Mexico - June 2026

The US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against four current Mexican officials, including a state governor and federal senator, and six former officials on 29 April. The indictment marked a turning point in US President Donald Trump’s campaign against Mexican drug cartels, from targeting cartels’ main criminal actors and financial networks to the politicians allegedly colluding with them. While President Claudia Sheinbaum has also pledged to go after such networks, this has so far been limited to opposition politicians and those with links to previous administrations. The indictment directly implicates officials from the ruling Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena), handing Sheinbaum a timebomb in terms of handling internal party dynamics. The apparent lack of forewarning from the US has also struck a nerve amid heightened tensions over US involvement in Mexican security issues.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed the indictment on 29 April. It accuses the 10 current and former officials of participating in a sprawling institutional corruption network in the state of Sinaloa, conspiring with the Cártel de Sinaloa and facilitating their drug trafficking operations in exchange for political support and bribes. All 10 have been charged with drugs and weapons offences and would face mandatory minimum sentences of 40 years in prison if convicted. One of those indicted, the former municipal police commander in Sinaloa state capital Culiacán, Juan Valenzuela Millán (2018-2024), also faces kidnapping charges and would face life imprisonment. At the time of writing, two of those indicted were in US custody after apparently having surrendered to the authorities.

• Cooperating witnesses?

In mid-May two of those indicted, former Sinaloa state security minister, Gerardo Mérida Sánchez (2023-2024), and former state secretary of administration and finance, Enrique Díaz Vega (2021-2024), were taken into US custody after apparently surrendering to the authorities. This suggests that they are seeking to cooperate with prosecutors potentially in exchange for lighter sentences. Such a development could well be bad news for others who have been indicted, given the use of such cooperating witness testimonies in other high-profile cases in the US against Mexican officials and drug traffickers.

The most high-profile of those indicted is Sinaloa state governor, Rubén Rocha Moya. A close ally of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) and a former federal senator (2018-2021), Rocha is accused of having been elected governor in 2021 with the support of the Los Chapitos faction of the Cártel de Sinaloa. According to the indictment, he attended meetings with leaders of the criminal group before and after he was elected, where it was agreed that they would support his campaign in return for being allowed to “operate with impunity” once he was elected.

The other sitting officials included in the indictment are the mayor of Sinaloa state capital Culiacán, Juan de Dios Gámez Mendívil, the deputy state attorney general, Dámaso Castro Zaavedra, and federal senator, Enrique Inzunza Cázarez. The indictment accuses Gámez of accepting bribes from Los Chapitos in exchange for allowing them to operate in Culiacán without government interference and protecting members from arrest, while Castro allegedly also accepted bribes from the faction to protect them from arrest and warn them of planned US-backed law enforcement operations. The allegations against Inzunza concern his time as the secretary general of government for Sinaloa (2021-2024), when he is accused of acting as a liaison between Los Chapitos and Rocha.

All four have vehemently denied the accusations, with Rocha saying they were part of “a perverse strategy to undermine the constitutional order”. Despite this, he, Gámez, and Castro have all taken a temporary leave of absence while Mexican authorities investigate the claims. At the time of writing, Inzunza remained in his role although did not attend a senate session on 6 May so as to “not give representatives of the conservative right an opportunity to use this as a pretext to turn the session into a spectacle unworthy of the senate”.

Domestic response

Sheinbaum has reacted with caution to the indictment, avoiding offering her wholehearted support to Rocha and others implicated, but also not rejecting the accusations outright. Her approach has been to demand more evidence from the US to back up the accusations and its related extradition requests, saying that her government would never cover for anyone who has committed a crime but that “if clear evidence does not exist, it is obvious that the aim of these indictments from the Department of Justice is political”. This both gives her more time to evaluate the situation and sets the stage for a potential framing of the accusations as purely politically motivated.

There is form for a Morena government to discount US evidence as insufficient. In 2020, during López Obrador’s administration and Trump’s first term (2017-2021), Mexico’s former defence minister General Salvador Cienfuegos (2012-2018) was arrested in the US in what López Obrador viewed as a major overstep. After negotiating Cienfuegos’ return to Mexico, Mexican authorities promptly rejected the allegations against him as baseless and ruled out taking any legal action. The incident served as a catalyst for the distrust surrounding bilateral security relations that continues to this day.

Sheinbaum is now operating in a very different environment. Domestically, she has been left with a sprawling party that was centred around López Obrador and is increasingly beset with internal differences. She will be mindful of such divisions in her handling of the indictment. The faction of the party most closely aligned with López Obrador has strongly opposed any action that may be seen as bowing to US pressure, according to sources consulted by Spanish newspaper El País. This faction, headed up by supreme court justice Lenia Batres and her brother, Martí, the head of the public sector social security agency (ISSSTE), as well as Morena’s leaders in the senate and lower chamber, Ignacio Mier and Ricardo Monreal, respectively, were reportedly against Rocha stepping down and would view granting the US’ extradition requests as a betrayal of sovereignty.

The opposing faction is comprised of a growing group of young, influential Morena figures led by the party’s new national leader, Ariadna Montiel. This faction is more naturally aligned with Sheinbaum – the replacement of the party’s former leader, Luisa María Alcalde, with Montiel in early May was seen as indicative of Sheinbaum trying to take more control of Morena – and views the indictment as a chance to crack down on corruption within party ranks. Therefore, Sheinbaum will need to tread carefully to maintain party cohesion in her response to the charges, particularly with midterms due next year and tensions with the party’s allies, the Partido del Trabajo (PT) and Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM), already evident.

• Morena leader

On 22 April President Sheinbaum announced she had asked Alcalde to step down as Morena leader and serve as her legal counsel instead. Rather than immediately accepting Sheinbaum’s invitation as is custom, Alcalde asked for time to think before acquiescing, in what was widely seen as a sign of tensions. A staunch ally of López Obrador, Alcalde was replaced by Montiel, a former social welfare minister (2022-2026) who is closely aligned with Sheinbaum. The reshuffle was viewed as a reconfiguration of the party ahead of the elections, with Sheinbaum ensuring key positions are held by close allies following disappointing results, rumours of internal divisions, and tensions with allies.

The international context is also very different. Trump has significantly upped the ante in his second term, threatening tariffs and other punitive trade measures, as well as unilateral military action if Mexico does not do his bidding on security measures. Sheinbaum will be particularly mindful of the review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is due by July. A ratcheting up of tensions shortly before this is the last thing her government wants as it tries to persuade Trump to keep the deal intact.

Evidence

Sheinbaum and the federal attorney general’s office (FGR) have demanded more evidence to back up the accusations. It is likely that prosecutors have gathered testimonies from high-ranking members of the Cártel de Sinaloa who are imprisoned in the US. These include the cartel’s co-founder, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García, and two leaders of Los Chapitos, Joaquín and Ovidio Guzmán López, sons of another imprisoned cartel co-founder, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera. Given that all three have pleaded guilty, it is likely they have struck some sort of plea agreement with the authorities, offering information on criminal groups and corrupt officials in exchange for lighter sentences.

Indeed, Rocha’s name appeared in relation to the Cártel de Sinaloa in a letter that El Mayo sent from his prison cell in August 2024. In the letter El Mayo states that, on the day of his arrest, he had been called to a meeting to “help resolve differences” between Rocha and another local politician, who was later found dead. Rocha forcefully denied any links between his administration and criminal groups at the time, with both López Obrador and then president-elect Sheinbaum expressing their support for him.

There is a precedent for the testimony of cartel members proving vital in the conviction of a high-ranking Mexican official in the US. Genaro García Luna, who served as public security minister under former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), was convicted in February 2023 of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Cártel de Sinaloa in exchange for protecting their criminal activities [SSR-23-04]. Key witness testimony was provided by Zambada’s brother, Jesús ‘El Rey’ Zambada, among other convicted former cartel members and state officials.

Again, however, the context was very different. García Luna was arrested in 2019, after he had left office and after Calderón had left the presidency, with his political rival, López Obrador, in office. The arrest supported López Obrador’s claims that past governments had colluded with criminal groups, boosting his own anti-corruption rhetoric while serving a blow to Calderón and his right-wing Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). Additionally, he was arrested in the US, negating the need for US authorities to request extradition.

US relations

The state of US-Mexico relations has also changed. García Luna’s arrest came before the Cienfuegos incident, preceding many of the tensions that have come to characterise security relations and concerns around US intervention. Indeed, such concerns had been heightened in the weeks running up to the indictment, with the discovery that two US officials – suspected to be from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – had been working in Mexico without the authorisation of the federal government. This would be in violation of a reform passed in the wake of Cienfuegos’ arrest, which was carried out based on evidence collected by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) without the Mexican government’s knowledge.

The reform to the national security law obliged foreign embassies to inform the federal government of the presence and actions of all their security agents stationed in the country. However, the federal government only learned of the presence of the two officials after they were killed on 19 April in a car crash alongside two Chihuahua state officials who had been returning from an anti-cartel operation. Although state officials have denied that the US officials were participating in the operation, saying they had been conducting a training exercise nearby, the lack of clarity around the incident has renewed concerns over US security intervention.

The Trump administration has indicated that it will continue applying pressure on Mexico to clamp down on cartels and the corrupt officials colluding with them. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has stated that more accusations against officials should be expected, while on 5 May Trump once again reiterated his threats to engage in land operations against Mexican cartels if the government does not combat them more effectively. While Sheinbaum’s government has recently signalled its readiness to go after corrupt politicians – arresting five current and former officials in Morelos state on 20 May and announcing a reform aimed at preventing candidates with links to organised crime running in elections on 21 May – a failure to act on the Sinaloa accusations would likely sour relations and dent Sheinbaum’s anti-corruption credentials.

• Reform

Under the reform, political parties would choose to submit a list of all those seeking candidacies in elections to a newly established commission, which would evaluate the potential candidates and report whether they presented “no risk” or “reasonable risk” of links to organised crime. If incriminating information were to be found, the authorities would also open an investigation into the individual concerned. The party would then decide whether to register the candidate or not. President Sheinbaum said the reform was being submitted so it can be considered ahead of the 2027 election cycle.