Mexico maintains the challenge of dealing with drug cartels, because they control a part of their territory and have become the dominant organizations trafficking fentanyl to the United States, he said. the head of the National Directorate of Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines.
“With respect to Mexico, I mean, I think there is no doubt that it is a challenge for the Mexican government to deal with the cartels. And there are parts of the country that are effectively under the control of the cartels in certain aspects,” he said in a public hearing before the Intelligence Committee of the upper house.
“However, at the same time, We would say that our cooperation with them has improved over time. And I think Director (William) Burns (of the CIA) and Director (Christopher) Ray (of the FBI) may have more to say on this, but this is an area where we’ve really been able to work with them to try to help,” he responded to a question from Maine Senator Angus King.
His testimony is similar to the statements of General Glen VanHerck, head of the Northern Command, who He assured in 2021 that organized crime controls “between 30% and 35% of the territory in Mexico and that is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of migrants arriving every day at the southern border of the United States.”
At the hearing, dedicated to the Assessment of Global Threats, in addition to the DNI, the CIA and the FBI, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Jeffrey Kruse; the director of the National Security Agency, Timothy Haughand the Assistant Secretary of State, Brett Holmgren.
Democratic and Republican senators were concerned that the porosity of the border between the United States and Mexico could serve as a conduit for the arrival of terrorists from enemy countries.
The senator James Lankford, The Republican who negotiated the bipartisan immigration agreement boycotted by Donald Trump, noted that last year 58 people were arrested trying to cross the border on the “terrorist watch list”, in addition to 37 thousand Chinese citizens.
The director of the FBI, Christopher Wrayrecognized that this is a problem for the agencies, as well as the one that They do not know the identity of the 1.8 million migrants who managed to penetrate the border from Mexico since 2021.
