CIA Escalates Secret Operations Inside Mexico

(MENAFN) The CIA has dramatically intensified covert operations within Mexico, with agency operatives directly involved in lethal targeted strikes against cartel figures as part of a sharply escalated counter-cartel offensive, according to a report published Tuesday.

The agency's elite Ground Branch unit has been at the center of a string of operations, among them a March 28th car bombing on a highway outside Mexico City that claimed the lives of Francisco "El Payin" Beltran — a mid-level Sinaloa Cartel operative — and his driver, media reported, drawing on multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

"The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up," one source briefed on the operations told media. "It's a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico."

The surge in covert activity follows US President Donald Trump's formal designation of major Mexican criminal organizations — among them the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels — as foreign terrorist organizations, a move that dramatically widened the legal and operational latitude afforded to US agencies.

Mexican Security Minister Omar Hamid Garcia Harfuch swiftly pushed back on the reporting, taking to the US social media platform X to flatly deny the existence of any unilateral lethal operations conducted by foreign agencies on Mexican soil. He maintained that all US-Mexico security cooperation flows strictly through institutional channels and remains anchored in respect for national sovereignty.

The minister further emphasized that any operational activity within Mexico is executed exclusively by Mexican authorities, with bilateral engagement confined to intelligence sharing, coordination, and formally sanctioned government mechanisms.

Media noted that the CIA declined to issue any comment, while Mexican government agencies similarly did not respond to requests for a statement.

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