Mexico said Saturday that two U.S. federal agents killed in a car crash in the northern state of Chihuahua were not authorized to operate on Mexican territory, sharpening scrutiny of an anti-narcotics raid that also left two Mexican officials dead last Sunday.
The Mexican security cabinet said one of the U.S. citizens entered the country as a visitor and the other on a diplomatic passport, but neither had formal accreditation to take part in operational activity inside Mexico. The crash happened during an anti-narcotics operation in Chihuahua, and the government’s statement put fresh pressure on the question of who was doing what on the ground when the vehicle went down.
Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier this week that her government would investigate whether Mexico’s national security law had been violated. She said, in reference to foreign participation in the operation, that the military evidently did not know there were people taking part who were not Mexican citizens, adding that Mexicans should not take the matter lightly. Her comments signaled that the issue had moved beyond a single crash and into a broader review of how foreign personnel operate inside the country.
Under Mexican law, foreign agents must receive federal authorization to work in Mexico and cannot operate directly with local officials without approval. That framework is central to the case because U.S. authorities have not confirmed reports that the dead individuals were CIA agents in Mexico as part of a wider anti-drug operation. The gap between what Mexico says happened and what Washington has publicly confirmed has become the story’s core dispute.
U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson described the two dead Americans as embassy personnel, while the Chihuahua attorney general called them instructor officers from the embassy carrying out routine training work. Mexico has also ruled out any U.S. military presence in the country. The crash, the raid and the unanswered questions around accreditation now leave both governments with a narrower but more sensitive task: explaining how foreign personnel ended up in a fatal operation on Mexican soil without the permissions Mexico says are required.