The Claudia Sheinbaum administration's demand for overwhelming evidence before extraditing a top politician to the U.S. over alleged drug cartel ties highlights a double standard in Mexico's fight against organized crime, experts say. The U.S. indicted former Sinaloa governor Rubén Rocha and others, but Mexico insists on irrefutable proof before proceeding.
The Claudia Sheinbaum administration's demand for "irrefutable" proof before handing over a top elected politician to the U.S. over alleged drug cartel dealings reveals how the Mexican government applies a double standard in its stated battle against organized crime, experts say.
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, left, stands beside Rubén Rocha, who at the time was the governor of Sinaloa, as he speaks to the media in Mexico City on June 26, 2025.
The U.S. indicted Rocha and nine other people last month on alleged drug cartel ties and requested their extradition. and requested the extradition of Rubén Rocha, at the time the sitting governor of Sinaloa, along with the mayor of state capital Culiacán, a Sinaloan senator and seven other former officials and law enforcement officers.
The Mexican government initially balked at the demand, saying that the U.S. did not provide any proof in its request that Rocha and the others be detained and processed for extradition. Sheinbaum said during a news conference that Mexico needed "overwhelming and irrefutable proof" before moving against Rocha and the others.
"Under no circumstances are we going to permit the intrusion or interference of a foreign government in the decisions that belong exclusively to the people of Mexico," she said. But Marco Antonio Avilés, a Mexico City lawyer and expert on extraditions, said the burden of proof that Sheinbaum's administration set in the Rocha matter went far above the standard normally used in extradition cases or in recent mass transfers of people wanted by U.S. authorities.on cartel-related indictments.
It's a practice that is akin to sending someone into forced exile, violating the constitutional rights of Mexican citizens and international law, Avilés said.
"For everyone else, there has always been a very low standard to meet the evidence requirement," he said. "But in this case, they raised it to the maximum, as if the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General's Office had to conduct a full trial themselves. " Lawyer Marco Antonio Avilés says the Rocha case highlights a double standard since the Mexican government sent 92 people to the U.S. on cartel-related indictments without any judicial process.
alleges that Rocha made a deal with the sons of jailed Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, receiving their help to win the 2021 governor's race in exchange for giving them a free hand to run their affairs throughout the state.and has denied the charges, is a member of the governing National Regeneration Movement party to which Sheinbaum belongs. He is also reportedly close to Sheinbaum's predecessor, former president and party founder Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Morena controls 22 of the country’s 31 state governor posts, the mayorship of Mexico City and both chambers of the Congress of the Union. David Saucedo, a Mexico City-based security analyst, said the U.S. has never moved against a sitting, publicly elected, top politician in Mexico. Instead, previous U.S. administrations have used evidence gathered against government leaders in backrooms to pressure Mexico on other matters like trade and migration, he said.
Now, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, as part of its aggressive hemispheric security agenda, is targeting members of Mexico's ruling party, Saucedo said.
"Trump is also doing this for political ends. He is seeing a major drop in his popularity, and his party is facing midterm elections ," he said. David Saucedo, a Mexico City security consultant, says the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is now targeting elected Mexican officials.
Saucedo said that while Sheinbaum has publicly taken a strong, nationalist position on the Rocha case, behind the scenes her team is trying to reach a compromise deal with the U.S. "They are making a counter-proposal to the U.S. that the 10 accused individuals from Sinaloa should be investigated, processed, judged, sentenced and jailed in Mexico, not the U.S.,” he said. Mexico has been under increasing pressure from the second Trump administration over the flow of people and narcotics crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. president and his officials have even mused about using The Sheinbaum administration has responded, throttling the flow of migration and targeting top organized crime bosses like Nemesio Rubén "El Mencho" Oseguera, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel . HeMexican authorities also captured one of El Mencho's probable successors, Audias "El Jardinero" Flores Silva, the day before the U.S. released Rocha's indictment.
, in three waves beginning in February 2025, who were wanted by the U.S. The transfers were executed through an opaque mechanism under the guise of national security with no chance of appeal. Sinaloa cartel faction linked to kidnapping of Canadian mining firm's workers: top official "There's a big argument saying, well, this is illegal, and the legal rights of those individuals were trampled for them to be taken to U.S. custody," said Ioan Grillo, an author and journalist who has written extensively on organized crime in Mexico.
"But who in Mexico wants to stand up and defend Z-40, who's accused of ordering hundreds of people to be kidnapped and murdered and their bodies dissolved in barrels? ", also known as Z-40, was one of the leaders of Los Zetas, a brutal paramilitary group originally formed by U.S.-trained Mexican special forces soldiers.
Treviño Morales, who was one of the 92 sent to the U.S., has been linked to at least two massacres in the states of Tamaulipas and Coahuila in 2010 and 2011, with a combined death toll amounting to hundreds of people. Mexico sent 37 individuals to the U.S. in January, the last, to date, of three waves of transfers totalling 92 people handed over to U.S. authorities in about the past 15 months.
Mexico City lawyer Avilés, who has clients among the 92, said there are fundamental principles at play around protecting the human and constitutional rights of Mexican citizens against forcible exile. He said the transfers created a precedent where a federal government could use the same opaque mechanism to get rid of politically undesirable opponents. The Mexican government is also compromising its sovereignty by trampling the rights of its citizens to appease a foreign government, Avilés said.
"The Mexican government has never handed people over under the circumstances that it does now. " Mexico probes allegation Sinaloa faction threatened workers at Canadian-owned gold mine before union voteDeputy Arturo Ávila Anaya, a spokesperson for the Morena caucus in the Chamber of Deputies, said the transfer of the 92 was carried out under the federal government's constitutional authority over national security matters.
Ávila Anaya said that Mexican institutions — its courts and prison system — could not handle these organized crime figures, who represented an ongoing threat to national security.
"We have suffered the consequences of being a country that, geopolitically, is in a transit zone for drugs where we have a neighbour to the north who is the principal consumer of drugs,” he said. "I don't believe this determination violated the constitution, but instead it ensures that these generators of violence can no longer operate.
"Violence roiled several states across Mexico, including in Jalisco and its coastal city of Puerto Vallarta, as Mexican authorities confirmed that the leader of one of the country's most powerful criminal organizations had died following a clash with special forces operatives. The indictment against Rocha and the other nine, including former high-ranking state and Culiacán police officers, involves allegations linking them to the kidnapping and murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant and their family member.
"In the case of the 92 group, it seems the legal and political will was, 'Give them to me,' and , 'Here they are. ' And we skipped the entire extradition process," Avilés said. "But here , the political will is, 'I want him,' and , 'I won’t give him to you. ' And there is a significant bias toward not even processing the extradition request.
" Jorge Barrera is a Caracas-born journalist currently based in Mexico City for CBC News. He previously worked with CBC's Investigative Unit and CBC's Indigenous Unit. Follow him on X @JorgeBarrera or email him jorge.barrera@cbc.ca. Fear, death and hope in a city under the shadows of a Mexican cartel warMexico made 'high-risk bet' in taking down cartel boss El Mencho Mexico probes allegation Sinaloa faction threatened workers at Canadian-owned gold mine before union vote
Mexico Extradition Drug Cartels Claudia Sheinbaum Rubén Rocha
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