On May 11, Mexico sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. government, demanding information on whether Mexican government officials knew about the failed 2009-2010 “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking operation.
In the note, Mexico’s Foreign Affair Ministry , led by Marcelo Ebrard , explained that if Mexican officials were aware of the scheme, as some testimony suggests, then they violated the country’s laws; however, if Mexico wasn’t notified about the operation, then “Mexico’s sovereignty would have been violated” by U.S. agents, the Ministry said.
During the so-called “Fast and Furious” operation, U.S. federal agents allowed criminals to buy firearms to track them to criminal organizations but it went wrong when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives lost track of most of the guns, including two found at the scene of the 2010 killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Marcelo Ebrard revealed that the Attorney General’s Office had requested the information in 2019 and ratified the petition in February 2020.
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Authorities who conducted the investigation faced criticism for allowing suspected gun buyers for a smuggling ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize the guns.
The investigation’s failures were later examined in U.S. congressional hearings . Many of Mexico’s drug cartel killings are carried out using the weapons smuggled in from the United States; the operation had been meant to stem that flow.
The diplomatic note said: “The Mexican government asks to be given all the available information on the “Fast and Furious” operation, in the framework of cooperation and mutual trust that characterizes the close relations between our two countries.”
Ebrard mentioned that Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General, said: “Mexican authorities were aware of the case.”
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Meanwhile, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the Foreign Affairs Ministry asked the Attorney General’s Office to issue a report about the investigations it has carried out in regards to the infamous “Fast and Furious” operation.
During his news conference, President López Obrador said: There are two things. First, what former President Felipe Calderón said, that he wasn’t aware of the operation (…) he says that they acted after the scandal and asked information to the U.S. government and that Mexico didn’t participate with the U.S. government, this is why we requested information directly.”
President López Obrador also mentioned that a recently declassified U.S. report confirms that Eduardo Medina Mora , the former Attorney General, knew about the operation.
López Obrador added that we have to “know if Medina Mora informed former President Calderón or not.”He also emphasized that this operation violated Mexico’s sovereignty.
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