Just a day after the Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming that U.S. Federal agents worked operations in Mexico disguised as Marines and carrying Mexican weapons, Mexico’s Naval Secretariat called the article false.
“We strongly deny that authorities from the U.S. or from any other country for that matter have participated with Mexican military personnel during tactical field operations against organized crime members while using Mexican uniforms and weapons,” Mexico’s Naval Secretariat said in a prepared statement issued to Breitbart Texas.
The harsh denial comes after the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that Deputy U.S. Marshals had been operating in Mexico disguising themselves as Mexican Marines in order to apprehend drug capos. The article claimed that one of those agents had been shot in July during a firefight where half a dozen cartel capos were gunned down.
In the past, the close cooperation between U.S. law enforcement and the Mexican military has resulted in the apprehension of top drug lords such as the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf cartel, the Zetas and others. The Wall Street Journal article claimed that U.S. agents had gone beyond just sharing information and took an actual role in the operations, a claim that the Mexican navy denied.
“Our institution is constantly receiving sensitive high tech equipment from the U.S. government which requires field training that is usually done by agents, some of which are the U.S. marshals,” the statement provided to Breitbart Texas shows.
In regards to the claims that a Deputy U.S. Marshal was shot in the Mexican State of Sinaloa during a clash with cartel hitmen, the Mexican navy stated that the information was partly accurate since the U.S. agent had been in a training mission helping the military, but not as a participant in a drug raid when the shooting began.
Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter @ildefonsoortiz