via CBSNEWS:
Mexico’s president lashed out Monday at what he called U.S. “spying” and “interference” in Mexico, days after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against 28 members of the Sinaloa cartel for smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl into the United States. The three sons of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — known as the “Chapitos” — were among those charged.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested Monday that the case had been built on information gathered by U.S. agents in Mexico, and said “foreign agents cannot be in Mexico.”
He called the Sinaloa investigation “abusive, arrogant interference that should not be accepted under any circumstances.”
A former top U.S. drug enforcement agent called the president’s comments unjustified. Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said López Obrador was mistakenly assuming that U.S. agents needed to be in Mexico to collect intelligence for the case. In fact, much of the case appears to have come from trafficking suspects caught in the U.S.
“He wants to completely destroy the working relationship that has taken decades to build,” Vigil said. “This is going to translate into more drugs reaching the United States and more violence and corruption in Mexico.”