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A New York grand jury on Thursday indicted two former leaders of the Mexican federal police force, including one who oversaw the anti-narcotics units that were specially vetted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and were linked to two brazen massacres in Mexico that left dozens, possibly hundreds, of people dead and missing.

The indictments marked a stunning fall from grace for Ramn Pequeo Garca and Luis Crdenas Palomino, who had been celebrated by U.S. national security and diplomatic officials as trusted partners in the fight against Mexican drug cartels.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury found that instead of combating the cartels, there was evidence that the men had been collaborating with and accepting millions in bribes from them. Crdenas Palomino had served as the director of regional operations for the federal police force between 2006 and 2012. During that time, Pequeo was head of the federal police anti-narcotics division, which controlled the DEAs Sensitive Investigative Units.

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A ProPublica investigation in 2018 found that those units had a long history of deadly leaks to drug traffickers. One of those leaks triggered a spree of violence in Allende, a Mexican ranching town about 40 minutes from the U.S. border. The massacre left scores of innocent people dead. Another leak sparked a deadly attack on innocent guests at a Holiday Inn in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

Thursdays indictments do not link either Pequeo or Crdenas Palomino directly to those incidents. However, they make clear that the disastrous leaks were part of a systemic problem that reached to the highest levels of the Mexican government. And they provided more evidence of the tragic consequences of the United States role in Mexicos drug war.

The indictments are part of an investigation into Mexican government corruption that began after the conviction of Mexicos most wanted drug trafficker, Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn, in February 2019. In December, prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York arrested their first big target, Genaro Garca Luna, the former head of Mexicos federal police force and a man so powerful that The New York Times described him as that countrys Eliot Ness, one of the Americas most famous federal law enforcement agents.

Pequeo and Crdenas Palomino were two of Garca Lunas chief lieutenants. Beginning in 2006, when Garca Luna was appointed to a cabinet-level position as Mexicos security chief, the three men were celebrated on both sides of the border as the bold, new architects of Mexicos fight against drug cartels. All three men worked closely with senior U.S. security and diplomatic officials. The United States poured hundreds of millions of dollars in training and equipment into their efforts and began sharing increasing amounts of highly sensitive intelligence.

That fight led to the arrests of dozens of kingpins but also to record numbers of deaths and disappearances. It did not stop the flow of drugs across the border. Still, Mexican and American authorities defended the fight, saying the bloodshed was a necessary evil in their efforts to dismantle the cartels. And while allegations of corruption swirled around Garca Luna and his team, and evidence emerged that the intelligence channels were leaky, senior American authorities, at least for a time, appeared to shrug them off.

The indictments Thursday make clear thats changed. They allege a staggering degree of cooperation between Garca Luna, Pequeo and Crdenas Palomino and one of the worlds most notorious drug cartels. The police officials agreed not to interfere with the Sinaloa Cartels drug shipments, most of which ended up in the United States, and to provide its leaders with sensitive information about law enforcement operations targeting the cartel, as well as its rivals. Moreover, the indictment alleges, the officials targeted those rivals for arrest, instead of Sinaloa members, and assigned corrupt officials to oversee security agencies in regions of Mexico where the Sinaloa Cartel had its operations.

One of the first U.S. cases against Garca Lunas police force came in 2018 when a former chief of Mexicos SIU, and Pequeos right-hand man, turned himself in to U.S. authorities in Chicago and, later, pleaded no contest to charges that he had used his position for years to collaborate with drug traffickers. Several months after that, the trial against Chapo Guzmn included testimony from a cast of major drug traffickers who described delivering suitcases of cartel cash to Garca Luna and his aides.

Upon hearing the news of the indictments, Andrew Selee, a longtime expert on Mexico at the Migration Policy Institute, said, Thats incredible, and added that they would force us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the recent anti-narcotics efforts in Mexico.

Eric Olson, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, was similarly stunned and said the arrests showed the ruinous results of U.S. policies in Mexico that prioritize law enforcement.

Now we see theres a trade-off to turning a blind eye to people like Garca Luna, he said. If you turn a blind eye, youre going to pay a price in the long run. The price is democracy and rule of law. How is that in our interest?

Thursdays indictments against Pequeo and Crdenas Palomino followed months of unsuccessful efforts by U.S. law enforcement agents and prosecutors to convince the two men to cooperate in the case against their former boss. Both remain at large in Mexico.

Meanwhile Garca Luna, who is alleged to have amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune in drug money, remains in custody at a federal jail in Brooklyn. Prosecutors yesterday announced that he was being indicted under the so-called Kingpin Statute, designed to target precisely the kinds of criminal leaders he was once sworn to fight. A legal expert pointed out that the statute requires prosecutors demonstrate that Garca Luna ran a criminal organization of five or more people, suggesting that there are more indictments to come.

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New York Grand Jury Indicts Two Former Leaders of Mexicos Drug War for Cartel Connections - ProPublica