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International

The highly politicized FBI has lost the trust and cooperation of local law enforcement

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24 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Conservative Treehouse

If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been –institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. 

Miranda Devine has an interesting July 24 op-ed in the New York Post, sharing information gleaned from a group of law enforcement who are no longer cooperating with what they see as a highly politicized FBI.

The underlying issue is not a surprise to many of us, and the specific reasons for the distrust and lack of cooperation are, not surprisingly, exactly what we predicted long before their assembly came together.

From the Post:

… ‘They are not only reluctant to work with the FBI but reportedly have decided to no longer share actionable, substantive information on criminal and other intelligence-related activity with the FBI.’

Most concerning is what the alliance of whistleblowers calls a ‘crisis of confidence’ in FBI-led task forces where relationships with local cops have deteriorated to the point of ‘imploding’ in some cases because of ‘poor management and ineffective leadership by the FBI.’

Local cops said their precipitous loss of trust in the FBI was triggered by its excessive response to the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, followed by the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

One source, a 25-year veteran sergeant in the Major Crimes Division of a large police force in a Western state, said they ‘cannot understand why the FBI is not going after [far-left militant group] Antifa, BLM and pro-Palestinian rioters with the same vigor the FBI brought to bear against’ J6 participants.

READ: Google under fire for reportedly manipulating searches about Trump assassination attempt

What the group describes about the FBI relationship with Antifa is exactly what we have previously discussed on these pages. There is no way for Antifa to operate as a domestic extremist group, without the expressed support and willful blindness of the FBI. Quite simply, if the FBI wanted to stop the violent and extremist activity of Antifa, they could do that easily.

Remember, the objective of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was to resecure what they perceived as physical evidence President Donald Trump controlled showing how the DOJ and FBI action in 2016 was targeting him using the power of their law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In the background, the origination of all the DOJ/FBI/Intelligence Community targeting goes back to the 2015/16 FBI exploitation of the NSA database; this is not a contested discussion issue – it’s just continually forgotten.

The FBI was using their access to the NSA metadata of all Americans to conduct surveillance on political candidates that might be a threat to the power structures that exploited the secrets within the electronic records of all Americans. The FBI was, and almost certainly still is, conducting domestic surveillance and tracking Americans just like the German Stasi or Soviet KGB. It’s still happening, but we are not supposed to talk about it, or something.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago, just like the Robert Mueller investigation, was part of a long-standing coverup operation. The FBI was looking for what Trump took with him as evidence of the weaponized system that targeted him. The FBI wanted that back. The FBI was willing to use deadly force to get it back if that’s what it took.

The modern FBI is the police agency of a weaponized U.S. government, with a direct and purposeful mandate to keep the American people under control through strict surveillance and a violent police state.

Understand and accept this with great seriousness, there are no honorable “rank and file” inside this organization.

Every member of the FBI is a participant in the weaponization of power and government. The members are jackboots recruited from ideological college campuses for exactly the purpose of supporting a Stasi-like police state.

Through the past several years, we have discovered how the FBI worked inside Twitter, Facebook, and social media to control information, remove content, and manipulate opinion on behalf of the U.S. government – all activity political.

We have also learned the FBI took active measures to suppress information about the Hunter Biden laptop and control any negative consequences for the Biden regime – again, political. These are not disputed realities.

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI are now political institutions that have abandoned their originating mission in order to become the domestic equivalent of the Soviet-era FSB. Their joint targeting mechanisms have been redesigned to support the interests of corrupt D.C. politicians, specifically the interests of Democrats.

It was in June 2022, when Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, notifying them of whistleblower allegations from within the FBI that senior leadership in both Main Justice and FBI are involved in a coordinated effort to cover up criminal activity related to Hunter Biden.

The whistleblower allegations, in combination with the documented history of DOJ and FBI misconduct, culminate in Sen. Grassley stating:

If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies. [Emphases added]

Grassley was admitting what has been visible for years.

Grassley is telling the corrupt DOJ-FBI leadership that people in the organizations are outlining the detailed behavior of their corrupt leadership. However, with zero oversight involved, and with Democrats in charge of all committees that would be responsible for such oversight, and with institutional media in alignment and agreement with the corrupt institutional intents of the DOJ/FBI, the frustrating question becomes… “and?

I mean, who are we kidding? If Republicans were in charge of the Senate Judiciary, Reform/Oversight, or Intelligence committees, do we really believe that anything would be different? Before responding to that cynicism, remind yourself, they were for four years; January 2015 through January 2019, Republicans in charge of oversight.

It was exactly when Republicans were in charge of Main Justice and FBI oversight that Main Justice and FBI were targeting political candidate Donald Trump.

In July 2021, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General produced an absolutely damning Inspector General investigation of FBI conduct in the rape and sexual assault of U.S. gymnasts, revealing how FBI agents facilitated Nassar’s sex crimes by taking no action despite numerous witness statements to them.

Worse yet, the FBI never reported the sexual assaults to local law enforcement… and to top it off, the rank and vile FBI agents lied during the investigation of their conduct, and the DOJ under AG Bill Barr, and now under AG Merrick Garland, refused to prosecute the FBI liars.

The entire IG report reveals layer-upon-layer of FBI wrongdoing, misconduct, and false statements in an effort to cover up their activity when the internal investigation of their conduct began. This report is a total condemnation of the FBI rank and file. It really is quite stunning.

Background on FBI

As we discovered in January 2023, the FBI was fully aware of the terrorist who was planning to shoot the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and yet they did nothing.

The FBI knowledge of the shooter, Malik Faisal Akram, who was known as Faisal Akram, was confirmed by the Daily Mail. Akram ranted, prior to his travel to the U.S., that he wished he had died in the 9/11 terror attacks. He was a regular visitor to Pakistan, and reportedly a member of the Tablighi Jamaat group set up to “purify” Islam. To say the U.S. intelligence system knew Faisal Akram would be an understatement.

The FBI was also fully aware of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers, before they executed their plot. The FBI took no action. The Russian police twice warned the FBI that the Tsarnaev brothers were going to carry out a domestic terrorist attack on the U.S., but the FBI did nothing.

The FBI knew about the San Bernardino terrorists, specifically Tashfeen Malik, and were monitoring her phone calls and communications before her and Syed Farook executed their attack killing 14 people and leaving 22 others seriously injured. The FBI took no action.

The FBI knew Colorado grocery store shooter Ahmad Alissa before he executed his attack. The FBI took no action.

The FBI knew in advance of the Pulse Nightclub shooter (Omar Mateen) and were tipped off by the local sheriff. The FBI knew in advance of the Parkland High School shooter (Nikolas Cruz). The FBI knew in advance of the Fort Hood shooter (Nidal Hasan), and the FBI knew in advance of Colorado grocery store shooter Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa. The FBI took no action.

The case of the first recorded ISIS attack on U.S. soil was in Garland, Texas in 2015.

The FBI not only knew the shooters (Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi) in advance, but the FBI also took the shooters to the venue and were standing only a few yards away when Simpson and Soofi opened fire. Yes, you read that correctly – the FBI took the terrorists to the event and then watched it unfold. “An FBI trainer suggested in an interview with 60 Minutes that, had the attack been bigger, the agency’s numerous ties to the shooter would have led to a congressional investigation.”

Remember, shortly before the 2018 mid-term election, when Ceasar Syoc – a man living in his van – was caught sending “energetic material that can become combustible when subjected to heat or friction,” or what FBI Director Christopher Wray called “not hoax devices”?

Remember how sketchy everything about that was, including the child-like perpetrator telling a judge later that he was trying to walk back his guilty plea, because he was tricked into signing a confession for a crime he did not create.

Or more recently, the goofball plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer that involved 18 suspects, 12 of them actually working for the FBI as the plot was hatched? And we cannot forget the January 6 D.C. protest-turned-insurrection effort, which is clearly looking like an FBI inspired and coordinated effort; and unlike Syoc, despite the numerous CCTV cameras and resources in the area, they cannot find who placed the pipe-bombs.

Have we forgotten the Atlanta “Olympic Park Bombing,” and the FBI intentionally setting up transparently innocent Richard Jewel?

What about the FBI failing to investigate the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi. Did we forget when Robert Mueller’s FBI waited 19 days after the Benghazi attack before showing up at the compound? Journalists from the U.S. were walking around the compound after 48 hours, but it took the FBI another two weeks before the first investigator arrived. All evidence long destroyed.

Then, there’s the entirety of the FBI conduct in “Spygate,” the demonstrably evident FBI operation to conduct political surveillance against Donald Trump using their investigative authorities; and the downstream consequences of a massive institutional effort to cover up one of the biggest justice department scandals in the history of our nation. The original effort against Trump used massive resources from the DOJ and FBI. Heck, the coverup operation using the Mueller/Weissmann special counsel used more than 50 investigative FBI agents alone.

And of course, the FBI still had 13 extra agents available to rush to a NASCAR racetrack to investigate a garage door pull-down rope that might have been perceived as a noose; but the serial rape of hundreds of teenage girls, eh, not-so-much effort – even when they are standing in front of the FBI begging for help.

[At this point, I am increasingly convinced by evidence there are elements within the FBI that are enablers involved in sex trafficking, human smuggling, abduction, counterfeiting, and money laundering as part of their operational mission.]

The FBI didn’t make a mistake or drop the proverbial ball in the Olympic gymnast case, they intentionally and specifically maintained the sexual exploitation of teenage girls by doing absolutely nothing with the complaints they received. This is not misconduct, this is purposeful.

Then, as if to apply salt to the open wound of severe FBI politicization, what did the FBI do with the Hunter Biden laptop?

[Notice I’ve set the issue of the disappearing Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner laptop – in the known custody of the FBI – over there in the corner, next to missing investigation of the Awan brothers.]

More recently, the FBI executed a search warrant on the home and office of Project Veritas and the founder, James O’Keefe. While the raid was taking place, a New York Times reporter called O’Keefe to ask him about his thoughts on getting raided. The same New York Times journalist, a few days later, then begins writing about the confidential attorney-client privileged information illegally retrieved then leaked by the FBI during their raid.

My point is this…

What the Federal Security Service (FSB) is to the internal security of the Russian state, so too is the FBI in performing the same function for the U.S. federal government.

The FBI is a U.S. version of the Russian “State Police”; and the FBI is deployed – almost exclusively – to attack domestic enemies of those who control government, while they protect the interests of the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government. That is the clear and accurate domestic prism to contextualize their perceived mission: “domestic violent extremists pose the greatest threat” to their objective.

Put another way, “We The People,” who fight against government abuse and usurpation, are the FBI’s actual and literal enemy.

Let me be very clear with another brutally obvious example. Antifa could not exist as an organization, capable to organize and carry out violent attacks against their targets, without the full support of the FBI. If the FBI wanted to arrest members of Antifa, who are actually conducting violence, they could do it easily – with little effort.

It is the absence of any action, by the FBI toward Antifa, that tells us the FBI is enabling that violent extremist behavior to continue. Once you accept that transparent point of truth, then you realize the FBI definition of domestic violent extremism is something else entirely.

The FBI is not a law enforcement or investigative division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI is a political weapon of a larger institution that is now focused almost entirely toward supporting a radical communist agenda to destroy civil society in the United States.

The FBI set up the operation in Michigan to give the illusion that domestic threats were attempting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, everything about the events were an FBI construct. The same thing with the January 6 events in Washington, D.C., and the pipe bombs. These are domestic FBI operations. Think about the precarious nature of what this type of activity indicates.

The current mission of the FBI appears to be preserving and protecting institutional power by protecting the administration of President Joe Biden.

Anyone who continues to push this insufferable and fraudulent “honorable FBI rank and file talking point” is, at this point in history, willfully and purposefully operating to deceive the American people on behalf of government interests who are intent on destroying us.

It is not a difference of opinion any longer. Personally, I have lost the ability to sit comfortably or intellectually with anyone who pushes or accepts the “mistakes are made” nonsense. The FBI is not making mistakes, it is doing well what it considers important.

To me, it comes down to a simple matter of accepting what is continually staring us in the face.

Additionally, as we watched the outcome of the Michael Sussmann trial, we should never lose sight of the fact that 40 FBI agents were involved in the Mueller-Weissmann probe to investigate the fraudulent construct created by Hillary Clinton and crew. 40 agents? And, according to the outcome of the Sussmann trial, the FBI knew it was all a ruse.

This is why and how the Fourth Branch of Government is now the superseding apparatus above all other branches. This is why and how Barack Obama, John Brennan, and Eric Holder created it, cemented it, and made it impervious to any effort to remove it.

Remember when Henry Cuellar was critical of the Biden administration open border policies that were hurting his Texas district? Less than a month after going public with his criticisms, the FBI raids on his home and office began, the same FBI that raided the home of James O’Keefe while coordinating its search with the New York Times.

The Fourth Branch of Government is corrupt; heck, the J6 committee was defending the corrupt FBI, participating with the corrupt FBI, selling a joint J6 operation that involved the FBI. The corrupt media have aligned with the corrupt FBI, and the justice institutions in/around this legal framework are self-aware and fully autonomous.

As the Twitter Files show, the DOJ and FBI, through the authority of DHS, now have the ability to monitor every single aspect of every life that might seek to challenge or destroy the corrupt system.

In essence, Skynet – the ultimate end game of political surveillance and targeting outlined by Edward Snowden – has been activated. We the People are the enemy of the state.

Jackboots are very real, and they are wearing FBI logos on their shirts.

Business

‘Context Of Chemsex’: Biden-Harris Admin Dumps Millions Into Developing Drug-Fueled Gay Sex App

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Owen Klinsky

The Biden-Harris administration is spending millions funding a project to advise homosexual men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse.

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) in July announced a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for Assistant Professor Roman Shrestha to develop his app JomCare — “a smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive intervention aimed at improving access to HIV- and substance use-related harm reduction services for Malaysian GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex,” university news website UCONN Today reported. “Chemsex,” according to Northern Irish LGBTQ+ nonprofit the Rainbow Project, is the involvement of drug use in one’s sex life, and typically involves Methamphetamine (crystal meth), Mephedrone (meth), and GHB and GBL (G).

Examples of the app’s use-cases include providing a user who has reported injecting drugs with prompts about ordering an at-home HIV test kit and employing safe drug injection practices, UCONN Today reported. The app is also slated to provide same-day delivery of HIV prevention drug PrEP, HIV self-testing kits and even a mood tracker.

“In Malaysia, our research has indicated that harm reduction needs of GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex are not being adequately met,” Shrestha told UCONN Today. “Utilizing smartphone apps and other mHealth tools presents a promising and cost-effective approach to expand access to these services.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and is punishable by imprisonment, according to digital LGBTQ+ rights publication Equaldex. Drug use, including of cannabis, is illegal in Malaysia, and drug trafficking can be a capital offense.

The NIH disbursed $773,845 to Shrestha in July to conduct a 90-day trial testing the efficacy of JomCare among 482 chemsex-involved Malaysian gays. It also provided Shrestha with $191,417 in 2022 to “facilitate access to gender-affirming health care” for transgender women in the country.

“Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism used to describe a wide range of procedures, including sometimes irreversible hormone treatments that can lead to infertility as well as irreversible surgeries like mastectomies, phalloplasties and vaginoplasties.

Shrestha has a track record of researching mobile health (mHealth) initiatives for foreign homosexuals, co-authoring a 2024 study entitled, “Preferences for mHealth Intervention to Address Mental Health Challenges Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in Nepal.”

The proliferation of LGBT rights has been a “foreign policy priority” under the Biden-Harris administration, a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation, with President Joe Biden instructing federal government department heads to “to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”

“Around the globe, including here at home, brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) activists are fighting for equal protection under the law, freedom from violence, and recognition of their fundamental human rights,” a 2021 White House memorandum states. “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would collaborate to establish a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Musk claiming the agency would feature a leaderboard for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.” Some DOGE cuts could come from LGBTQ+ programs, such as a grant from the United States Agency for International Development to perform sex changes in Guatemala and State Department funding for the showing of a play in North Macedonia entitled, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”

Shrestha and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, a UCONN spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “specific questions about the grant and the decision to award it to our faculty member should be directed to the NIH, since that’s the funding agency.”

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Crime

Mexican cartels are a direct threat to Canada’s public safety, and the future of North American trade

Published on

From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By Gary J. Hale for Inside Policy

RCMP raided a fentanyl ‘superlab’ in Falkland, BC, with ties to a transnational criminal network that spans from Mexico to China.

On October 31, residents of Falkland, BC, were readying their children for a night of Halloween fun. Little did they know that their “quaint, quiet, and low-key little village” was about to make national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On that day, RCMP announced that it had raided a fentanyl “superlab” of scary proportions near Falkland – one that police called the “largest and most sophisticated” drug operation in Canada. Officers seized nearly half-a-billion-dollars’ worth of illicit materials, including 54 kilograms of finished fentanyl, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA, and six kilograms of cannabis” as well as AR-15-style guns, silencers, small explosive devices, body armour, and vast amounts of ammunition.

They also found massive quantities of “precursor chemicals” used to make the drugs. This strongly suggests that the superlab was tied into a transnational criminal network that spans from Mexico to China – one that uses North America’s transportation supply chains to spread its poisonous cargo across Canada and the United States.

The Canada-US-Mexico relationship is comprised of many interests, but the economic benefits of trade between the nations is one of the driving forces that keep these neighbours profitably engaged. The CUSMA trade agreement is the successor to NAFTA and is the strongest example globally of a successful economic co-operation treaty. It benefits all three signatories. This level of interdependence under CUSMA requires all parties to recognize their respective vulnerabilities and attempt to mitigate any threats, risks, or dangers to trade and to the overall relationship. What happens to one affects all the others.

The supply chain, and the transport infrastructure that supports it, affects the balance books of all three. While the supply chain is robust and currently experiences only occasional delays, the different types of transport that make up the supply chain – such as trucks, trains, and sea-going vessels – are extremely vulnerable to disruption or stoppages because of the unchecked violence and crime attributed to the activities of Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs). These cartels operate throughout Mexico, from the Pacific ports to the northern plains at the US-Mexico border.

The sophistication of the Falkland superlab strongly suggests connectivity to multi-national production, transportation, and distribution networks that likely include China (supply of raw products) and Mexico (clandestine laboratory expertise).

For most Canadians, Mexican cartels call to mind the stereotypical villains of TV and movie police dramas. But their power and influence is very real – as is the threat they pose to all three CUSMA nations.

Mexico’s cartels: a deadly and growing threat

Mexican cartels started as drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in the 1960s. By the late 1990s they had evolved to become transnational enterprises as they expanded their business beyond locally produced drugs (originally marijuana and heroin) to include primarily Colombian cocaine that they transported through Mexico en route to the US and Canada.

Marijuana and the opium poppy are cultivated in Mexico and, in the case of weed, taken to market in raw form. While the cartels required some chemicals sourced from outside Mexico to extract opium from the poppy and convert it into heroin, the large-scale, multi-ton production of synthetic drugs like Methamphetamine and today Fentanyl expanded the demand for sources of precursor chemicals (where the chemical is slightly altered at the molecular level to become the drug) and essential chemicals (chemicals used to extract, process, or clean the drugs.)

The need to acquire cocaine and chemicals internationalized the cartels. Mexican TCO’s now operate on every continent. That presence involves all the critical stages of the criminal business cycle: production, transportation, distribution, and re-capitalization. Some of the money from drug proceeds flow south from Canada and the US back to Mexico to be retained as profits, while other funds are used to keep the enterprise well-funded and operational.

In Mexico, the scope of their activities is economy-wide; they now operate many lines of criminal business. Some directly affect Mexico’s economic security, such as petroleum theft, intellectual property theft (mainly pirated DVDs and CDs), adulterating drinking alcohol, and exploiting public utilities. Others are in “traditional” criminal markets, such as prostitution, extortion, kidnapping, weapons smuggling, migrant smuggling and human trafficking. Organized auto theft has also become another revenue stream.

Criminal Actors

The Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS or Sinaloa Cartel) and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) are the two principal TCO’s vying for territorial control of Mexico’s air, land, and maritime ports, as well as illegal crossing points. These points on the cartel map are known as “plazas,” and are often between formal ports of entry into the US. By controlling territories crucial for the inbound and outbound movement of drugs, precursors, people, and illegal proceeds, the cartels secretly transport illicit goods and people through commercial supply chains, thus subjecting the transportation segment of legitimate North American trade to the most risk.

That is giving the cartels the power to impair – and even control – the movement of Mexico’s legitimate trade. While largely kept out of the public domain, incidents of forced payment of criminal taxation fees, called “cuotas,” and other similar threats to international business operations are already occurring. For instance, cuotas are being imposed on the transnational business of exporting used cars from the US to Mexico. They’re also being forced on Mexican avocado and lime exporters before the cartels will allow their products to cross the border to the US and international markets. This has crippled that particular trade. Unfortunately, the Mexican government has been slow to react, and the extortion persists throughout Mexico. It is worth repeating – these entirely legitimate goods reach the market only after cartel conditions are met and bribes paid.

The free trade and soft border policies of the US of recent years have allowed cartel operatives to enter that country and work the drug trade with limited consequence. In May, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published the National Drug Threat Assessment 2024, where it reported that the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels operate in all 50 US states and are engaged in armed violence in American cities as they fight for market shares of the sales of Methamphetamine, Fentanyl, and other drugs sourced from Mexico.

The DEA’s findings should sound alarms in Canada. Canada and the US have similar trade and immigration policies, which allow the Mexican cartels to easily enter and control the wholesale component of the drug trade. The long-term effects of the drug trade are the billions of dollars gained that allow for the corruption of government officials. Canada should be on guard: Mexican drug cartels in Canada could begin to not only kill ordinary Canadians by knowingly selling them deadly drugs like Fentanyl – their operatives can also embed themselves in Canadian society, as they have in the US, leading to ordinary citizens on Canadian streets being victimized by the armed violence cartels regularly use to assert their position and power.

Organized crime and Mexican governance

Canada faces these threats directly, but the indirect ones that the cartels present to Mexican governance are no less consequential to Canada in the long term – and likely sooner. Illicit agreements between corrupt Mexican government officials and the cartels assure that the crime organizations retain control of territory and have freedom to operate.

That threat is becoming increasingly existential. Cartel fighters are well disciplined, well equipped and strong enough to challenge Mexico’s military, currently the government’s main tool to fight them. Should the TCOs come to dominate Mexican society or gain decisive influence over government policy, Mexico’s government risks being declared a narco-democracy and the US may come to see the cartels as a threat to national security. That in turn could lead to a US military intervention in Mexico – not an outcome desired by either side.

While that scenario may be considered extreme, it is not as far from reality as many may think. While in many respects the US-Mexico trading relationship remains unchanged, the overall political context has become testy – and could be a real flashpoint for the incoming Trump administration.

Political developments in Mexico have played a role. After his election in 2018, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to his initials, AMLO) demonstrated a disdain for all things North American. This included frequent complaints of US interference or violation of Mexican sovereignty – complaints that were more about keeping Mexican government domestic actions out of the public eye. To retain a shroud of secrecy over government corruption, Mexico under Amlo started in 2022 to limit the activities and numbers of US federal law enforcement agencies operating there, particularly the FBI, DEA, ATF and ICE. These agencies formerly enjoyed a close relationship with the Mexican Federal Police – a force AMLO disbanded and replaced with the National Guard. The AMLO administration reduced the number of US assets and agents in Mexico, particularly singling out the DEA for the most punitive restrictions.

During his administration, AMLO placed the army and navy in charge of all ports of entry and gave them responsibility for all domestic public safety and security by subordinating the Guardia Nacional (GN), or National Guard, to the army. The GN, the only federal law enforcement agency, has been taken over by military officials who are sometimes corrupt and in league with the cartels.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in 2024, has continued AMLO’s organizational moves. Sheinbaum comes from the same political party and has so far extended carte blanche to the military, whose administration is opaque and now operates with impunity, under the guise of “national security” and “sovereignty” concerns.

It is expected that Sheinbaum will continue to shield American eyes from Mexico law enforcement and judicial affairs. The fear in the US law enforcement and national security community is that Sheinbaum may even declare DEA non grata, much as then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005 and Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2008 did in their countries. Both were anti-American leftists of the same mindset as AMLO and Sheinbaum, who feared detection of their connections to the illegal drug trade.

Sheinbaum has publicly demonstrated disinterest in the consistent application of the rule of law against the TCOs by stating that she will continue the “hugs not bullets” (“abrazos, no balazos”) non-confrontational, non-interventional posture towards organized crime. Agreements with corrupt government officials will allow the cartels to expand their business and to operate with impunity. Through intimidation, bribery, and murder, the cartels affect decision making at the municipal, state, and federal levels of Mexican government. That leverage, while performed outside the public eye, has the potential to negatively affect supply and demand among the three countries at the very least, and at worst, to signal that cartels in Mexico are directly or indirectly involved in the formulation of government security, immigration, drug, and trade policy.

AMLO enacted constitutional changes that will provide Sheinbaum with the powers of a dictator, giving her administration unchecked control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. As a result, the judiciary in Mexico is in crisis mode with 8 of 11 Supreme Court Justices resigning in October 2024 to protest the unconstitutional disregard for due process that started with AMLO and continues with Sheinbaum thanks to a “voting for judges” law that she and AMLO have rammed into operation without debate. This development portends even more corruption.

Without the existence of an independent judicial system, these institutional changes could give pause to US and Canadian negotiators when it comes time to renew CUSMA in 2026.

Beyond 2025: Mexican organized crime as a threat to the US and Canada, and Greater North American implications

Most worrying, the cartels will be in a yet stronger position to affect and even dictate the pace and volume of legitimate trade between the US and Mexico under Sheinbaum. This makes Mexico the weakest link among the three CUSMA members.

The US and Canada should therefore be concerned about the strength and power of the cartels because the current trajectory could provide them a greater role in Mexico’s performance as a trade partner. Should this trend continue, the US would likely begin to see Mexico through the lens of a threat to critical components of its national security: 1) the public safety of US citizens being killed in epidemic proportions by the drugs produced by citizens of Mexico; 2) the negative impact or increased cost of commerce that supplies goods to the American market; and 3) the CUSMA relationship that sustains the economic strength of all three participating countries.

This worrisome evolution requires proactivity by Canada and the US to insist that Sheinbaum reverse the gains that the cartels have made to influence policy and erode the government’s monopoly on territorial control and the use of violence, and reverse Mexico’s limits on drug enforcement co-operation with what should be its partners to the north. Pressure should also be applied to demand a return to a drug policy model that includes international law enforcement co-operation and a continuation towards the transformation of the Mexican judicial system from a mixed inquisitorial or accusatorial system to an adversarial system that employs the use of juries, witness testimony, oral hearings and trials, and cross-examination of witnesses, as opposed to a system where cartel-influenced elections could dictate judicial outcomes.

The implications of the further development of a Mexico narco-democracy for US-Mexico-Canada relations would be devastating. Co-operation on public safety and security would cease completely, allowing the cartels to take full control of commercial supply lines, significantly reducing trade between the three nations – likely causing the CUSMA trade deal to fracture until governance returned to duly elected civilian officials.

Continental security and Canada’s contribution

The continued success of CUSMA lies with Mexico more than any other country. Should Mexico continue on its path to autocracy, it could upset the trade deal, crucial to the prosperity of all three countries. Canada is not immune from what on the surface may appear to be mostly bilateral, US-Mexico issues, because, regardless of the commodity – whether it’s consumables or manufactured items – the cartels are positioned and empowered to affect imports, exports, trade, and migration throughout North America.

For the foreseeable future, Mexico is not going to voluntarily change its security posture. This enables the cartels to remain persistent threats, especially to trade. Canada and the US need to continue to jointly insist that Mexico take a stronger stance against organized crime and that it take steps to strengthen the judiciary and the rule of law in that country.


Gary J. Hale served 31 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), retiring as an executive-level intelligence analyst. In 2010, he was appointed as Drug Policy fellow and Mexico Studies Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

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