FBI Director Christopher Wray said the U.S. needs “much more help from Mexico” to shut down drug cartels and stop the flow of precursor drugs into the U.S., especially since Mexico recently elected a new president as its top leader.
Wray met with the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Tuesday to make his case for his $11.3 billion budget request for FY25, $661 million more than last year.
During the hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) questioned Ray about President Andres Manuel Lopez Abrador’s ties to the cartels and corruption related to those connections.
“If you upset and shake up the big Mexican drug cartels, who are also trafficking people into the United States, President Lopez Obrador will get a cut from their pockets, right?” Kennedy asked Wray.
Mexico’s next leftist president could be ‘bad news’ for US on border crisis: expert
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Latin American countries needed to meet certain needs to curb the migrant crisis. (Isaac Guzman/AFP via Getty Images, Obrador screenshot from CBS’ “60 Minutes”)
“I don’t know if I can comment on the corruption of specific individuals outside of the cases we bring, but I certainly understand what you’re saying,” Ray responded.
Kennedy then asked about the cooperation the U.S. is receiving from Mexico on border control.
“Let me put it this way: We’ve had some successes here and there in terms of extraditions and so forth, and I’m grateful for those, and I’m grateful for our partners in Mexico, but we need a lot more help from Mexico than we’ve ever had in terms of shutting down the drug cartels and stopping the flow of precursor substances,” Ray said. “I could keep saying it. So, I’m grateful for the successes we’ve had so far, but we need a lot more help.”
Claudia Scheinbaum elected Mexico’s first female president
FBI Director Christopher Wray listens during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, in 2021. (Graham Jennings/Washington Examiner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Ray later said he welcomed “all the tools” that could be used to improve relations and cooperation with its southern neighbor, adding that he hoped the Mexican government would see the value in building on the success the two countries have achieved so far.
The questioning came after Claudia Scheinbaum won Mexico’s presidential election, replacing Lopez Obrador.
Scheinbaum’s Morena party was also expected to win majorities in both houses of Congress.
Scheinbaum faces major obstacles from powerful cartels
After Mexico’s electoral commission announced that President-elect Claudia Scheinbaum maintained a commanding lead in Monday’s election, she waved to supporters in Mexico City’s main square, the Zocalo. (AP/Marco Ugarte)
Andrés Martínez Fernández, a senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, warned at a news conference that Scheinbaum is a left-wing activist who is unlikely to deviate from AMLO’s hard-line stance toward the United States.
“Claudia Scheinbaum is a progressive with a background as an activist/scholar. [who] “He’s come up through the ranks of the Mexican left and comes from a well-established family on the Mexican left,” he said.
In particular, Mexico and the United States have not always seen eye to eye on the issue of illegal immigration across the U.S. border. While the Biden administration has praised cooperation with Mexico on many fronts, AMLO has attacked Republican politicians, threatening to wage an “information campaign” against them, and falsely claiming that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico.
For more coverage on the border security crisis, click here
On March 21, 2024, a group of over 100 migrants stormed the border wall in an attempt to illegally enter the United States. (James Breeden for the New York Post/Mega)
“We can expect to see a lot of similar dynamics when it comes to U.S.-Mexico relations and U.S. policy on issues that are of greatest concern to the United States and that directly affect the United States,” Martinez Fernandez said.
He said Scheinbaum would “stay the course” and bring continuity to Lopez Obrador’s administration, in part because of the continuing presence of the current president.
“I congratulate Claudia Scheinbaum on her historic election as Mexico’s first woman president,” Biden said Monday, adding, “I look forward to working closely with President-elect Scheinbaum in a spirit of cooperation and friendship that reflects the enduring bond between our two countries.”
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“I also congratulate the Mexican people for a successful nationwide democratic electoral process that included elections for more than 20,000 offices at the local, state and federal levels,” Biden added.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Greg Norman contributed to this report.
