Mexico’s security chief quietly forms an elite force to take on the drug cartels
Minister of Security and Citizen Protection Omar Garcia Harfuch speaks during a presentation of incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Cabinet members in Mexico City, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Six years ago Mexico’s president disbanded the country’s Federal Police and handed security responsibilities fully to the military. Now, his successor has quietly begun to build an elite civilian investigative and special operations force to fight the drug cartels.
President Claudia Sheinbaum had already shown a willingness early in her presidency to move away from former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s oft-criticized “hugs, not bullets” strategy. It focused on addressing the social roots of crime rather than directly confronting Mexico’s powerful cartels.
Sheinbaum’s security chief, Omar García Harfuch, is drawing on his law enforcement contacts — mostly from the former ranks of the Federal Police — to claw back security capabilities from the armed forces with a civilian force under his direct command.
The government has yet to formally announce the new National Operations Unit, known by its Spanish initials UNO, but its existence is an open secret among former members of the Federal Police, where García Harfuch started his career.
Three Mexican officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak about the still unannounced force, confirmed its existence to The Associated Press.
Security analyst David Saucedo, who has spoken with people who have joined the force, said he believes García Harfuch’s main objective is to have an armed force that allows him to meet demands from Washington.
UNO takes shape
The unit began to form shortly after Sheinbaum took office and it hopes to have 800 members by the end of the year, said one federal official, who is familiar with many of the unit’s details.
On Monday, while García Harfuch was in Washington meeting with the Trump administration, the security ministry published a call for college graduates to make up “the first generation of investigative and intelligence agents,” saying only they would be part of a specialized group to strengthen the country’s security.
UNO will have three branches distributed geographically across Mexico, as well as a high-impact team that will be the “elite of the elite,” the federal official said.
Its current members are mostly former Federal Police and members of the special operations team García Harfuch created when he was Mexico City’s police chief. Most have previously received training from security forces from the United States, Colombia, Spain or France.
His challenge is rebuilding the trust of his U.S. counterparts after López Obrador limited U.S. agents’ movements in Mexico and do it as President Donald Trump pressures Mexico to step up the fight against fentanyl trafficking.
A controversial past
Shortly after taking office, López Obrador replaced the Federal Police with a new force, the National Guard, that he sold to the public as civilian, but that was always led by and made up of the armed forces.
He lambasted the Federal Police as too corrupt to save and made Mexico’s former security chief Genaro García Luna, then facing trial in the U.S. and eventually convicted of working for the Sinaloa cartel, the poster child. He cut funding for training and equipping local police.
What followed were six years of what critics decried as militarization that effectively concentrated unprecedented authority in the hands of the armed forces.
Despite that, levels of violence remained stubbornly high and critics said the cartels grew stronger, fueled by soaring revenue from fentanyl. One of the main criticisms of the National Guard and military was that while they had numbers and fire power they did not have the investigative skills needed to dismantle large criminal organizations.
García Harfuch was initially a “toothless tiger,” who was frequently denied resources, information and investigative files by other security entities, said Saucedo, based in Guanajuato state, Mexico’s most violent.
UNO puts an elite force under his direct command.
The Mexican federal official denied that UNO’s objective was to satisfy Trump, but noted the unit was involved in the unprecedented delivery of 29 high-profile cartel figures to the United States at the height of negotiations between the two countries to suspend threatened tariffs. They were pulled out of prisons all over Mexico, assembled and sent to the U.S. without incident.
The challenge: avoid corruption
Special operations forces, be it from the Navy, Army, Federal Police or state police, have a checkered history in Mexico, having been involved in many scandals and abuses of power, extrajudicial killings and infiltration by cartels.
“There have been a lot of cases that were bad,” said the previously quoted federal official, who added that there were also honest police. He said the security ministry is emphasizing stricter screening, exhaustive background investigations and better pay once they’re in.
García Harfuch’s influence also extends to states where Sheinbaum’s party holds power. People he trusts are taking key security positions and UNO will train state special operations teams that are also made up of many former Federal Police.
The southern state of Chiapas, where Mexico’s most powerful cartels are battling for control of smuggling routes, announced a special operations force in December called the Pakal with some 500 members. Two members told the AP they were ex-Federal Police and did eight months of specialized training to join the Pakal.
But doubts remain. For Saucedo, since the new elite force doesn’t yet have effective internal controls and accountability mechanisms, “there’s no guarantee that this elite group won’t commit the excesses committed by other special operations groups.”
___ Associated Press writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico contributed to this report.