Querétaro and ‘’Foreign Intervention’’
What looks at first like a bureaucratic dispute over a police academy in Querétaro is at least in part about something larger: sovereignty, and Morena’s growing fear of Trump-backed region swinging sharply to the right and coming under US influence.
A recap. On 23 September, the government of Querétaro wrote to the Foreign Ministry (SRE) to notify it of the US ambassador’s planned visit on 2 October; the letter was received by the SRE on 25 September. It said the visit would be protocolary and would involve no direct mechanism of international cooperation on security or justice, nor any role for foreign agents in investigating or prosecuting crimes. Yet on 3 October Ambassador Ronald Johnson publicly described the new police academy as an expansion of security cooperation between the United States and Querétaro. Speaking on behalf of President Trump, he said he had joined Governor Mauricio Kuri in laying the first stone of a facility designed to train law-enforcement officers to detect and intercept drugs, weapons, illicit cash and other contraband.
The discrepancy became news on 5 October, when President Claudia Sheinbaum instructed Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco to speak with Kuri and Johnson and seek an explanation. She stressed that international security cooperation must pass through the federal government’s established channels.
But if those are the facts, the Querétaro dispute fits a broader political narrative by Sheinbaum and Morena around the threat of foreign interference in Mexico, the need to protect national sovereignty, and the patriotism of the opposition governors. The issue has long been central to Mexico’s political identity, not least since the Mexican–American War of 1846–48, after which Mexico ceded roughly half of its prewar territory to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It has become particularly sensitive again under Trump, who has repeatedly pressed for a more aggressive US role against the cartels and offered to send US troops into Mexico, an offer Sheinbaum rejected, and issued arrest warrants against the then Governor on Sinaloa, among others, and cancelled the USA visa of Andy Lopez Beltran, the son of former President Lopez Obrador.
The issue became still more explosive after two CIA officers took part in a Chihuahua anti-drug operation in April 2026 and subsequently died, alongside two Mexican investigators, in a vehicle accident. Federal authorities later said the CIA officers had not been formally authorised to conduct operational activities in Mexico, raising questions over the PAN state government headed by Maru Campos and the extent of its cooperation with US security agencies.
Since then, Sheinbaum has been on the offensive. Congress has since amended Article 41 of the Constitution so that proven acts of foreign intervention that influence an electoral result can be grounds for annulling an election, a change Sheinbaum has explicitly linked to the risk of external financing and political interference. Following that, Congress is now in the process of approving a law that would prevent bi-nationals running for the presidency and governorships, ostensibly to curtail outside influence in Mexico’s electoral politics.
While it would be easy to dismiss all this as sovereignty posturing, and a chance to bash opposition governors, the mostly Trump-backed right-wing shift in Latin American is likely genuinely unnerving Sheinbaum and Morena. In Brazil’s first round on 4 October, when Flávio Bolsonaro unexpectedly finished ahead of Lula, 47.0% to 45.2%, Trump publicly celebrated the result as a “great victory.” Since Trump returned to office, the right, centre-right or anti-left opposition has won seven consecutive presidential elections in Ecuador with Daniel Noboa, Bolivia with Rodrigo Paz, Honduras with Nasry Asfura, Chile with José Antonio Kast, Costa Rica with Laura Fernández, Peru with Keiko Fujimori, and Colombia with Abelardo de la Espriella, while Venezula has become a US protectorate of sorts. Brazil would be the eighth if Flávio Bolsonaro as expected wins the runoff. This would leave just Sheinbaum, the Nicaraguan and Cuban dictators Daniel Ortega and Miguel Diez-Canel, and Uruguayan and Guatemalan Presidents as the remaining LatAm leftists in power.
Notwithstanding the political implications, behind the Queretaro spat lies a genuine constitutional and institutional distinction. A state can train and equip its own police, including with foreign assistance, but Mexican states cannot themselves conclude treaties or alliances with foreign powers; and, according to the SRE, security-training or cooperation projects involving a foreign government require prior federal approval through the High-Level Security Group, GANSEG.
At her morning press conference, Sheinbaum said the governor could not set up an international academy without the federal government’s permission, and that an academy linked to security has to go through the SRE and the National Security Law, all the more so when it deals with organised crime, a federal offence. She added, however, that she did not think any laws had been broken.
Querétaro’s letter, which cites instructions from the National Security Council and bears the SRE’s receipt stamp of 25 September, suggests the state saw the objection coming. The federal government was also at the table in the literal sense: the acting commander of the 17th Military Zone, the delegate of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in the state and a National Guard captain sat on the presidium, and none of them appears to have objected at the time.
Johnson’s statement credited President Trump’s leadership, described the facility as the first of its kind in Mexico and Latin America, and said officers trained there would carry their skills to units, states and communities across the country. It counted more than US$10 million invested in training and equipment in Querétaro over the past decade, and 4,732 people trained since 2015, 1,714 of them from the state prosecutor’s office. Nor was the embassy alone: at the ceremony, the state’s own security secretary, Iován Pérez, said the centre was designed to receive specialised training from US agencies and pass it on to Mexican security institutions. Even the name wavers: the statement’s headline promises an International Police Training Academy, while its text calls it the Querétaro State Interdiction Academy.
The Constitution draws the boundaries in layers. States are expressly barred from concluding alliances, treaties or coalitions with foreign powers. Foreign policy belongs to the President, who negotiates treaties, and the Senate must approve them. Public security is a function the federation, states and municipalities share through a national system, so a state government may recruit, train and equip its own police and prosecutors. Organised crime, firearms offences and most drug trafficking fall under federal jurisdiction (states can prosecute only small-scale dealing), which means a state can prepare its officers to recognise these crimes and hand cases over, while investigating and prosecuting them stays with federal authorities.
Secondary law fills in the procedure. The law on treaties allows state bodies to sign inter-institutional agreements with foreign government agencies on two conditions: the subject must fall within the signatory’s own powers, and the SRE must issue its opinion before signature. Training its own officers falls comfortably within Querétaro’s powers. Whether a groundbreaking alongside a foreign ambassador amounts to an agreement that needed the SRE’s opinion is the question Velasco will now have to answer.
Morena wants the Senate involved. Guadalupe Chavira, secretary of the Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, called on 5 October for the upper house to be informed and to issue a statement reminding state governments to keep within the law, complaining that Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) administrations had made a habit of blurring the limits of sovereignty.
Her own list of precedents, however, made Querétaro look less exceptional. In Puebla, Governor Rafael Moreno Valle and Ambassador Anthony Wayne opened a tactical training village at the state police academy, with US$1 million of US equipment supplied under the Mérida Initiative; in 2020 Guanajuato’s Diego Sinhue Rodríguez and Ambassador Christopher Landau inaugurated a forensic services building for the state prosecutor’s office, presented as the fruit of US cooperation on training and equipment. However, Chavira noted that those projects went through federal channels.
Rules for platforms, payments and pets
Congress spent the past week clearing the decks. The Senate passed two bills, and committees in the Chamber of Deputies approved three more: the Digital Economy Law, the copyright reform and a reform of the Customs Law, which we examine in more detail below. Ricardo Monreal, leader of the Morena group in the Chamber, has scheduled them for plenary votes from Tuesday, alongside a cadastral law and the industrial property bill sent over by the Senate.
The Senate’s most contested vote, at 72 to 34, was on that industrial property bill, one of two that media and opposition politicians have dubbed ‘anti-meme’ laws. It amends the Federal Criminal Code and the Federal Law for the Protection of Industrial Property to punish the commercial use of official graphic identity with intent to deceive, with prison terms of one to five years and fines of up to 10,000 times the Unidad de Medida y Actualización (UMA), the reference unit used to set fines. A quieter change matters more to rights holders and defence lawyers alike: prosecutors will no longer need a technical opinion from the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) before bringing criminal charges. The Chamber is expected to pass the bill this week.
Senators also approved a General Law on Animal Welfare by 115 votes to 1, the kind of margin reserved for causes nobody wants to be seen voting against. The law creates national registries and divides obligations among the federal government, the states and the municipalities, so the real test will come in local budgets and enforcement.
In the Chamber, the Finance and Public Credit Committee approved the Digital Economy Law by 24 votes to 4, on the same day as the customs reform. Its most practical consequence is that the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) will decide in which sectors electronic payment becomes the only accepted method. That sits awkwardly beside the customs bill, under which importers facing a price gap of 20 per cent or more can recover seized goods only by putting down cash.
The Economy, Commerce and Competitiveness Committee, meanwhile, voted eighteen to six to approve the other copyright reform that was covered in the 22 September edition of this newsletter. Rather than creating a safe harbour, the bill tightens the one Mexico has had since 2020, spelling out when digital platforms lose it and become liable for their users’ infringements. The changes please the content industry and worry digital-rights groups in roughly equal measure. Given Morena’s majority, the plenary votes should be quick.
Customs set to lower the bar for questioning an invoice
Mexican customs officers are about to gain a freer hand over imports that look too cheap. The Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies has approved President Claudia Sheinbaum’s bill against undervaluation, which scraps the rule that a declared value must sit at least 50 per cent below that of identical or similar goods before certain precautionary seizures (embargos precautorios) can proceed. Customs will also be able to open audits on its own initiative whenever the declared value falls below the transaction value set by the valuation rules. The bill creates no new levy and would take effect on 1 January 2027. Following the committee vote on 1 October, it reaches the floor next week alongside the Digital Economy Law.
The 20 per cent figure in the headlines determines how importers get their goods back. Where the gap is below 20 per cent, a seized shipment can be released against cash or a deposit in a customs guarantee account (cuenta aduanera de garantía); at 20 per cent or more, only cash will do. The same figure replaces 50 per cent as the trigger for a presumed infringement under regimes that let importers defer duties at the border. Seizure itself is left with no threshold at all, so where it applies, a 5 per cent difference can stop a container. Take a shipment declared at US$70 when identical goods clear at US$100. Today, that 30 per cent gap sits comfortably inside the 50 per cent threshold. Under the reform, the goods can be held and released only once the importer has put down cash. The price may be perfectly honest, reflecting a volume discount, a global supply contract or preferential terms with a long-standing supplier. The bill provides for the return of both goods and deposit once the importer shows the value was set lawfully, so everything rides on the paperwork: the negotiation, the contract and the valuation method need to be documented before anyone asks.
The most detailed objection comes from Gustavo de Hoyos, a deputy for Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), who accepts that undervaluation does real damage. Shoe workshops in León and garment makers in Puebla, he writes, know what it means to compete against goods declared at absurd prices. His complaint is that the bill folds investigation and seizure into a single step. The explanatory statement concedes that a price gap is no proof of wrongdoing and refers to objective risk factors, yet those factors never make it into the text of the law. Meanwhile, costs mount from the moment goods are stopped: storage, demurrage, halted production lines and seasonal stock that misses its window. The bill is silent on who pays when the importer turns out to be right, and bonded warehouses already run close to capacity. He also finds the cash-only rule an odd demand from a government busy legislating against cash.
The committee’s most consequential change lies in the transitional provisions. Seizures for undervaluation will apply only to the goods, and under the procedures, that the customs authorities set out in rules to be issued before the reform takes effect. Trade practitioners who followed the negotiation read this as a partial win. The bill falls short of what foreign trade needed, they say, but the power to seize goods on the strength of a price comparison at the border, which pushes transaction value into the background despite its primacy under international valuation standards, will now be confined to specific sectors. The committee also amended the fines regime: where hydrocarbons and petroleum products are involved, failing to file documents or declarations, or to transmit information electronically, will cost 50 to 100 per cent of the goods’ commercial value. The Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) proposed adding the suspension of customs brokers’ licences as a penalty, lost the vote and backed the amendment anyway.
That narrowing shifts the real decision to a set of administrative rules nobody has yet seen. Which sectors make the list, and on what evidence, will matter more to importers than anything Congress votes on next week. Critics who ask whether the reform tackles the causes of undervaluation or only its effects, and who will watch the watchers, now have a document to follow. After a fuel-smuggling scandal that opposition deputies traced to corruption within the customs system itself, a list of sectors drafted by that same system is a modest safeguard.
Lend the car, keep the fine
Car owners in Mexico City will keep paying speed-camera fines, regardless of who was driving. On 1 October the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) voted six to two to reject a draft ruling by Justice Giovanni Figueroa Mejía, which would have struck down parts of the capital’s traffic regulations and of its law on the use of technology for public security. The same majority then approved, without debate, a rival draft by Justice Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra upholding the rules (amparo directo en revisión 1555/2026). One of the claimants had challenged 13 speeding fines.
The majority separated the offence from the bill. The person at the wheel commits the infraction; the owner can be made jointly liable for its financial consequences, which, the Court held, is not the same as blaming the owner for someone else’s conduct. Because the camera evidence can be challenged, the owner retains a means of defence. Figueroa, joined only by Justice María Estela Ríos González, argued that cameras identify the vehicle but rarely the driver, so shifting the payment onto the owner raised a constitutional problem.
Delivery fleets, rental firms and leasing companies are the registered owners of thousands of vehicles driven by other people, and the ruling confirms that the fine lands on them by default. Recovering it from an employee or customer is a matter for the contract. Earlier this year the Court held that the deadline for challenging such a fine runs only from the moment the owner learns of it. Owners therefore have more time to object, but fewer grounds on which to do so.
After Torreón, the platforms are put on notice
The federal government will draft a presidential decree requiring social media platforms to detect, report and remove content that directly incites violence, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced on 2 October. The announcement came a day after two former pupils armed with knives killed a deputy head and injured four people at a secondary school in Torreón, Coahuila. An inter-ministerial working group, coordinated by the Office of the Legal Counsel of the Federal Executive (CJEF) under Luisa María Alcalde, starts work next week. Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said the decree would oblige platforms to remove posts and comments promptly and to set up channels for coordinating with the authorities.
The focus on platforms comes from the investigation. The security cabinet says it found similar patterns of online communication across recent school attacks, including cases in Colima and Morelos, and Coahuila prosecutors say the two 18-year-old brothers idolised and sought to copy similar types of attacks abroad. Sheinbaum put the burden squarely on the companies, saying platforms must prove they are safe places for minors. The weekly Etcétera noted the shift in emphasis from a president who usually traces the roots of violence to a lack of economic opportunity.
The package goes beyond the decree. The National Intelligence Centre (CNI) will step up monitoring of social networks, forums and messaging services, with the caveat that viewing such content is a warning sign rather than a crime in itself. The Public Education Ministry (SEP) will expand its emotional-literacy programme, install confidential reporting boxes and ban mobile phone use in primary and secondary schools from November. The government will also seek legal reforms so that children cannot open accounts without an adult’s involvement.
The legal questions start with the instrument. A presidential decree can organise the executive branch, but imposing obligations backed by penalties on private companies normally requires a statute, and the telecoms framework passed last year gave the authorities no general power over content moderation. The government’s own experience with that law should counsel caution: a provision allowing the state to block platforms was withdrawn in 2025 after critics called it censorship. Sheinbaum has promised precise definitions, drafted with experts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), so that the rules do not slide into censorship. That promise will be tested on hard cases: a clip of violence abroad can be news, commentary or instruction, depending on who posts it and why.
The intelligence component deserves as much scrutiny. Expanded monitoring of messaging services touches privacy and data-protection rules that the government is still bedding down after dismantling the transparency institute. Platforms will want to know whether ‘reporting to the authorities’ means flagging content or handing over user data, and under what legal process. For TikTok, Meta and their peers, the immediate task is to get into the working group before the definitions are written. A decree drafted in a week of shock and grief tends to be broad, and broad rules tend to be selectively enforced.
Chatter Box
A quinceañera without the ballroom for Morena
The Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) has turned fifteen. Andrés Manuel López Obrador established it as a civil association at the Auditorio Nacional on 2 October 2011. The electoral authority granted it party registration in 2014; four years later it won the presidency and, in 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum’s coalition took 59.75 per cent of the vote. The leadership had wanted to return to the Auditorio Nacional for the anniversary, but the venue was unavailable; instead, the occasion has been marked with events across the country. The milestone comes days after Morena finished selecting coordinators for the seventeen governorships up for election in 2027, a process that has left grievances and divisions in its wake. Fifteen years on, the party’s main opposition sits within its own ranks.
Cofepris and the FDA read the same results differently
Mexico’s health regulator (Cofepris) has said there is no conclusive evidence linking Mexican produce to the Salmonella Javiana and Cyclospora outbreaks in the United States, following the FDA’s closure of both investigations on 2 October. The salmonella samples tested negative. The Cyclospora case is less tidy: the FDA found the parasite in two environmental samples in Guanajuato, one from a wastewater pond and one from a drainage ditch beside the fields, but acknowledged that it could not establish how the contamination occurred. Taylor Farms has blamed an independent grower, which it has since dropped, and has kept its facilities in central Mexico closed. For exporters, an FDA file closed without a culprit is cold comfort.
Directo a México signs off
The Banco de México (Banxico) has announced that Directo a México, the programme it has run jointly with the US Federal Reserve (Fed) for 25 years to move money from the United States to Mexico, will close on 20 November. Banxico said the decision followed the Fed’s notice that it would discontinue the cross-border transfers made through the scheme, part of a wider withdrawal from other international payment corridors. The programme offered a flat fee and exchange rate regardless of the amount sent, showed recipients the rate applied and the original dollar sum, and carried the backing of both central banks. It was never a major channel: in July it handled 669 transfers worth US$2.24 million, roughly 0.04 per cent of the more than US$5 billion Mexico receives in remittances each month. Still, its closure removes one of the cheapest options for Mexicans sending money home at a time when flows are already softening. Remittances fell 3.6 per cent year on year in August to US$5.45 billion, ending six consecutive months of growth. Banxico has promised an orderly wind-down.
CNDH backs a right to die, with conditions
The Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) has come out in favour of regulating the right to a dignified death, provided any law meets a high standard of legal certainty. In a statement, the commission said the Ley Trasciende and related initiatives were compatible with the progressive expansion of human rights, but stressed that it was not advocating a ‘right to suicide’. Any framework for irreversible end-of-life decisions, it argued, must guarantee full information, proper medical assessment, capacity to understand the decision, freedom from coercion and the chance to reconsider, along with mechanisms to detect violence, financial motives or family pressure. Nor should it come at the expense of palliative care. Autonomy, the CNDH warned, cannot become a way of shifting the health system’s failings onto patients. On conscientious objection, it recalled its 2018 constitutional challenge (acción de inconstitucionalidad 54/2018), which led the Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) to strike down Article 10 Bis of the Ley General de Salud in 2021 for lacking safeguards. Public institutions must guarantee non-objecting staff, it said, and health workers acting under any new law should be exempt from criminal liability.
Contact:
Laura Camacho
Executive Director Miranda Public Affairs