CIA uses drones to sniff out cartels and fentanyl labs in Mexico: US official

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been conducting surveillance flights with drones over Mexico in partnership with the U.S. neighbor to the south, to gather intelligence on cartels and fentanyl laboratories, according to a senior U.S. official.

The Biden administration authorized the use of MQ9 Reaper drones, which the official said are not armed and “not lethal,” over Mexico to focus on locating fentanyl labs and cartels.

President Donald Trump’s administration continued the program, which is being done in coordination with the Mexican government.

The intelligence is shared with the Mexican government, which in turn has the authority to act on shutting down any illegal activities associated with the cartels and labs.

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“This is not the Pakistan model,” a senior U.S. official told Fox News. “It is being done in partnership with the Mexican government.”

Felipe de Jesus Gallo, the head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, said last year that since the 1990s “Mexico has been the champion of methamphetamine production, and now fentanyl.” 

He made the statement while speaking at a U.S.-Mexico conference on synthetic drugs in Mexico City.

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Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually.

While fentanyl is not widely abused in Mexico, methamphetamine addiction is commonplace.

Gallo said that Mexican cartels have launched industrial-scale production of meth in many states throughout the country and now export the drug around the world.

“Believe me, methamphetamine production has become industrialized, it’s not just in the mountains anymore,” Gallo said. “We now expect to see (drug) laboratories not just in the mountains of Sinaloa and Sonora, but in Hidalgo as well, Puebla, and also in Jalisco.”

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He was apparently referring to thousands of drug labs detected in previous years in the hills and scrublands around Culiacan, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa. Those clandestine, rural production sites were often bare-bones, improvised labs covered with tree branches and tarpaulins.

Now, the meth trade has become so lucrative and so sophisticated that Mexican meth is exported as far away as Hong Kong or Australia, and the cartels have found ways to avoid detection of their drug money.

Fentanyl production is also huge, though because it is a more potent drug, the volume is smaller.

Soldiers seized more than a half-million fentanyl pills in Culiacan in 2023, in what the army at the time described as the largest synthetic drug lab found to date.

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Soldiers found almost 630,000 pills that appeared to contain fentanyl, the army said. They also reported seizing 282 pounds of powdered fentanyl and about 220 pounds of suspected methamphetamine.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.