MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president lashed out at what he called U.S. “spying” and “interference” in Mexico, days after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against 28 people accused of smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl into the United States.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested that the case had been built on information gathered by U.S. agents in Mexico, and said “foreign agents cannot be in Mexico.”
He called the investigation “abusive, arrogant interference that should not be accepted under any circumstances.”
“Acts of spying cannot be used to find out what our security institutions are doing and, furthermore, with the arrogance of leaking the information to The Washington Post,” he said at his daily news conference.
He was referring to a report in the newspaper over the weekend citing a leaked U.S. classified document that noted the potential for worsening tensions between branches of Mexico’s armed forces.
According to the secret US military assessment, Mexico’s navy was frustrated with the likelihood of Lopez Obrador giving more responsibilities to the army, such as control of all national airspace, the newspaper said.
López Obrador on Monday described fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually in the United States — as a U.S. problem, saying it isn’t made in Mexico. He has suggested American families hug their children more, or keep their adult children at home longer, to stop the fentanyl crisis.
The Mexican president also made it clear that fighting fentanyl trafficking takes a back seat to combating Mexico’s domestic security problems, and that Mexico is helping only out of good will.
“What we have to do first is guarantee public safety in our country ... that is the first thing,” López Obrador said, “and in second place, help and cooperate with the U.S. government.”
López Obrador deeply resents U.S. allegations of corruption in Mexico, and fought tooth and nail to avoid a U.S. trial of former defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on U.S. charges of aiding a drug gang in 2020.
López Obrador at one point threatened to kick U.S. Drug Enforcement agents out of Mexico whom he accused of fabricating drug trafficking crimes against Cienfuegos unless the general was returned, which he was.