Mexico - July 2026

On 21 June the governor of Mexico’s Chihuahua state, María Eugenia ‘Maru’ Campos, denounced an “international crisis of confidence” in Mexico which she said was exposing the country to “international intervention on our territory”. In a social media post, the governor – a member of the right-wing opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) – called on the federal government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum to prosecute officials accused of links with organised crime, in a reference to members of the federally ruling Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) who were indicted by the US in April. Campos’ message came as tensions between the federal government and her Chihuahua state administration were already running high, as well as sensitivities around the issue of foreign intervention.

In a social media post and video, Campos declared herself “categorically against foreign intervention”. However, she accused Morena of using “sovereignty as a shield for impunity”, saying the government was increasing the chance of US military intervention by refusing to prosecute the 10 current and former Sinaloa state officials indicted by the US for alleged drug ties [SSR-26-06]. “What poses the greatest risk to Mexican sovereignty is not a foreign government, but the impunity of organised crime,” she said, calling on the government not to “sacrifice a whole country by putting its party above the law”.

Campos’ comments risk exacerbating tensions with the federal government, which have been running high since 19 April when two US officials were killed in a car crash in Chihuahua. The officials, who were later identified in the international press as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents, were travelling with Chihuahua state officials who were returning from a raid on a drug lab. With the Sheinbaum administration claiming no knowledge of the CIA’s presence in the region, the political fallout has centred on Campos’ role in allegedly permitting CIA operations inside Mexican territory without federal approval, an unconstitutional act under the country’s 2020 national security law. Campos has since come under growing political and legal pressure, prompting the resignation on 27 April of her attorney general, César Jáuregui, and an ultimately unsuccessful petition launched by Morena deputies to bring impeachment proceedings against her.

The federal attorney general’s office (FGR) is investigating the presence of the US agents in Chihuahua and called Campos as a witness on 23 May. Campos appeared before the FGR’s office in Mexico City on 27 May to decry “the political use of federal institutions” against her. Surrounded by members of the PAN, Campos accused Morena of “looking for ways to twist the law in order to persecute me”, saying although she had been called as a witness, the aim was to turn her into a suspect.

Back in Chihuahua, on 30 May the PAN organised a march of solidarity under the mantra “Yo con Maru” (I stand with Maru), attended by former PAN presidents Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). As the PAN attempts to turn the scandal surrounding Campos into political momentum against what it portrays as Morena’s governance failures and political overreach, party figures have increasingly sought to cast her as a martyr-like figure and even a potential future presidential challenger for the right. However, a recent survey by pollster Enkoll found that 66% of Mexicans agreed with the proposals by Morena legislators to bring impeachment proceedings against the embattled governor.

The FGR’s notice of summons to Campos also contained a call for the testimony of Rubén Rocha Moya, the Morena governor of Sinaloa who was among those indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for alleged cartel ties. Rocha has since stepped back from his gubernatorial duties, but he and others indicted have vehemently rejected the allegations. The cases against Campos and Rocha have become linked in the national discourse, fuelling domestic antagonism over the influence of organised crime in politics and the threat of an increasingly interventionist US administration under President Donald Trump. While the Rocha affair demonstrates Washington’s willingness to exert pressure on the Mexican government to meet its security demands, Morena’s reaction against Campos over the CIA incident underscores the party’s determination to maintain its sovereigntist red line against active US operations within Mexican territory.

CIA in Mexico

The political ramifications of the Chihuahua affair have been so explosive in large part because it has thrown into broad daylight something many already suspected to be true, but which until now had remained plausibly deniable for the Sheinbaum government: the CIA’s presence in the country. The covert activities of the CIA in Mexico have a long history stretching back to the Cold War era and remained ongoing until Washington’s fight against communism gave way to the so-called war on drugs – a remit traditionally spearheaded in Mexico by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). But recent revelations have fuelled suggestions that, under the direction of the Trump administration, the CIA is assuming a more prominent operational role in the fight against Mexico’s cartels, several of which were designated as foreign terrorist organisations in February 2025 by the US State Department.

In the wake of the Chihuahua incident, on 12 May US broadcaster CNN published an investigation into the escalating presence of the CIA inside Mexico. According to CNN’s reporting, which cited “multiple” unnamed sources, the CIA has been leading a campaign of kinetic operations in Mexico under its covert Ground Branch division that involve targeted killings of mostly mid-level cartel members. The most striking example to emerge from the report was the claim that CIA officers “facilitated” the assassination of Francisco Beltrán, alias ‘El Payín’, a mid-level member of the Cártel de Sinaloa who was killed in March in a suspected car bombing on a highway in Estado de México (Edomex). The Mexican government was quick to dismiss the reports, with the federal public security minister, Omar García Harfuch, “categorically” rejecting the existence of unilateral lethal operations by foreign agents and Sheinbaum labelling the US media reporting “a fiction the size of the universe” at her morning press conference on 13 May.

Nevertheless, the spiralling sequence of events over the last two months, set off by the Chihuahua incident in April and compounded by the indictment of a sitting Morena governor and reports of systemic incursions by US agents inside Mexican territory, has proven to be one of the most challenging episodes of Sheinbaum’s presidency to date. Domestic scrutiny of her willingness to tackle corruption within Morena’s ranks while maintaining her broadly popular doctrine of “cooperation without subordination” is likely to define her agenda for the second half of 2026.

Negotiations over the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will further add to the pressure on the president, not least given Trump has shown his willingness to link security demands to the trade deal. If Sheinbaum fails to strike the balance between placating US demands while standing firm on Mexican sovereignty, it will only invite further US interventionism from the Trump administration, as well as greater opportunity for her political adversaries at home to ramp up the pressure ahead of midterm elections set for 2027.

Murders

In the face of growing pressure to crack down on organised crime, President Sheinbaum has highlighted an almost 50% drop in murder numbers since she took office in October 2024. On 16 June, Sheinbaum stated that the average daily number of murders had fallen by 46% between September 2024, the final month of her predecessor’s term, and May this year, from 86.9 to 47.3.

Double standard?

Speaking outside the FGR, Campos sought to draw attention to the double standard the government’s opponents insist is evident in the handling of the cases against her and against Rocha. She claimed that while her treatment by the FGR amounted to political “persecution”, when it came to Rocha and the nine other Sinaloa officials indicted by the DoJ, “they invited them in to attend friendly interviews”.