Mexico's former defence minister arrested on arrival in US over drugs charges

Around 36,000 killed every year in Mexico in drug cartel-related homicides

File: Mexico’s former defence minister General Salvador Cienfuegos (REUTERS)

Mexico’s former defence minister General Salvador Cienfuegos was detained by US authorities at the Los Angeles airport on Thursday, while family members who were travelling with him have been released.

Cienfuegos was considered an influential and powerful figure in Mexico’s own efforts against drug cartels while the army fought such groups across the country. Under him, the Mexican army was also accused of extrajudicial killing, including a 2014 incident where over 20 drug gang members were killed.

His arrest is significant as the armed forces in Mexico, which are playing a central role in the fight against drug cartels, are considered less susceptible to corruption.  

Cienfuegos was arrested on a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warrant. The arrest is in line with the US’s efforts to clamp down on drug cartels – a major Trump policy promise which has yet to gather much momentum on the ground, save for sporadic claims of success. 

The arrest comes just weeks before US elections on 3 November, where Mr Trump is seeking a second term. 

It is the second arrest of a high ranking public figure by US authorities in less than a year, after former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s security minister Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas in December 2019. Luna is currently facing trial in US on charges of accepting bribes worth millions of dollars from a drug cartel.

Cienfuegos was defence minister of Mexico until the end of the tenure of former president Pena Nieto in December 2018. Many former top-ranking officials and leaders of Nieto ‘s party have been implicated in corruption cases or in cases that included allegations of organised crime since he left office.  

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has often accused his predecessors of corruption, but has also leant heavily on the armed forces to end drug cartel violence that has led to about 35,000 killings in 2019 alone. Several of Mexico’s former officials tasked with fighting against drugs have been implicated in narcotics.

On Cienfuegos’s arrest, the foreign minister of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard C tweeted that the US’s ambassador to Mexico informed him of the detention. He also said “the Consul in Los Angeles will be informing” him of the “charges in the next few hours” and they will “offer consular assistance” to Cienfuegos.  

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, the drug cartels in Mexico are “leading suppliers of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other illicit narcotics” to the US which has provided Mexico with “billions of dollars in security and counter-narcotics assistance” since 2006 when it launched a war against drug cartels.

The think tank said that drug cartels and the drug trade result in tens of thousands of homicides every year in Mexico – in 2019 it was about 90 murders daily. Killings hit a high of around 36,000 in 2018, according to CFR.