As fentanyl boomed, DEA removed Mexico director amid misconduct probe

As illegal fentanyl was surging across the U.S. southwestern border, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Mexico office was in turmoil for more than six months with a director recalled to Washington while investigators probed his conduct, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The investigation, which has not been previously reported, came at a critical time. Cooperation between the DEA and Mexican authorities had deteriorated under the nationalist government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, meanwhile, were soaring to record levels, as Mexico consolidated its role as the No. 1 source of fentanyl in the United States.

The move left the DEA regional office in Mexico City, which oversees the agency’s operations in Mexico and Central America, without a full-time resident director for at least six months beginning in June 2021 — just as the Biden administration was starting to confront the crisis.

The upheaval in one of the DEA’s most important offices was an embarrassing distraction as agents tried to work with Mexico’s corruption-ridden security agencies to deter drug trafficking, according to several U.S. officials who worked in the country in recent years.

“You can’t fix what’s going wrong in the Mexican government if your own house is on fire,” said one ex-DEA agent.

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