Mexico wants progress on U.S. extraditions and arms trafficking

MEXICO CITY, October 12, 2021, (AP) — Mexico said it wants to see more U.S. action on extraditions and weapons trafficking at security meetings scheduled for Friday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said Tuesday he wants to see faster extraditions of suspects from the United States and fewer guns coming across the border.

“It is important that you, United States, take effective, efficient actions to drastically reduce the illegal trafficking of weapons,” said Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

Ebrard also called for “quick judicial assistance,” suggesting that while Mexico had extradited suspects quickly to the United States, it wasn’t the same pace the other way around.

“Extraditions should have the same speed from there to here, as from here to there, something that is not the case right now,” Ebrard said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were also scheduled to attend the talks in Mexico City, though Ebrard suggested migration won’t be the main agenda item.

“It’s about mutual respect. If you don’t respect me, I don’t respect you. If we do not respect each other, it is going to be very difficult to get something done,” Ebrard said.

U.S. officials, on the other hand, are expected to focus on issues like the increasing trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is largely produced in Mexico from precursor chemicals imported from China. Mexican cartels press the fentanyl into counterfeit pills that contain wildly varying and often lethal doses of the potent opioid.

Overdose deaths in the United States rose to over 93,000 in 2020, and almost 70,000 of those were linked to opioids.

Source: Border Report

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