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United States/Mexico Bi-National Drug Strategy

Strategy Component

Alliance Point 3: Focus law enforcement efforts against criminal organizations and those who facilitate their operations in both countries.

Combating criminal organizations tied to drug trafficking is a priority in each country’s drug control strategy. Accordingly, Mexico and the United States have developed specific mechanisms to combat criminal organizations that engage in drug trafficking and other related offenses within their respective territories. They have also developed specific programs and procedures to obtain information and evidence relating to the structure and operating methods of these organizations.

In order to strengthen efforts to combat these criminal organizations operating within the territory of the two countries, cooperation will be strengthened between the appropriate agencies, with due regard for each country’s applicable rules for conducting investigations.

Training and information exchange activities will also be strengthened, with a view to enhancing the capability of institutions to conduct investigations that lead to the capture, prosecution, and conviction of major drug traffickers.

Objectives

  1. Strengthen activities in both countries designed to dismantle major criminal drug trafficking organizations and ensure that all their members, particularly their leaders and key associates are arrested, prosecuted, and made to serve prison sentences commensurate with their crimes.

  2. Intensify bilateral law enforcement cooperation against transnational drug trafficking organizations that affect both countries, and strengthen and expand existing mechanisms and instruments to exchange information relating to this topic.

  3. Maintain and intensify in both countries the capability of institutions responsible for combating criminal organizations, and, within the framework of the respective domestic programs, step up arrests, prosecutions, drug seizures, destruction of illicit laboratories, asset seizures, and asset forfeitures.

  4. Strengthen domestic activities designed to curb and eliminate the sale and distribution of drugs in their respective territories.

  5. Build upon their investigations by identifying the linkages between criminal syndicates and their surrogates on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
Actions
  1. The Governments of Mexico and the United States will each strengthen its professional counterdrug investigative and prosecutorial capacity through cooperation, training, information sharing and confidence building with the other country.

    2. 1.1  Each country will continue to design and implement programs for selection, scrutiny and ongoing screening for the professional and ethical conduct of counterdrug investigators and prosecutors.

    1.1.1  Both countries will strengthen their abilities to conduct counternarcotics investigations and to prosecute the offense in criminal proceedings. To that end, each country will seek mutually agreed formulas to cooperate in the training and education of law enforcement officers, investigators, and prosecutors and to establish general frameworks for training, and technical and material support.

    1.2  Training programs and assistance will focus on utilizing the most effective evidence gathering, investigative, and prosecutorial techniques permitted by respective laws.

    1.3  Both countries will allocate the necessary resources and equipment to conduct effective selection, screening, and training for counterdrug enforcement personnel.

  2. The Governments of Mexico and the United States will develop thorough investigations, compelling prosecutions, and sustainable convictions with commensurate sentencing against leaders of the major drug trafficking organizations. Both governments will strengthen with all legal and investigative resources available, criminal proceedings brought against well-known leaders and other members of major drug trafficking organizations. The use of evidence introduced at these proceedings will conform to the domestic procedures of each country.

  3. The Governments of Mexico and the United States will adopt measures to enhance the effectiveness of the bilateral cooperation system to combat transnational organized crime, particularly in the areas of coordination, liaison mechanisms between authorities, exchange of information, logistical support and status of foreign agents ensuring strict compliance with rules and regulations applicable in the development of programs.

  4. The Governments of Mexico and the United States will exchange information regarding intermediary distribution organizations that maintain contacts with transnational narcotics organizations and that operate in both countries.

  5. The Governments of Mexico and the United States will continue to discuss the merits of specific cases to build the strongest prosecutions in the appropriate jurisdiction. Both countries will work towards prosecuting cases that will achieve sentences commensurate with the gravity of the offenses.