The director of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Anne Milgram, criticized this Tuesday the slowness of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in issuing visas to its agents to be able to work in Mexico.
“We have been waiting eight months for a visa and we know the cost that means for us in terms of our ability to work,” the DEA director said during an appearance in the United States House of Representatives to the chairman of the US Expenditure Subcommittee. Justice, Hal Rogers.
“Every year in the United States, we are losing more than 100,000 Americans (to drug overdoses) so time matters,” Milgram added.
For his part, the president of the subcommittee on Justice, Commerce, Science and Related Agencies, Hal Rogers, said that it is worrying that, despite all her efforts, the director of the DEA has not obtained an appointment with a single Mexican official of high level since he came to office.
Likewise, Rogers asked the director if she was satisfied with Mexico's cooperation and she avoided answering directly.
In 2021, anonymous Biden government officials made the same accusation to the Mexican government, regarding the delay in approving visas for agents, which directly affected the bilateral security relationship.
Due to the arrest in 2020 of the former Secretary of National Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos, by the DEA, at Los Angeles International Airport, López Obrador initially froze the process to issue visas to agents, which limited the cooperation of both countries to combat drug cartels.
