Extensive report on a network of Mexican cartels around the world and their expansion into various industries, as well as teaching local crime groups to expand there too

Dear Chairman Cornyn, Co-Chair Whitehouse, and distinguished members of the caucus,

Thank you for holding this hearing entitled “Beyond Our Shores: The Global Reach of Mexican Drug Cartels and Risks to U.S. National Security.” The activities of Mexican cartels outside of Mexico and the United States have significant implications for our homeland and our partners and merit the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control’s close attention. I am honored to have this opportunity to submit this testimony as a statement for the record.

I am a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where I direct the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and the Brookings series, “The fentanyl epidemic in North America and the global reach of synthetic drugs,” and codirect the Africa Security Initiative. Illicit economies, such as the drug trade and wildlife trafficking, organized crime, and corruption, and their impacts on U.S. and local security issues around the world are the domain of my work. I have conducted fieldwork on these issues across Latin America as well as in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

In 2022, I wrote a pioneering series of articles¹ in Mexico Today of El Reforma that detailed the expansion of Mexican criminal groups in North America, Latin America, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East:

• “The Foreign Policies of the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG – Part I: In the Americas.”
• “The Foreign Policies of the Sinaloa and CJNG – Part II: The Asia-Pacific.”
• “The Foreign Policies of the Sinaloa and CJNG – Part III: Africa.”
• “The Foreign Policies of the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG – Part IV: Europe’s Cocaine and Meth Markets.”
• “The Foreign Policies of the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG – Part V: Europe’s Supercoke and On-the-Horizon Issues and the Middle East.”

The series also laid out the threats this expansion posed to public safety and public health around the world, warning that further expansion and graver risks lay ahead. In my research and writing since, I have continued to track and explore these growing challenges.

My testimony below draws on the series and expands its findings with up-to-date developments regarding Mexican cartels’ operations outside of Mexico and the United States.

The Brookings Institution is a U.S. nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The testimony that I am submitting represents solely my personal views, and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees.

Executive summary

Over the past decade, Mexican criminal groups, particularly the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), have significantly expanded their operations outside of Mexico and the United States. While still flooding Europe with cocaine from Latin America and trying to develop new markets for the drug in Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, they are also internationally promoting and trafficking synthetic drugs far more dangerous than cocaine—particularly methamphetamine. In the past five years, they have set up methamphetamine labs across Europe and in Africa, partnering with local criminal actors and teaching them how to produce the highly potent and lethal Mexican version of the meth.

In Latin America, the presence of the Mexican cartels is most extensive and longest. Spanning the continent, it includes, among many other activities, the facilitation of drug coca cultivation in Colombia and the trafficking of the drug throughout the continent, and precursor smuggling and pill pressing in Central America. In Asia, Mexican criminal groups cooperate with Chinese and Indian networks to smuggle fentanyl and meth precursors and utilize Chinese money laundering networks. But they also appear to seek to develop cocaine markets not just in Australia and New Zealand, but also in East Asia.

In Australia and New Zealand, the Mexican cartels have recently surpassed the long-established Chinese criminal groups in the supply of methamphetamine.

Africa is no longer just a transit point for the Mexican cartels’ cocaine shipments or their purchases of precursor chemicals from China and India. Though West Africa and the Sahel still serve as vast conduits of cocaine trafficking to Europe, and the continent is crisscrossed with precursor and other drug smuggling, the Mexican cartels have begun to set up methamphetamine labs in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya to feed demand in regions like the Asia-Pacific as well as locally.

The cartels have also set up such labs in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and likely elsewhere in Europe. The expansion of meth use on the continent, which the cartels appear to seek, creates high public health risks. Beyond the high mortality and morbidity of Mexican methamphetamine, the risk is also that meth addiction will become a vector for expanded fentanyl use.

The Mexican cartels also smuggle methamphetamine through the United States, Canada, and the Middle East, and launder money in all three regions.

Around the world, the expansion of drug trafficking gives rise to increased drug use, as the cartels pay their local partners in drugs, rather than cash, and the latter then need to develop local drug consumption markets to obtain liquidity. African and Pacific Island countries along drug trafficking routes are among the latest to suffer the public health consequences.

In markets outside of Mexico—much like in the United States—the Mexican criminal groups do not seek to distribute drugs at the retail level. They leave such retail to local criminal groups. Instead, they organize the upstream part of the supply chains—such as production, trafficking, and wholesale distribution, often in alliances with local actors.

Like in Mexico, the criminal groups have also diversified their external activities beyond drugs, including into human smuggling and trafficking; illegal gold mining, such as in Ecuador; illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, such as in Costa Rica and Central America; and wildlife trafficking, such as in Africa.

In various parts of Latin America, such as in Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, the Mexican cartels’ presence and influence have already significantly augmented criminal violence and made it more complex and difficult to suppress. This is especially the case when the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG compete in the same country over local allies, illicit production, and trafficking routes, and demand exclusive relations. Although in Europe, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific, Mexican cartels operate under the radar and do not come in with many hitmen and high firepower, their arrival has been associated with escalating criminal violence among local criminal groups, even in Australia. And their encroachment on and effort to displace Chinese meth suppliers in the Asia-Pacific region could also translate into similar infighting among the local allies of the Chinese and Mexican criminal groups.

The Mexican cartels’ arrival often presents local criminal groups with the capacity to increase their firepower and expand their criminal activities beyond cooking potent meth—diversifying into many other illegal and legal economies. The cartels’ presence can also increase local corruption.

Mexican cartels pose threats to public safety, the rule of law, economic and environmental sustainability, public health, and even U.S. national security—in both the United States and in the countries abroad where they set up their operations.

The cartels’ expansion abroad undermines U.S. law enforcement efforts against the cartels by creating resilient and redundant systems of drug production and trafficking networks, money laundering, and income flows. U.S. international and anti-money-laundering actions in Mexico or any one location become less effective as a result.

The expansion of Mexican cartels also weakens U.S. partners and makes them susceptible to nefarious activities. Beyond the obvious dangerous drug use and increased criminal violence, the threats also include others, such as the loss of biodiversity, economic sustainability, and food security when the Mexican cartels promote local wildlife trafficking or exacerbate IUU fishing. Mexican cartel activities could also undermine the security of U.S. supply chains, such as in critical minerals, or the financial integrity and economic stability of partners. The risks also include threats to democracy when criminal violence and corruption give rise to authoritarianism or create opportunities for exploitation by hostile powers such as Russia.

Mexican cartels’ expanded global footprint thus necessitates greater international law enforcement cooperation against the groups. Elements of how to build such a U.S. strategy include:

• Raising awareness abroad of the threats associated with Mexican cartels and helping government authorities around the world to develop intelligence capabilities and law enforcement tools against them.
• Sharing intelligence.
• Prioritizing the dismantling of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories, the flow of synthetic opioids, and the Mexican and local networks behind them.
• Bringing down Mexican criminal networks and prioritizing groups that partner up with them.
• Countering Mexican criminal groups’ operations beyond drugs.
• Dismantling money laundering networks associated with Mexican criminal groups.
• Reducing corruption and patronage systems and establishing apolitical, independent legal systems.
• Prioritizing actions against Mexican criminal groups connected to terrorist networks or hostile states.
• Scrupulously adhering to human rights and civil liberties protections and holding law enforcement accountable.

Preparing for second-degree effects.

The regional spread of Mexican cartels’ operations outside of Mexico and the United States

Read more

The spiking threat: Mexican cartels in Europe, Canada, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America