mexico city —
For decades, drug lords with names like “El Chapo” and “El Mencho” were the poster boys for the United States’ fight against drug trafficking in Mexico. The Trump administration has now set new targets on wealthy politicians who allegedly receive dirty money to help criminals.
The U.S. Treasury Department recently accused cartels of “increasingly using illicit profits to pay cash to political campaigns in Mexico.” Their goal is to elect candidates “willing to protect the cartels and their interests,” the statement said.
It is no secret that organized crime groups in Mexico pour money into election campaigns, especially at the local level. But Mexican officials rarely raise the issue publicly. The warning from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has caused an uproar, with analysts seeing it as the latest sign that the U.S. wants to go after not only cartel capos but also those who allegedly enable cartels in government.
Last year, the Trump administration revoked the U.S. visas of Marina del Pilar Avila Olmeda, the governor of Mexico’s Baja California state, and numerous mayors. And in an unusual move, U.S. prosecutors have indicted Rubén Rocha Moya, the incumbent governor of Sinaloa state, on charges of allowing drug traffickers to operate in exchange for bribes and election aid. Rocha and Avila, both of the ruling Morena party, deny wrongdoing.
The move marks a break with the US practice of handling bilateral disputes primarily behind closed doors and not openly interfering in Mexican politics.
“This is uncharted territory in the U.S.-Mexico relationship,” said Pamela Starr, a political scientist at the University of Southern California and author of the recent book “Making Mexico: Revolution, Reform, and Transformation.”
He said the United States has traditionally given Mexico “a lot of domestic political autonomy” to ensure stability in a neighbor willing to cooperate on everything from global power dynamics to illegal immigration and trade.
What has changed? The Trump administration has taken a hardline approach, including labeling cartels as terrorist organizations and bombing suspected drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. U.S. authorities may also now be in a better position than ever to prosecute politicians who support organized crime groups. Thanks to America’s aggressive anti-drug operations and Mexico’s cooperation, a number of top-level cartel figures have been sent to American custody over the past two years. Security analysts speculate that many people are trying to tell politicians about bribes in hopes of getting their sentences reduced.
“This is the only real way in this country to explore the relationship between organized crime and political movements,” said Luis Carlos Ugalde, an academic who headed Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute from 2003 to 2007.
But U.S. policy has strained relations between Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the left-wing Morena party, which holds a majority in Congress and nearly three-quarters of the country’s governors. Starr said that if the Trump administration goes too far, it “risks tainting the waters of bilateral security cooperation.”
No one knows the exact scale of cartel donations to political campaigns in Mexico, but even former election officials admit they are large.
“This is a phenomenon that exploded very quickly,” Ugalde said, adding that the issue was barely recognized 20 years ago when he was an election official.
In 2018, he co-authored a report estimating that gubernatorial candidates typically spend at least 15 times more on their campaigns than they report to authorities. “Dark money,” he wrote, includes not only donations to organized crime, but also money siphoned from government budgets and donations from executives looking to win contracts.
Campaigns typically receive such funds in cash and spend them in the same way, leaving no financial trace. The report, titled “Money Under the Table,” notes that “no one pays for vote cancellation operations with American Express cards.”
Political consultant Jaime García said campaigning has become increasingly expensive over the past few decades as Mexico transitions from a one-party state to a competitive democracy. That incentivizes party officials to ignore campaign finance rules and accept illegal donations, he said.
Donors and recipients of drug funds are rarely prosecuted, much less convicted.
There are multiple reasons for its failure. Mexico’s judicial system is weak and overwhelmed. Witnesses are often unable to testify in court for fear of cartels. And neither political party was keen on scrutinizing the money flowing into their election campaigns.
“It is inconvenient for anyone to track funds spent during official campaign activities,” Garcia said.
Tracking the money may be difficult, but there are other signs of organized crime’s growing role in politics. More than 30 candidates have been killed in the run-up to the 2024 national elections, and hundreds more have dropped out of the race, as criminal gangs plot to field allies. Political control of towns and cities has become more important as cartels diversify into activities such as extortion, illegal logging, and domestic drug sales. Once focused on securing highways to transport heroin and cocaine into the United States, it now seeks to control local mayor’s offices, police departments, and entire populations.
Mr. Sheinbaum said there was little evidence to support claims that cartels were interfering in the election, noting that a state-level election tribunal recognized Mr. Rocha’s victory in Sinaloa after investigating reports of fraud. Still, she proposed that federal election officials establish a verification committee to screen candidates for ties to organized crime before next year’s midterm elections.
She also expressed doubts about the Trump administration’s aim to target politicians allegedly in bed with cartels. “Is this a legitimate interest in fighting organized crime?” Sheinbaum asked in a recent speech. “Or are we seeing how far-right forces in the United States are using our country to position themselves for the 2026 (November) election?”
A recent Treasury Department statement takes aim at one of these new cartel activities. Oil and gasoline trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business in Mexico, and the government accuses criminal organizations of working with corrupt officials and companies. In some cases, criminal organizations steal fuel in Mexico and resell it. Sometimes they are smuggled across the U.S. border.
The Treasury Department’s warning said cartels use profits from such sales to elect corrupt Mexican politicians who provide access to “key administrative positions in the government,” making it easier for criminals to smuggle fuel and launder the proceeds.
This was a sweeping indictment of Mexican politics, and Mr. Sheinbaum reacted with indignation. “What evidence do they have?” she asked at a press conference.
The allegations were just part of the US’s criticism of the cartels’ political human rights abuses.
In April, US Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson signaled that the Trump administration was opening a new front in the fight against drugs, warning that “significant action” against bribery and corruption in Mexico was coming. Nearly a week later, the U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments against Rocha and nine other current and former Sinaloa state officials. He accused the group of collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel and “sending large quantities of drugs to the United States in exchange for political support and bribes.”
The case is particularly sensitive because Mr. Rocha is a close ally of Mr. Sheinbaum’s mentor, former President Andres Manuel López Obrador. She rejected a US request to detain Rocha for extradition, saying Washington had not produced evidence of his guilt. The Sinaloa governor has been placed on leave while the U.S. investigation is ongoing. He claims the accusations were aimed at undermining Morena. “These charges against me are false,” he told reporters. “I will not allow them to use me to harm the movement I am a part of.”
Analysts say the Trump administration’s policies create a dilemma for Mr. Sheinbaum. Morena promotes himself as an anti-corruption party and does not want to give the impression that he is covering up corruption. But extraditing prominent Morena politicians to the United States could damage the party’s popularity and weaken Mr. Sheinbaum’s own control over the government.
Until now, Mexican leaders have primarily sought to appease U.S. President Donald Trump in his anti-drug campaign. She sent thousands of soldiers to patrol the Mexican border and transferred more than 90 drug cartel leaders to U.S. custody. Her government has cracked down on fuel theft, arresting dozens of current and former local officials, including some from the city of Morena, on suspicion of colluding with criminal organizations.
But in recent weeks, he has hardened his tone, saying the U.S. government is trying to undermine Mexico’s sovereignty with prosecutions like Rocha’s. Mexico’s government and people have become extremely sensitive to interference from its neighbor, which annexed more than half of its territory in the 1800s.
“Let me be clear: Until the Justice Department office becomes the main electorate in Mexico, they will come first for some people and then for others,” Sheinbaum said in late May. “We cannot tolerate this.”
Few doubt that corrupt politicians provide vital support to organized crime, but it is unclear how much the Trump administration’s policies will ultimately be able to weaken organized crime. Cartels, small-scale mafias, and street gangs have influence in city and state governments across the country and are playing a deepening role in the economy. Critics in both the United States and Mexico say the country lacks an effective justice system and well-trained police, and security agencies remain underfunded. The cartel is also strengthened by the strong demand for U.S. drugs and the illegal flow of U.S. guns across the border.
“Solving Mexico’s problems is a generational project,” Starr said. “That’s not something that can be done in one year, two years, or even the remaining four years of the Sheinbaum administration.”
