Two US officials who died after Mexico drug raid reported to be CIA agents

Mexico has launched an investigation into a possible breach of its constitution as it was reported that two US embassy officials who died in a car accident while returning from a raid on a drug lab with local officials in the border state of Chihuahua were CIA operatives.

The accident happened early on Sunday, as the officials were driving back from the scene of the raid. Their vehicle skidded off the road and plunged down a 200 metre ravine in the mountains near Chihuahua’s border with the state of Sinaloa.

Since then, state officials have provided seemingly conflicting accounts of whether and how the Americans were involved in the raid, while Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said neither she nor her cabinet had been aware of the operation. Mexico’s national security law does not allow for joint operations without prior approval from the federal government.

While the US embassy acknowledged the death of the embassy personnel on Sunday, it has yet to comment on subsequent reporting that they were from the CIA.

“We’re investigating what these people were doing and what agency they were from,” said Sheinbaum in her daily press conference on Tuesday. “So far the information we have is that they were working together [with the state government], and so the attorney general will have to investigate to know if this was in violation of the constitution and the law of national security.”

The incident comes during a tense moment in the US-Mexico relationship, as Donald Trump demands Mexico do more to stem the trafficking of drugs to the US, while Sheinbaum strives to defend Mexico’s sovereignty.

US law enforcement activity in Mexico is a politically sensitive issue, given previous interventions in the region. Sheinbaum has repeatedly turned down Trump’s offers to send troops into Mexico to help take on cartels.

Although Trump has threatened unilateral military strikes against Mexico’s cartels, US law enforcement agencies and the embassy in Mexico have emphasised that they are working together with Mexican authorities.

Those agencies include the CIA, which has taken a much greater role in the fight against drug trafficking in the Americas since Trump returned to the White House and designated various organised crime groups, including half a dozen Mexican cartels, as foreign terrorist organisations.

Intelligence from the CIA reportedly helped locate “El Mencho”, one of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers, who was killed during an operation by the Mexican army in February.

But the incident on Sunday has swung the spotlight on to the precise degree of CIA involvement in Mexico and whether it goes beyond intelligence sharing.

On Monday, Chihuahua’s attorney general, César Jáuregui Moreno, said that US “instructors” did not directly take part in the raid and only arrived at the scene of the operation after it had taken place, for training purposes. He added that Sheinbaum’s office was not notified of the raid because only Mexican agents took part in it.

But this seemed to go against an earlier statement from the attorney general’s office stating that the Americans had died while returning “from an operation to dismantle clandestine laboratories”.

“There is a great deal of collaboration and coordination [between Mexico and the US], but there are no joint operations as such on the ground,” said Sheinbaum. “If this investigation confirms that there was a joint operation, then the corresponding sanctions would have to be reviewed.”