Mexico’s head of security calmly forms an elite force to face the drug cartels

Mexico (AP) – Six years ago dissolved the country’s federal police and has completely given security responsibilities to the military. Now, his successor has quietly started to build a force of civil investigation and special elite operations to combat drug cartels.

President Claudia Sheinbaum had already shown a will at the start of his presidency to move away from former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador often criticized “Cuddling, no balls” strategy. He focused on the fight against the social roots of crime rather than the direct confrontation of the powerful cartels of Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s head of security, Omar García Harfuch, is based on his law enforcement contacts – mainly ancient rows of the federal police – to recover the security capacities of the armed forces with a civil force under his direct command.

The government has not yet officially announced the new national operations unit, known by its Uno Spanish initials, but its existence is a policeman from the former members of the Federal Police, where García Harfuch began his career.

Three Mexican officials, who have all asked for the anonymity of talking about the still unexpected force, confirmed its existence to the Associated Press.

Security analyst David Saucedo, who spoke with people who joined force, said he thought that the main objective of García Harfuch is to have an armed force that allows him to respond to Washington’s requests.

UNO takes shape

The unit began to train shortly after Sheinbaum took office and he hopes to have 800 members by the end of the year, said a federal official, who has many details of the unit.

On Monday, when García Harfuch was in Washington by meeting the Trump administration, the Ministry of Security published a call for college graduates to catch up “the first generation of investigative and intelligence agents”, only affirming that they would be part of a specialized group to strengthen the security of the country.

The UNO will have three branches distributed geographically across Mexico, as well as a high impact team which will be “the elite of the elite,” said the federal official.

Its current members are mostly former federal police officers and members of the García Harfuch special operations team created when he was a police chief in Mexico City. Most of them previously received training from the United States, Colombia, Spain or France security forces.

Its challenge is to rebuild the confidence of its American counterparts after López Obrador limited the movements of American agents in Mexico and did it as President Donald Trump for Mexico Livers to intensify the fight against fentanyl milking.

A controversial past

Shortly after taking up his duties, López Obrador replaced the federal police with a new force, The National Guardthat he sold to the public as a civilian, but it has always been led and composed of the armed forces.

He castigated the federal police as too corrupt to save and made the former security chief of Mexico Genaro García LunaThen confronted the trial in the United States and finally found guilty of work for the Sinaloa cartel, the child of the poster. He reduced funding for local training and equipment.

What followed was six years of what criticisms decreed as a militarization which actually concentrated an unprecedented authority in the hands of the armed forces.

Despite this, the levels of violence remained stubbornly high and the criticisms said that the cartels have strengthened, fed by the flambé of fentanyl income. One of the main criticisms of the National guard And the army was that, even if they had a number and a power of shooting, they did not have the investigation skills necessary to dismantle major criminal organizations.

García Harfuch was initially a “steeped tiger”, which has often refused resources, information and investigation files by other security entities, said saucedo, based in the state of Guanajuato, the most violent in Mexico.

Uno puts an elite force under his direct command.

The Mexican federal official denied that the UNO’s objective was to satisfy Trump, but noted that the unit was involved in the unprecedented delivery of 29 high-level cartel figures in the United States at the height of negotiations between the two countries to suspend the threatened prices. They were removed from prisons everywhere in Mexico, gathered and sent to the United States without incident.

The challenge: to avoid corruption

The special operations forces, whether of the navy, the army, the federal police or the state police, have a checked history in Mexico, having been involved in many scandals and abuses of power, extrajudicial murders and infiltration by cartels.

“There were many cases that were bad,” said the federal official quoted above, who added that there was also an honest police. He said the Ministry of Security emphasizes stricter screening, exhaustive substantive surveys and better remuneration once they are.

The influence of García Harfuch also extends to the States where the party of Sheinbaum holds power. The people who have confidence in participating in key safety stations and the UN will form teams of special state operations who are also made up of many former federal police officers.

The southern state of the Chiapas, where the most powerful cartels in Mexico are fighting for the control of smuggling roads, announced a special operations force in December called Pakal with some 500 members. Two members told AP that they were a former federal police force and had eight months of specialized training to join the Pakal.

But doubts remain. For saucedo, as the new elite force does not yet have internal controls and effective liability mechanisms, “nothing guarantees that this elite group does not commit excesses committed by other special operations groups”.

___ The writer Associated Press Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.