Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

On Tuesday, May 7, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) accused Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) administration of stalling the approval of work visas for DEA agents assigned to work in Mexico. 

According to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram’s testimony in the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, 13 DEA agents are currently pending visa approval by the Mexican government. The AMLO administration had temporarily blocked the approval of 24 DEA agents’ visas back in 2021 following the implementation of bureaucratic restrictions on DEA agents operating in Mexico during January of that same year.

Milgram said that one particular DEA agent has been waiting for visa approval for as long as eight months.

“We have been waiting eight months for a visa and we know the cost that means to us in terms of our ability to work,” said the DEA head, whose agency works against the prolific Mexican organized crime groups the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG).

“Every year in the United States we lose more than 100,000 Americans to drug overdoses,” Milgram said Tuesday. “Time matters, and I couldn’t speak with enough urgency about how important it is for us to get those 13 intelligence agents and analysts into Mexico.”

“Unfortunately, all of us who are sitting in this room know the price we pay as a country when we wait so long,”” Milgram told U.S. Congress.

Milgram also noted that Mexico’s fentanyl production is reaching “catastrophic levels” during her testimony and, when questioned by congressmen, refrained from revealing if she was satisfied with how the AMLO administration has collaborated with the DEA on confronting organized crime.