New U.S. Anti-Cartel Task Force Poses Challenge for Mexico’s Intelligence System

Mexico City — The Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel (JIATF-CC), a newly created U.S. body that compiled intelligence used to target cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho, represents both support and a challenge for Mexican institutions.

The task force achieved unprecedented coordination among numerous U.S. military, intelligence, and financial offices, along with advanced technological resources. This puts Mexico at a crossroads: either update its intelligence system or fall behind.

Institutional, technological, and economic disparities between the two countries “create a gap that, if not urgently addressed, will consolidate a relationship of informational dependence in which Mexico will be a passive recipient of intelligence processed by the United States, with the sovereignty implications that entails,” states a document from intelligence analysis firm Asimetrics, shared exclusively with El Sol de México.

Formed on January 15 and housed within U.S. Northern Command under General Maurizio Calabrese, the office embodies the new intelligence architecture of President Donald Trump’s administration against Mexican cartels. It also represents an opportunity to update the legal framework governing Mexico’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) and invest in personnel, technology, and logistical capabilities.

“The activation of the JIATF-CC can be strategically leveraged as a catalyst for the technological modernization of the Mexican intelligence system,” highlights the Asimetrics analysis, which adds that Mexico should use this moment to negotiate transfers of analytical capabilities, access to intelligence platforms, and analyst training as compensation for the informational access Mexico provides.

The pursuit and subsequent killing of El Mencho, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) on February 22, was possible thanks to intelligence information provided to Mexico at unprecedented speed by the JIATF-CC. This office brings together experts from 12 institutions that have set aside the rivalry that kept them distant for years and now operate in a coordinated manner.

It is a node involving analysts from the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of the Treasury (DoT), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Additionally, the new anti-cartel office includes seats for each entity that makes up the intelligence community: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

“One thing we should learn in Mexico from the intelligence fusion practiced in the United States is not to fall into protagonism,” says Raúl Álvarez Paniagua, a military intelligence expert specializing in security and defense.

“If you notice, the agencies in the United States don’t have that conflict because they possess a vision that it’s interinstitutional work. I believe that here in Mexico, institutions should learn not to be individualistic, not to be jealous of colleagues’ successes, and to see the work in an integrated manner,” adds Álvarez, also a specialist in risk analysis and prospective intelligence.

Preparation for the creation of the JIATF-CC began at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, when six Mexican cartels were designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and Significant Transnational Criminal Organizations (SDGT). This gives U.S. agencies an expansive legal mandate that includes intelligence, financial, military, space, and technological operations.

According to U.S. Congressional documents, the speed and precision of the JIATF-CC’s work is due, among other reasons, to the convergence of technological resources like SIGINT (signals intelligence), IMINT (imagery intelligence), and HUMINT (human intelligence)—the three main intelligence disciplines used to collect strategic, tactical, and operational information.

Its work includes identifying behavioral patterns of cartel leaders, trafficking routes and distribution networks; automatic translation and semantic analysis of intercepted communications; network mapping to identify the organizational structure of criminal groups, links between cells, relationships with political and economic actors; and automated detection of money laundering patterns, transaction structuring, and networks of front companies linked to Mexican drug lords.

Explained by Raúl Álvarez in simpler terms, the JIATF-CC’s work prior to El Mencho’s capture consisted of studies of the political context (networks of political co-optation), level of governance (territorial control exercised by the criminal organization), military capabilities (weaponry and equipment available), leadership (the drug lord’s command power and his main lieutenants), and economic conditions (financial capacity, money laundering, and profits).

With this information, Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense, led by General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, had the informational inputs to know where Oseguera Cervantes was hiding, the number of hitmen accompanying him, their firepower, the weaponry and vehicles needed for the operation, the criminal’s support network, possible reactions to his capture or killing, and the financial capacity to reconstitute the cartel and continue its criminal activities.

According to Asimetrics, the U.S. Task Force has a regional analysis of Mexico and the level of risk to national security. According to this atlas, the area with the greatest threats is the northwest (Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua), where it recommends establishing a liaison protocol between Mexico’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) and the JIATF-CC; activating a real-time communication channel between the Financial Intelligence Unit and the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

From Asimetrics’ perspective, the JIATF-CC’s interinstitutional integration “represents an organizational model that Mexico must replicate in its own intelligence fusion system. The National Intelligence Center must evolve toward an integrated command structure that overcomes the current institutional fragmentation and allows the generation of quality fused intelligence.”

However, the main obstacle is the reform to the National Security Law made to harmonize it with the Law of the National Investigation and Intelligence System. As long as tension persists between the National Intelligence Center’s national security functions (preserving the integrity of the state) and its public security functions (investigating and prosecuting crimes), the Mexican intelligence system will operate with a legal ambiguity that can compromise the quality of its work, the report states.