo before becoming a U.S. government informant in
2008, told Reuters the cartel frequently used to strike deals with
military commanders on the ground, including giving up small meth
labs on the understanding bigger labs would be left alone.
"The trade offs happened a lot," Flores said, referring to his time
with the cartel.
Reuters could not independently verify the traffickers' claims, and
they did not cite specific instances or identify the military
commanders involved in such deals. SEDENA and other law enforcement
agencies did not respond to requests for comment.
On taking office, Lopez Obrador overhauled Mexico's security policy,
abandoning the previous "kingpin" strategy that focused on capturing
top capos but contributed to violence spiraling nationwide. He
favored a less confrontational approach that tried to address the
root causes of violence, such as poverty.
(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic and Jackie Botts in Mexico, additional
reporting by Jeff Mason and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; editing by
Christian Plumb and Claudia Parsons)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |