Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is demanding what she called “irrefutable evidence” before her government will consider extraditing officials accused by the United States of ties to drug cartels, pushing back on a sweeping indictment from Washington, D.C.
The Department of Justice on Wednesday charged 10 current and former Mexican officials, including the sitting governor of Sinaloa, with drug trafficking and related offenses, alleging they played key roles in facilitating cartel operations.
Sheinbaum said Mexico would cooperate, but only under strict legal standards.
“If the Office of the Attorney General … receives solid and irrefutable evidence in accordance with Mexican law, or if, in the course of its own investigation, it finds elements constituting a crime, it must comply” with the U.S. extradition request, Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference.
At the same time, she cast doubt on the motives behind the charges, arguing that “the goal of these Justice Department accusations is political.”
The case marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to target corruption in Mexico, as it is the first time Washington has indicted a sitting Mexican governor.
The move also carries political weight in Mexico as one of the indicted, Sinaloa state Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, is a member of Sheinbaum’s own political party.
Rocha Moya forcefully denied the allegations.
In a statement posted to social media, he said he “categorically and absolutely” rejects the charges from U.S. officials, calling them an “attack.”
“It is part of a perverse strategy to violate the constitutional order, specifically on national sovereignty,” he wrote Wednesday in a post on X. “We will show them that this slander doesn’t have any sort of foundation.”
U.S. prosecutors allege the accused officials accepted millions of dollars in exchange for protecting cartel activity, leaking sensitive law enforcement information, and directing police forces to ensure drug shipments reached the U.S.
US CHARGES 10 MEXICAN OFFICIALS WITH SMUGGLING DRUGS FOR SINALOA CARTEL
According to the indictment, the officials played “essential roles” in sustaining cartel networks, tipping off traffickers about investigations, blocking arrests, and allowing violence to proceed unchecked. Authorities also say they instructed state and local police units to safeguard narcotics shipments as they moved north into the U.S.
The charges further allege connections to the network once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former Sinaloa cartel boss now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.