How do you get rid of drug cartels if they're running a government agency?

 

That's the unspoken question posed by a cartel takeover of a Mexican port.

A sharp increase in drug seizures has been reported at Mexico’s west coast ports with caches discovered inside containers and vessels’ sea chests, said protection and indemnity club NorthStandard.

The alert follows the seizure earlier this month of 88 tonnes of chemicals needed for the manufacture of synthetic drugs at the country’s largest container port, Manzanillo.

Ports are a “critical part” of the criminal infrastructure of one of the most powerful cartels, the Sinaloa, which uses them to receive precursor chemicals and South American cocaine for trafficking into the US, according to a May report by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

. . .

The DEA report said that the Pacific coast port of Mazatlan was wholly controlled by the Sinaloa cartel and they charged other drug trafficking organisations to use the port.

A long history of alliances with drug trafficking groups also gave the Sinaloa access to the port of Manzanillo, said the report.

The port is “strategically significant because of its location on the central Pacific Coast and its high volume of shipping traffic due to widespread use of the port by foreign countries to exchange legitimate trade goods with Mexico and to refuel”, said the agency in its 2024 national drug threat assessment.

There's more at the link.

It's all very well to go after criminals . . . but what if the administrators and bureaucrats controlling government functions (such as a port) are themselves criminals?  Remove them, and you'll have to appoint replacements - who will doubtless be threatened immediately with death or dismemberment, for themselves and/or their families, if they don't do precisely the same as their predecessors did.  "Plata o plomo", remember?

Also, how can any honest law enforcement agent or agency work with a port administration that's so clearly criminal?  Everything the latter learns about the "good guys" will undoubtedly be passed to the "bad guys", who will use the information to target law enforcement and operate with impunity.

Most worrying of all to me, we've just "imported" what are likely to be hundreds of thousands of cartel operatives and other criminals from South America, thanks to President Biden's border policies.  They're now inside our borders, and I'm sure some are already working in our harbors, airports, etc.  How long until they take over one of our transport hubs, and operate it for the benefit of their cartel buddies back home?

Peter