As the Trump administration ramps up its investigations into Mexico’s government, elected officials in the country’s governing party have been quietly offering themselves to U.S. authorities as informants against fellow party members, according to eight people involved in the conversations.
The discussions have come in the weeks since the United States indicted 10 current and former Mexican officials, charging them with colluding with one of the nation’s most powerful drug cartels. In turn, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has made challenging those investigations a rallying cry for her leftist political party, Morena, denouncing the indictments as foreign interference.
But behind the scenes, the conversations between some of her party members and U.S. authorities could hand the United States critical momentum at a delicate time in U.S.-Mexico relations, escalating the standoff between the two countries.
At least a dozen elected officials in Mexico — including governors and members of Congress, many from the governing party — have reached out to discuss sharing information about fellow politicians, multiple people said, and several have already begun talks with the United States.
Many of the officials are seeking to get ahead of investigations that they fear could soon focus on them, the people said.
The sudden wave of cooperation was in part set off by a Drug Enforcement Administration initiative to privately contact Mexican officials in hopes of persuading them to talk, according to three people familiar with the efforts.
More than a dozen people spoke to The New York Times for this article on the condition of anonymity to discuss the D.E.A.’s efforts and the confidential talks between the U.S. government and Mexican officials.
The D.E.A. and Mexican government declined to comment.
Mexican politicians aiding U.S. investigations into their colleagues is a deeply worrying sign for Mexico’s dominant political party and its leader, Ms. Sheinbaum. It signals that U.S. corruption investigations are gaining speed, just as Ms. Sheinbaum has made opposing them a central bet of her presidency.
If U.S. investigators are able to persuade enough Morena politicians to act as informants, it could start a cascade of cooperating witnesses and indictments that would threaten to weaken the party. After a series of election losses by leftist parties across Latin America, Morena is the most important one still in power outside of Brazil.
Some Mexican analysts have predicted that the Trump administration’s investigations could give the governing party an issue to unify around. But the fact that some politicians are looking to cooperate with the U.S. investigations, despite Ms. Sheinbaum’s resistance to them, indicates fissures within the party.
“The closing of ranks that the president is calling for from above is not being matched from below,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a prominent Mexican political analyst. “Because some people within the system, instead of standing with the president, are rushing to the United States to save their own skin.”
Ms. Sheinbaum has often been regarded as a model for how to handle President Trump, but she is now stuck in a tightening predicament that illustrates the challenges for Latin America’s leftist leaders. Mr. Trump, who holds enormous sway over her country’s fortunes, wants her to turn over her political allies, while the left wing of her party, which provides her base of support, wants her to stand up to Mr. Trump.
She has opted to side with her party in recent weeks, refusing U.S. demands to arrest Rubén Rocha Moya, the Morena governor of Sinaloa state, after U.S. prosecutors charged him with protecting his state’s powerful cartel in exchange for help winning an election.
Ms. Sheinbaum has said that U.S. investigators have presented no evidence to warrant his arrest and that the demand represents meddling in Mexico’s affairs. She has also said that Mexican prosecutors would open their own investigations into the accused officials. But Ms. Sheinbaum has repeatedly accused the Trump administration of playing politics.
“Is there really a legitimate interest in fighting organized crime?” she said in a fiery speech last month. “Or are we maybe seeing how parts of the American far right are using our country to position themselves ahead of their 2026 elections?”
“We are no longer talking about cooperation,” she added, “we are talking about interference.”
Ms. Sheinbaum’s defiant stance has divided her cabinet between more pragmatist officials who push for more cooperation with Washington, and colleagues farther to the left who say the Trump administration is setting a dangerous precedent by prosecuting a sitting Mexican governor, according to two people familiar with the internal debate.
The United States is by far Mexico’s biggest trading partner, and the two countries are immersed in negotiations over an expiring trade deal. Mr. Trump has also threatened military action in Mexico to combat the cartels, which Ms. Sheinbaum has repeatedly rejected.
The Morena officials now cooperating in the investigations add to a growing roster of high-level Mexican informants who have given U.S. authorities a remarkably rich picture of the inner workings of the cartels and their nexus with Mexican politicians, according to four people with direct knowledge of the talks with informants, including lawyers and former U.S. law enforcement officials.
Two of the 10 Mexican officials indicted in April are now in U.S. custody, with one of them turning himself in at the U.S. border. U.S. prosecutors have been getting information from two imprisoned cartel leaders — sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo — who pleaded guilty last year to drug charges. And over the past 18 months, Ms. Sheinbaum’s government has sent to the United States 92 Mexican cartel operatives, several of whom have begun talking to U.S. authorities, according to the four people with direct knowledge of the discussions.
They said those who have provided information include top lieutenants to El Chapo’s sons, one of their senior pilots and one of their top advisers.
One of the main areas of questioning in those interrogations has been how the cartels corrupted Mexican officials, the people said. U.S. officials have said rooting out corruption is key to solving Mexico’s cartel problem, and last month, a top Justice Department official urged federal prosecutors to prioritize corruption investigations in Mexico, even instructing them to use terrorism statutes in their cases.
Derek Maltz, the former acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said that the cooperating Morena officials and the bank of drug traffickers now in U.S. custody increase the likelihood that U.S. authorities are building major cases.
“I’m very confident there will be some high-level indictments coming,” he said.
Overall, Ms. Sheinbaum has built a positive relationship with the Trump administration, in large part by increasing Mexican military presence along the U.S.-Mexico border and significantly expanding security cooperation between the two countries. Mexican authorities, working in part off U.S. intelligence, recently killed Mexico’s top drug kingpin, Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho.
Ms. Sheinbaum’s government has also reported a decrease in violent crime nationwide. According to government data, homicides from January to May dropped by 63 percent, from the same period two years prior.
But going after politicians is far more politically complicated for Ms. Sheinbaum. Some targets of U.S. investigations are not only members of her party, but also close allies of her predecessor and political benefactor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who remains a larger-than-life figure in Mexican politics.
Critics have long accused Mr. López Obrador and some of his children, who have been Morena officials, of corruption. U.S. officials even examined those claims though never opened a formal investigation.
But this week, those accusations were revived by leaked excerpts from an upcoming book by the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar. In the book, Mr. Salazar wrote that he understood from a mutual contact that Mr. López Obrador was worried about the U.S. capture of a cartel leader in 2024 because of what information the criminal might hand over. Mr. Salazar later said he had no direct evidence that Mr. López Obrador had connections to cartels.
Mr. López Obrador and his sons have denied any ties to cartels. And Ms. Sheinbaum defended her predecessor this week, saying that if he had any concerns about that 2024 operation, it was about “interference and a violation of Mexico’s sovereignty.”
Two targets of the U.S. corruption investigations are the Morena governors of Sonora and Tamaulipas states, Alfonso Durazo and Américo Villarreal Anaya, according to five people familiar with the investigations who were not authorized to speak publicly. The governors have denied corruption accusations.
Mr. Durazo “has carried out public service with strict adherence to the law” and has not been notified that he is under investigation, his spokeswoman, Paloma Terán, said in a statement.
Mr. López Obrador is allied with both, picking Mr. Durazo as his security minister and publicly backing Mr. Villareal when he faced claims of corruption in 2022, which he denied.
The investigations into the governors were previously reported by The Los Angeles Times.
This week, the Mexican news outlet El Universal published a leaked audio of another governor, Marina del Pilar, of Baja California state, that revealed her scheduling a meeting with U.S. authorities.
“I’m very willing because I want to resolve this and clarify anything, but I’d really like it to be through my lawyer,” she said in the three-minute clip.
Ms. del Pilar confirmed the authenticity of the recording, adding that the meeting was related to her revoked U.S. visa but that it never occurred. She also said she has a clear conscience: “The supposed shady agreements with the United States authorities are a total lie.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.
This article was published in partnership with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom that covers stories from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.
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