The Treason Test
The decision by the Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) to charge César Jáuregui, Chihuahua’s former state prosecutor, with treason for allowing CIA agents to participate in a drug raid has divided Mexico’s political class, but along unusual lines. Morena and its supporters have backed the arrest, but so has Chihuahua’s opposition PAN governor and Jáuregui’s former boss, Maru Campos. Other PAN figures and many commentators have denounced it as a political witch-hunt, exposing an increasingly bitter split within the party ahead of the 2027 elections.
Jáuregui, who resigned in April, was detained by state police on 17 October on charges of unlawful exercise of public office and coalición. That evening, the FGR announced a federal warrant for alleged treason. Around midnight on 18 October, as Jáuregui left a courthouse where a state judge had allowed him to face the local charges at liberty, federal agents arrested him. Both cases stem from an operation at El Pinal, in the municipality of Morelos, on 17–19 April, in which CIA personnel helped dismantle a drug laboratory.
César Jáuregui, former state attorney general of Chihuahua. (Photo: Screen capture)
The operation became public only after two CIA officers, the director of Chihuahua’s Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), Pedro Román Oseguera, and a bodyguard died in a road accident returning from the raid on 19 April.
After meeting President Claudia Sheinbaum in Ciudad Juárez on 19 September, Campos agreed that the federal investigation would remain with the FGR. Her account of responsibility has shifted. In May, she said the operation had been authorised by Román Oseguera, without her knowledge. Last week, she blamed Jáuregui for independently involving CIA agents. Four days later, state prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant.
On 19 October, Campos publicly backed the arrest, saying her government’s investigation had been completed and the matter was now for the courts. “No one who has served in my government is above the law,” she said, stressing that foreign security cooperation must follow institutional channels. Sheinbaum described Jáuregui’s conduct as “very irresponsible”.
Governor Maru Campos in a video she posted to social media on 19 October. (Photo: Screen capture)
Campos’s position is politically revealing. The scandal had threatened to engulf her administration, with Morena legislators previously seeking to strip her immunity. Distancing herself from Jáuregui may help contain that threat and improve relations with Sheinbaum. Indeed, the president has since said there is no evidence so far that Campos personally authorised the operation.
There is also a local electoral dimension. Jáuregui had sought the PAN nomination for mayor of Chihuahua in 2027, while Campos favours her government secretary, Santiago de la Peña. His lawyer alleges that the prosecution is partly intended to eliminate a political rival, an accusation that remains unproven. The broader political calculation is clear enough: Campos may be protecting her administration and preferred successors, but at the cost of alienating a substantial part of her own party.
The state charges, each carrying two to five years in prison, concern allowing US personnel to participate in AEI activities from October 2025, not just the April raid. Prosecutors cited interviews with dozens of officers who had encountered the foreigners and identified them as US embassy personnel. Jáuregui’s defence argues that the state prosecutor’s office cannot investigate its own former head and that jurisdiction belongs to the anti-corruption prosecutor. The argument raises an obvious conflict-of-interest concern.
The federal case is more consequential. Attorney General Ernestina Godoy argues that allowing foreign agents to exercise powers reserved for Mexican federal authorities violated national sovereignty and the constitutional division of powers. Details of the FGR investigation published by El Universal suggest the two CIA officers were armed and participated directly in dismantling the laboratory.
But whether that constitutes treason is another matter. Under Article 123 of the Federal Criminal Code, the central offence requires conduct directed against Mexico’s independence, sovereignty or territorial integrity with the specific purpose of subjecting the country to a foreign power. Criminal law specialists argue that knowingly allowing unauthorised foreign agents to participate in a security operation does not, by itself, establish that purpose.
The distinction is fundamental. An operation can be unlawful, irresponsible and a serious breach of national security rules without necessarily constituting treason, an offence carrying five to 40 years in prison. Godoy’s argument describes an apparent violation of federal authority more readily than an intention to subordinate Mexico to another country. Other legal provisions may fit the alleged conduct more closely.
The classification also determines Jáuregui’s immediate liberty. Treason triggers mandatory pre-trial detention, whereas the state judge on 18 October allowed him to remain free under restrictions, including surrendering his travel documents and reporting monthly. The defence notes that he voluntarily appeared before the FGR in May. Those considerations carry little weight if the federal treason charge is accepted.
The parallel proceedings create further complications. Federal jurisdiction can absorb related state offences, while overlapping prosecutions based on the same conduct could prompt arguments about double jeopardy. There is also little established judicial precedent for applying treason in such circumstances. In the case of the alleged abduction of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a federal judge previously declined to issue a treason warrant.
Critics also point to an apparent double standard. Successive Mexican federal governments have allowed extensive CIA and other US intelligence operations on Mexican soil, including intelligence-sharing, joint planning and support for raids. A Reuters investigation in 2025 found that the CIA continued to operate in Mexico with the federal government’s consent. The distinction, officials argue, is that the Chihuahua operation involved armed US agents participating directly in a raid without federal authorisation. That is a legal difference, but it also raises the question of why cooperation long tolerated at the federal level should now attract a charge as grave as treason.
The state proceedings continue on 22 October, but Jáuregui’s liberty now depends principally on the federal case. The central question is whether a serious breach of national security rules can legally be stretched into treason. Politically, the case is already achieving something unusual: bringing a PAN governor closer to the Morena government while dividing her own party, just as Chihuahua prepares for a closely contested election.
Five Votes and a Vending Machine
Food and drink suppliers have lost their fight against the school junk-food ban, and the Supreme Court (SCJN) has made clear that their contracts offer no shelter. On 13 October the plenary resolved amparo reviews brought by companies that distribute food and drink in schools and held that the healthy-living guidelines issued by the Public Education Ministry (SEP) are constitutional. The plaintiffs included Coca-Cola subsidiaries, Maison Kayser and Mega Vending de México. The ban on products carrying front-of-pack warning seals also applies in upper-secondary and higher education, even where students are adults, and the majority held that the autonomy of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) gives it no exemption.
For suppliers, the most important finding concerns existing agreements. Contracts signed before the guidelines took effect do not release providers from complying, save for the exceptions in the transitional regime. Cafeteria concessions priced on the old rules must now be performed under the new ones, and any claim for lost revenue meets a Court that treats the measure as a valid use of health and education powers. The restrictions stop at the school gate, which is where marketing budgets will move. The SEP says it has faced 139 legal challenges since the guidelines were published on 30 September 2024. The remaining challenges now face a settled answer.
In a separate case, the Court voted six to two to grant amparo to Granix and Productos de Caliza against Nuevo León’s environmental tax on the extraction of stone materials (materiales pétreos), reaffirming its July holding that the levy invades the Federation’s exclusive taxing power. The state’s tax authority responded that the ruling covers only those companies, that states may still tax stone materials not subject to mining concessions and that it will step up collection. An amparo protects only the party that filed it, so quarries still paying need their own claims, within their own deadlines, though each repetition makes the argument easier to win in district court.
The Court has also changed how it decides who drafts a ruling. An algorithm now distributes cases at random among the justices’ chambers (ponencias), balancing workloads by number and type of case and replacing a system that required manual intervention. For litigants, predicting at filing which justice will draft the proposed ruling becomes harder. Related files still go to the chamber handling the main case, a draft that fails is reassigned at random among the justices who voted against it, and cases the Court attracts go only to those who voted to attract them. The plenary also keeps the power to assign a case directly in session.
An Amnesty by Any Other Name
Only one of the 426 reservations tabled to the 2027 Federal Revenue Law has survived the Chamber of Deputies. It is an amendment from Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the Chamber, and it grants relief from fines, surcharges and enforcement costs to individuals and companies, large taxpayers included, that owe taxes and pay them. The law passed by 340 votes to 109 in the early hours of 15 October and has gone to the Senate, which must approve it by 31 October. The opposition calls the amendment a disguised tax waiver (condonación). Whether it is one turns on what Article 28 of the Constitution means by ‘taxes’ when it prohibits their condonation, a ban Morena and its allies added in 2020.
Deputy Ricardo Monreal in Congress on 15 October. (Photo: Ricardo Monreal/X)
The programme already exists. The 2025 version covered debts from 2023 and earlier for taxpayers with income of up to MXN35 million. The 2026 edition raised that ceiling to MXN300 million and extended relief to debts from 2024 and earlier, while keeping large taxpayers out. Monreal said it reached 38,399 taxpayers and recovered MXN6.4 billion. His reservation to the twenty-first transitory article removes the income ceiling and the exclusion of taxpayers under the Large Taxpayers unit of the Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT), and keeps relief from fines, surcharges and enforcement costs at 100 per cent. Debts from 2025 or earlier qualify if the taxpayer files the outstanding returns, pays in a single instalment by 31 December 2027 and drops any litigation over the assessment. Monreal said the amendment followed President Claudia Sheinbaum’s meeting on 13 October with business leaders from the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE), the day before he tabled it.
His defence is formal. There is no condonation or exemption of taxes, he argued, only incentives on accessories, because applicants must first pay the tax they owe. The critics argue substance. For the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Emilio Suárez Licona said the reservation dresses condonations up as incentives to escape the constitutional ban. An incentive reduces a tax before the liability arises, he argued, whereas a condonation extinguishes an obligation that has already arisen and become final, which is what this reservation does. For the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), Federico Döring called it an unconstitutional clean slate.
Three legal points support the critics. First, under the Federal Tax Code, surcharges, fines and enforcement costs are accessories of the tax and share its legal nature, so a ban on condoning taxes plausibly reaches them; 100 per cent relief achieves by statute what a condonation achieves by decree. Second, the Supreme Court (SCJN) treats tax incentives as instruments for extra-fiscal ends, reviewed for equal treatment rather than against the principles of tax justice. Congress has wide latitude in designing them, but this one aims at collection and rewards those who paid late over those who paid on time. Third, the reservation gives no estimate of the revenue forgone or of how many taxpayers would take part. Monreal’s claim that up to 30 million taxpayers could benefit, including 16,000 large taxpayers, appears nowhere in the text.
The amendment closed a fortnight in which the Chamber cleared the revenue side of the economic package. On 6 and 7 October deputies approved reforms to the Customs Law and two new statutes: the General Law for the Strengthening and Harmonisation of Cadastres and Registries, and the Digital Economy Law for Digital and Electronic Payments, which promotes electronic payment and requires all three levels of government to accept it. On 14 October they sent the Senate a reform of the Impuesto sobre la Renta (ISR). Its centrepiece for business is a control on deductions and tax losses for companies with taxable income above MXN50 million. Past losses will offset only half of taxable profit, though they can be carried forward for 20 years rather than 10. The same reform widens the Régimen Simplificado de Confianza (RESICO) well beyond its current reach. Individuals will qualify with annual income of up to MXN5 million, against MXN3.5 million now, and companies with up to MXN50 million, against MXN35 million. The revenue law adds an optional VAT scheme of 7 per cent on total income for RESICO taxpayers, settled in the same return as ISR. For individuals who had outgrown the old ceiling, the change means ISR rates of 1 to 2.5 per cent and fewer filings; for family companies, simpler cash-basis taxation without the bookkeeping burden of the general regime.
Chatter Box
Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco in a Senate appearance on 14 October. (Photo: Roberto Velasco/X)
Two ministers, one neighbour
Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco and Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard spent last week telling Congress that the relationship with Washington is working. Appearing before the Senate on 14 October for the review (glosa) of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s second annual report, Velasco said Mexico’s sovereignty and national interest are not negotiable, then set out what cooperation has delivered. Monthly fentanyl seizures at the US southern border fell 67 per cent between October 2024 and August 2026, according to US Customs and Border Protection. On the other side of the account, the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) has sent 16 diplomatic notes to the State Department and filed 20 complaints with prosecutors over Mexicans injured or killed in US custody or during immigration operations.
Ebrard appeared before two Chamber of Deputies committees on 16 October. He said about 80 per cent of Mexico’s trade with the United States remains tariff-free and announced a fourth bilateral round of the USMCA review before the end of 2026, while acknowledging that there is still no deal on US tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars. At a press conference afterwards, he was asked about a Wall Street Journal report that talks on those tariffs had stalled because of opposition from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He denied that negotiations had paused and said he had never detected hostility towards Mexico from Lutnick. He also fielded questions about his own future. ‘Take me off the list,’ he said of the 2030 presidential succession.
The IMSS votes no
Staff at the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) have rejected their pay deal and taken to the streets. In a consultation on 14 October, union members voted down the 2026–2027 offer agreed by the leadership of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores del Seguro Social (SNTSS). The offer was 6.8 per cent in total: 2.9 per cent on base salary and 3.9 per cent on benefits. Workers want a direct 10 per cent rise in base pay, arguing that the offer falls below inflation.
The vote came a day before the deadline for settling the pay review. On 15 October the union’s general secretary, Rafael Olivos, accepted the result. The same day, the union asked the Centro Federal de Conciliación y Registro Laboral (CFCRL) to extend the deadline to 15 November to keep talking and avoid a strike, though members learned of this only two days later. Talks with IMSS director Zoé Robledo now cover medicine shortages, staffing, equipment and maintenance as well as pay.
The dissidents’ main target is now Olivos himself. On 16 October they blocked the Mexico–Pachuca motorway and promised further blockades until he resigns. They also want an extraordinary national congress to remove him and the union’s national executive, and an end to sanctions on members who speak out, which they call a ‘gag law’. A second national march is called for 21 October. On 15 October President Claudia Sheinbaum asked Robledo for a comprehensive plan, adding that no one is obliged to do the impossible. On Monday she said Finance Minister Édgar Amador would help Robledo find a better offer within the available resources. The extension gives the two sides until mid-November to agree one. A higher offer may settle the pay dispute, but no pay offer can resolve the demand for Olivos’s removal.
The certifiers, certified
The Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno announced on Sunday that the Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT) has revoked the licences of five authorised invoice certification providers (proveedores autorizados de certificación, or PACs). An audit by the SAT’s internal control body found that seven PACs had dealt with companies that invoice simulated transactions (empresas que facturan operaciones simuladas, or EFOS). Facturadorelectronico.com, DigiFact, FactureYa, EdiFactMx and Comercio Digital have lost their licences. The other two, which the ministry did not name, face revocation proceedings.
Some headlines called the providers factureras. They are not: they are the licensed intermediaries that validate and stamp electronic invoices (CFDIs), and that makes the finding more serious. Between them, the seven validate about 20.53 per cent of national invoicing, though the ministry gave no figure for how many invoices or how much money involved simulated operations. Clients of the revoked providers need a new certifier before they issue their next invoice. Revocation does not automatically invalidate CFDIs already stamped, but anyone who received them will want to check the issuers. The ministry said it would continue proceedings before the Tribunal Federal de Justicia Administrativa and the federal judiciary, which suggests it expects the providers to litigate.
Slots for routes
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has lifted the restrictions it imposed on Mexican airlines’ flights to the United States from Mexico City’s two airports, the Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez de la Ciudad de México (AICM) and the Aeropuerto Internacional Felipe Ángeles (AIFA). Its order of 16 October, effective immediately, revokes Order 2025-10-13 of 28 October 2025. That order hit Aeroméxico, Volaris and Viva Aerobus: it disapproved existing, proposed and future services, affected 13 existing and planned routes and barred new ones. Washington justified the measure as a response to breaches of the bilateral air transport agreement, notably favouritism towards Mexican carriers in slot allocation at the AICM and the forced relocation of cargo flights to the AIFA.
The price was paid in slots. Under a memorandum of consultations signed in Washington on 1 May 2026, Mexico agreed that US carriers which had flown cargo-only services from the AICM could apply for slots again. The DOT said Mexico had met most of its demands, including returning AICM slots to US carriers, and tied its decision to Mexico’s promise to hand back the rest once those airlines are ready to resume suspended flights. It will keep monitoring compliance. The Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) and the Secretaría de Infraestructura, Comunicaciones y Transportes (SICT) credited the memorandum. The Cámara Nacional de Aerotransportes (CANAERO), which represents the airlines, welcomed the outcome as bringing greater certainty for passenger and cargo services. Mexican carriers can now apply for new routes and frequencies. However, suspended flights do not resume automatically and no timetable has been set, so the commercial effect will show in next year’s schedules.
Smaller seas
Mexico has cut the area of the Upper Gulf of California closed to gillnets by 86.5 per cent. That leaves the vaquita, the world’s most endangered marine mammal, with a protected zone of 1,562 square kilometres. An agreement published by the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat) in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 14 October lifts the ban on about 10,000 of the 11,590 square kilometres closed in 2020. The core Zero Tolerance Zone (Zona de Tolerancia Cero), 225 square kilometres where restrictions are strictest, stays in place. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the rules also allow authorised gillnet fishing outside the reduced zone, create a special-use area for free and hookah diving and shorten the night-time fishing ban by three hours.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said on 15 October that the change balances biodiversity against the livelihoods of fishing communities in San Felipe, Baja California, and Golfo de Santa Clara, Sonora. Both depend almost entirely on fishing, and their fishermen kept fishing illegally under the ban. Marina Robles, Semarnat’s under-secretary for biodiversity, said the decision follows a recommendation from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to focus surveillance, since policing a vast area is impractical. Authorities said they took account of proposals from the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a leading vaquita expert who sits on the committee, backed concentrating enforcement where the animals are found. He added that the area still needs better tracking of fishing boats, closer monitoring and fishing gear that does not endanger the porpoise.
Scientists estimated last year that 7 to 10 vaquitas remain, down from around 600 in 1997. The collapse was driven largely by illegal gillnetting for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder can fetch up to US$10,000 in Asia. Critics say the government is legalising fishing it could not stop: vaquitas have been sighted outside the enforced zone, and most boats still lack the satellite monitoring devices ordered six years ago. Gerardo Ceballos, a biologist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), said the area had been cut without the capacity to enforce the rules within it. Both scientists agree on one point: if no more vaquitas are killed, the species can still recover.
Contacto:
Laura Camacho
Directora Ejecutiva de Asuntos Públicos de Miranda