EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The U.S. is getting more cooperation from Mexico than it has in many years when it comes to law enforcement, a pair of State Department officials told a U.S. House subcommittee on Wednesday.
But it could do more, including investing more on its security forces and pushing China harder to keep fentanyl precursor chemicals from reaching the drug cartels in Mexico.
“U.S. law enforcement is working to build Mexican security forces operational proficiency. We are also insisting on greater burden sharing,” said Chris Landberg, senior official for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. “Mexico must invest more on its own security infrastructure and sustain its capabilities on its own. Our assistance is catalytic, not perpetual.”
Landberg went on to tell members of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that Mexico should root out corruption in its institutions so that criminals who wage violence and poison people throughout the Americas be brought to justice.
The hearing was meant to analyze Mexico’s relationship with other hemispheric partners but ended up focusing on drugs and Chinese influence in the region.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Katherine Dueholm praised Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for sending 55 high-level drug cartel leaders to face justice in the United States earlier this year and deploying 10,000 National Guard troops to the border. But she questioned her reluctance to support the administration’s hemispheric agenda.
“President Sheinbaum has been responsive to issues critical to U.S. interests. Unfortunately, in adhering to (Mexico’s) constitutional non-interference foreign policy, the current administration has often acted counter to what we believe to be our shared values and to U.S. objectives,” Dueholm said. “We continue to urge Mexico to reconsider these positions.”
Sheinbaum has publicly opposed the U.S. bombing of drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean and in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed dozens of suspected drug traffickers.
The Mexican president is also opposed to U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro has been labeled by the Trump administration as the head of the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Cartel de los Soles.
China not only is America’s fiercest economic competitor, but also the principal source of the chemicals Mexican drug cartels use for the large-scale manufacture of fentanyl.
“We would like to have Mexico talk to China on a regular basis because all the precursor chemicals are coming from China,” Landberg told the subcommittee.
Since Trump took office, border officials have seen a decrease in fentanyl seizures — down 53 percent through the first half of 2025, according to data cited at the hearing. In some cities in the U.S., the price of the illicit and often deadly synthetic drugs reportedly are rising due to a lower supply.
Landberg said that’s due to aggressive U.S.-Mexico cooperation.
“Seizures within Mexico have increased. Also, there is disruption within the supply chain, (our) focus on plaza bosses — I think that is the main thing,” he said. “Over the next months it will become clear how effective Chinese controls over these precursors is and whether the cartels will find alternative sources” of precursor chemicals.
Dueholm said Chinese influence in Mexico likely will be discussed during next year’s scheduled review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“The USMCA review will help ensure reliable supply chain (for the United States) and keep out third-party actors,” she told the committee. “We are working with Mexico to stem ability of China to use Mexico as a transshipment point.”
Earlier, Mexico imposed tariffs on some Chinese imports and reportedly is sharing information on what is being shipped from China to Mexican ports of entry.