US attorney general troubled by Mexican limits on agents

U.S. Attorney General William Barr said Friday United States is troubled by legislation pending in Mexico that would limit foreign nts and remove ir immunity.

In a statement, Barr said proposed law that before lower house of congress would hurt cross-border cooperation and would benefit drug cartels.

measure "would have effect of making cooperation between our countries more difficult,” Barr wrote. “This would make citizens of Mexico and United States less safe.”

“ pass of this legislation can only benefit violent transnational criminal organizations and or criminals that we are jointly fighting,” he ded.

re was immediate reaction from Mexican officials.

On Wednesday, Mexico’s Senate approved proposal from President Andrés Manuel López Obror to require all foreign nts, from any country, to share all information y gar with Mexican authorities. It also would require any Mexican officials y contact to submit a full report to Mexican federal authorities.

bill includes a vague promise to keep secret any information shared with Mexico. Mexico has tritionally relied on U.S. nts to generate much of its intelligence information on drug gangs, but it has history of officials leaking such information and even at times sharing it with drug cartels.

In most countries, chief Drug Enforcement ministration nt in country often has full diplomatic immunity and or nts have some form of limited or technical immunity. bill would eliminate all immunity.

Mike Vigil, DEA’s former chief of international operations, predicted this week that information is “going to be leaked, it’s going to compromise nts, it’s going to compromise informants.”

history of leaks is well documented. In 2017, commander of a Mexican police intelligence-sharing unit that received DEA information was charged with passing DEA data to Beltran Leyva drug cartel in exchange for millions of dollars.

proposal also specifies that any Mexican public servant — state, federal or local — who has as much as a phone call or text mess from a U.S. nt would be required “to deliver a written report to Foreign Relations Department and Public Safety Department within three days.”

Warning that would make for a cumbersome system, Vigil said: “It is going to hinder bilateral operations; it is going to hinder bilateral exchange of information. This is going to be much more detrimental to Mexico than to United States.”

Im credits: AP