This March, a car carrying alleged Sinaloa cartel figure Francisco “El Payin” Beltrán mysteriously exploded on a busy Mexican highway outside the capital city. The incident, said CNN, was part of an “expanded and previously unreported CIA campaign” that has sent American assets to “dismantle the entrenched cartel networks” in Mexico. Both the CIA and the Mexican government have denied the network’s allegations of an agency-run disruption program south of the border, even as newly reported details suggest a complex — and widening — operation.
Source of friction with Mexico
“Since last year” CIA assets have “directly participated in deadly attacks on several, mostly mid-level cartel members” on Mexican soil, said CNN. The operations are a “significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico,” with the “lethality” of their work “seriously ramped up,” said a source to the outlet. The covert CIA presence comes largely in the form of the agency’s “elite Ground Branch unit,” whose work reportedly includes “directly participating in targeted assassinations,” said Reuters.
The renewed focus on potential CIA activity within Mexico comes as President Donald Trump pursues an “aggressive campaign” against alleged Latin American drug cartels, a campaign that critics claim has “overstepped legal and presidential norms,” said Al Jazeera. The effort has been a “source of friction with Mexico” and culminated last month in a threat from President Claudia Sheinbaum to “sanction authorities” who allegedly allowed CIA operatives to “participate in raids on clandestine drug laboratories.”
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Still, after Beltrán’s death, Sheinbaum, in a press briefing, “strongly denied that CIA agents were operating in Mexico, let alone working there to kill someone,” said The New York Times. The CIA also rejected CNN’s allegations as “false and salacious,” said agency spokesperson Liz Lyons on X.
The “presence of CIA agents on the ground in Mexico,” for the second time in less than a month, has “unsettled the Sheinbaum administration,” said El País. “At different times” denials from the CIA and Sheinbaum government might have “resonated more strongly with the public,” but “in light of the events of recent weeks, doubts now surround their statements.”
‘Who did this?’
Security officials from both governments have “repeatedly” said their anti-cartel cooperation is “limited to intelligence sharing and training, with no on-the-ground role for U.S. forces,” the Times said. Crucially, operations with potential CIA involvement often attract “little attention outside of Mexico or in some cases beyond even the specific region where they take place,” CNN said. That localization, combined with the relative obscurity of many of the intended targets, has allowed the CIA’s involvement to “remain a secret” in a “playbook” not dissimilar to “counterterrorism missions designed to destroy groups in the Middle East.”
The CIA “definitely wanted this incident to create the question in everyone’s mind of ‘who did this?,’” said a former agency paramilitary officer to CNN about Beltrán’s death. It is also “in the Mexican government’s interest” to accept the CIA’s denials of its participation in operations on Mexican soil “given the taboo of direct U.S. intervention,” said The Washington Examiner.
