What other newspapers say: US and Mexico need to work together | News, Sports, Jobs

From 2006 to 2012, during Felipe Calderón’s presidency, Genaro García Luna was Mexico’s top law enforcement official, responsible for creating a strategy to combat powerful drug cartels and sharing intelligence with U.S. officials. He was also on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel.

In October, García Luna, who was arrested in Dallas in 2019, was sentenced to 38 years in prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn; It was a dramatic fall for a man who once led Mexico’s federal police agency and received millions in compensation, according to testimony. He bribed dollars and served as the cartel’s de facto protector.

García Luna, 56, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever convicted of corruption, and his harsh sentence sends a message to other public officials, the judge overseeing the trial said. At the very least, corrupt officials in Mexico and elsewhere will avoid setting foot on U.S. soil. But most importantly, it shows that the United States still has strong accountability tools.

These tools also include the work of the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, which were instrumental in the arrest of Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael Zambada last August. Mexican authorities, unaware of the operation that led to the drug lord’s arrest, were taken by surprise.

U.S. officials are unlikely to fully regain confidence in their Mexican counterparts, but the timing of García Luna’s sentence offers an opportunity to restart bilateral cooperation in the fight against drug traffickers and corruption. This has been severely damaged in the last few years under Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

There is a new Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and a new US administration will soon be installed. Better collaboration could lead to better outcomes in the fentanyl war, while also improving public safety and strengthening institutions in Mexico.

We are not naive about the possibilities. Sheinbaum will likely continue López Obrador’s policy of not engaging the cartels, and he now rules a country where his predecessor allowed the Mexican armed forces to gain more power, power and influence.

This is not something to be taken lightly, and the case of General Salvador Cienfuegos is of great importance. The Mexican general was arrested by US authorities in 2020 and accused of protecting drug lords, but the charges were dropped after political and diplomatic pressure. The US capitulated after López Obrador threatened to expel the DEA.

Since then, the Mexican military has grown in power and now oversees major infrastructure projects, tourism development, port management and even public health, often under unwritten agreements and with little oversight, opening the door to corruption.

Even if restoring cooperation on the war on drugs is a priority for the next administration, the United States must remain vigilant. García Luna’s sentences and other recent sentences for former Latin American public officials send the right message: There is zero tolerance for corrupt officials.

—Dallas Morning News