Official guidelines have been issued for law enforcement agents of foreign origin in Mexico

The guidelines that regulate the relationship of public servants with foreign agents were published in the Federal Official Gazette.

Mexico City.- The federal government published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) the guidelines to regulate the relationship of public servants with foreign agents, which establishes that the embassies must inform the Mexican government about the facts that may have a “significant impact on the life of the country, that represent a threat to National Security or that refer to the alleged criminal conduct of Mexican public servants or former public servants involved in security matters.”

At the end of last year, the Mexican Congress approved reforms to the National Security Law to regulate and monitor the activities of foreign agents in the country, and the guidelines published in the DOF derived from there. The modifications to the law came two months after the arrest in the United States of the former Secretary of National Defense, Salvador Cienfuegos.

FILE – In this April 16, 2016 file photo, Mexico’s Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda salutes soldiers at the Number 1 military camp in Mexico City. Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard wrote in his Twitter account Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau had informed him that Gen. Cienfuegos has been arrested in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

The guidelines established that all meetings between foreign agents and Mexican public servants must be authorized by the High Level Security Group of the National Security Council, to whom this information must be delivered:

  • meeting date,
  • the nationality of the agent,
  • the agency you work for,
  • the topic and purpose of the meeting.

The public servants who participate in these meetings must submit a written report to the Secretariats of Foreign Relations and of Security and Citizen Protection.

Foreign embassies accredited in Mexico must also send a monthly report to the same secretariats on bilateral cooperation agreements in security matters and that contribute to preserving national security.

The report from the embassies must contain the following information:

  1. The date the contact was made
  2. Type of contact
  3. The function of the public servant
  4. Public body
  5. Federal entity
  6. The municipality or territorial demarcation of Mexico to which the public servant belongs, subject and
  7. contact objective.

Finally, the guidelines published in the DOF warned that “foreign agents who commit crimes or infractions for violating the legal provisions that prohibit them from exercising functions reserved to the Mexican authorities will not enjoy any type of immunity.”

The publication in the DOF will take effect tomorrow and all provisions that oppose the guidelines will be repealed.

Similarly, it was indicated that the Ministry of Foreign Relations will sign an agreement with the Attorney General’s Office to establish exchange mechanisms, parameters to maintain the confidentiality and reserve of the information shared by foreign agents and by their embassies in order to preserve national security.