The president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has criticized the possible negotiations between Washington and Ovidio Guzmán, son of the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, and who was extradited by Mexico to the United States in September 2023. These days he has emerged little by little information about an alleged agreement that enabled the entry of 17 relatives of Ovid Guzmán to the United States, apparently in search of special protection. The transfer, made behind Mexico, has given days after Guzmán agreed to declare himself guilty of drug trafficking and deliver information to Washington. President Sheinbaum has required her counterpart to transparent arrangements with Guzmán, which belongs to the faction of the Sinaloa cartel called Los Chapitos. By the way, the president has questioned these alleged negotiations, after Donald Trump’s government classified the poster of the poster as a terrorist El Chapo Guzman and five other Mexican drug trafficking organizations. “Because they have said they don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he observed.
The relations between Mexico and the United States are going through low hours, despite Sheinbaum’s efforts to capotate the unpredictable way of negotiating Trump, which has exerted pressure on its commercial partners in exchange for better conditions in its tariff war. Sheinbaum had insisted that bilateral dialogue and cooperation had remained fluid in trade, border security, combat drug trafficking and migration. But, in recent days, the Trump administration has made unilateral decisions that deeply affect Mexico and for which it did not take into account its counterparts in the Sheinbaum government. One of those cases is that of negotiations with Ovid Guzmán.
“So what do we ask, in general? Respect, collaboration, coordination,” he said in the president at her Mañanera conference. “There is a policy of not negotiating with terrorists. They decide to appoint some crime organizations as terrorists. Well, to report whether there is an agreement or not,” he asked. In February, the Trump administration declared six Mexican criminal groups as terrorist organizations. The order included the Sinaloa poster, Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), the United posters, the Northwest poster, Gulf Cartel and the new Michoacan family. The classification raised alerts in Mexico for its implications for sovereignty, since it entailed the possibility that the United States attacked criminal organizations directly in Mexican territory.
After it transcended in the media that the family of Ovidio Guzmán had crossed the border with the US, the Secretary of Security of Mexico, Omar García Harfuch, admitted that the trip took place, and said it was a “obvious” consequence of a negotiation. “It is an agreement between a process and the authority,” said the official in a radio interview. “It is evident that if your family leaves now it is for this negotiation,” he added. Sheinbaum has pointed out that Washington must provide information to its counterparts, even more because Guzmán was extradited by Mexico and the Latin American country prosecution has pending investigations against the boss.
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