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Because it could be a serious escalation of US pressure on Mexico, the Trump administration has begun impose travel restrictions and other sanctions on notable Mexican politicians whom it believes are linked to drug corruption, U.S. officials said.
So far, two Mexican politicians have admitted they are banned from traveling to the United States. But US officials said they hope that more Mexicans will be targeted as the administration works through a list of dozens of politicians identified by law enforcement and intelligence reporting agencies as having links to drug trafficking.
The list includes several governors and politicians near President Claudia Sinbaum’s management party, her predecessor, and former president Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador, US officials said. They advocated anonymity to discuss sensitive policy plans.
Marina del Pilar Avila, governor of Mexico’s Baja California, confirmed that she and her husband, her husband, were told that their US visa had been revoked due to the “situation” in which her husband was involved. “The fact that the State Department has cancelled my visa doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong,” she said at a press conference Monday.
Sheinbaum said her government asked US officials to explain why Avila was stripped of her visa, but was told that such issues were private and that no further information was given.
Visa’s actions represent the latest political challenge for New Mexico leader and her leftist state revitalization movement known as Morena. Despite the country’s historical sensitivity to the hints of our interference, Sinbaum has so far strengthened support in the home by asserting Mexico’s sovereignty in his argument with President Donald Trump, responding to demands for action against the biggest traffickers.
A Mexican journalist reported that a US immigration officer had pulled a visa for Eikorico Villarreal, another border national governor of Tamaulipas. (Villareal is frequently accused of having links to drug trafficking, but he denied it.) Last month, the mayor of Matamoro, the state’s second-largest city, was stopped from crossing the border in Brownsville, Texas, but he also claimed that he had not officially stripped his visa.
A State Department spokesman declined to comment, noting that visa records were confidential under US law.
Three U.S. officials said visa measures could involve Treasury sanctions that prevent individuals from doing business with US companies and prevent them from freezing financial assets in the United States. Avila said she has no US bank account and does not face such sanctions.
A spokesman for the Treasury declined to comment on the sanctions plan.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller Credit: Tom Brenner/Washington Post/Getty Images
When the administration imposed tariffs on Mexico in early March, it claimed that the country’s government “gived a safe shelter for engaging in the production and transport of dangerous drugs.
As part of what has been described as a full battle with fentanyl and other illegal drugs, the administration has designated some of Mexico’s biggest human trafficking gangs as terrorist groups and explored the possibility of unilateral US military action against them, officials said.
The Mexican drug corruption review was launched by a small White House team that requested information from the US intelligence reporting community in criminal bonds from the US intelligence reporting community on law enforcement and Mexican political, government and military figures.
Officials said the group is shaping Mexico and its administration’s security policy under the leadership of White House Homeland Security Adviser Anthony Salisbury. It is supervised by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
A White House spokesman declined to comment in response to questions about the group’s role in launching travel sanctions.
Officials familiar with the team’s list said it overlaps with the files of around 35 Mexican officials compiled in 2019 by Drug Enforcement Bureau investigators after Lopez Obrador began shutting down Mexico’s U.S. cooperation with the counter drug program.
That previous effort sought to identify Mexican government figures who could be criminally charged to help drug traffickers. That led to the 2019 US indictment of former US security chief Genaro García Luna and his conviction for drug charges in federal court in New York three years later.
Terrance Cole and Matthew Donahue, two DEA staff from Mexico City who oversaw compiling the 2019 list, also suggested that the State Department cancel U.S. visas for some of the renowned Mexican politicians. The senior US diplomat rejected the proposal.
Cole is currently waiting for confirmation from the Senate as the new DEA administrator for the Trump administration.
Some current and former US officials have expressed concern about the latest White House-led plan. They said the standard of evidence required for both visa cancellation and Treasury sanctions is far below that of criminal trials, which could encourage supporters of measures to act on unstable information.
Officials said it provides that if the government has “know or reason to believe” why it is “knowing or believes” that foreigners are “a co-conspirator with another person on illegal drugs,” it provides that under section 212 of the Non-Citizens’ Nationality Act, non-citizens will be found not eligible to enter the United States. The law also allows the State Department to cancel relative visas of authorized officials who may have benefited from illegal interests.
One US official said that while visa withdrawals may send a strong signal of the US’s new will to challenge corruption in Mexico, they could also spark a new conflict between the two governments.
“We should use all the government resources to chase after these people,” the official said, referring to corrupt Mexican officials. “But the bigger question is, is this going to work with President Shainbaum? Are you going to lose the opportunity now in the Mexican government, which is highly compliant with drugs?”
Arturo Salkarn, former Mexican ambassador to Washington, said further visa actions against a prominent figure in Sheinbaum’s party would make it difficult to continue to assert “good” ties with the United States despite Trump’s openly and confrontational tone.
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“But at the same time,” added Salkan. “It gives her a nationalist president with a very Chaubinist party behind her – a perfect excuse to say that everything that’s going on in Mexico is for the economy and everything else is for our imperialism.”
Lopez Obrador, who came to power in 2018, had promised more to fight corruption than ever before. Instead, he ruled a regime that denies journalists have corruption issues with their ranks, even if they write the report after reports that the journalists were engaged in profits and transplants of the president and even his own son.
Simbaum hit another tone. In her message to Morena Party Parliament on May 4, she faithfully warned of kurnism, nepotism and the dangers of corruption.
“Every member of Morena should act with integrity, humility and simplicity,” she said. “Whether it’s an organized collar or a white collar, there’s no conspiracy with crime.”
