FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on June 4 that the United States will need a “whole lot more from Mexico” to deal with drug cartels and stop the flow of narcotics into the country.
Speaking to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Wray was asked about Mexico’s cooperation with the United States in light of the country’s electing a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to succeed Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
“Let me put it this way: While we have had some successes here and there in terms of extraditions and so forth, and I appreciate those, and I’m grateful to our Mexican partners for those … we need a whole lot more from Mexico than we’ve gotten in terms of shutting down the cartels and stopping the flow of the precursors,” Mr. Wray said, referring to precursor chemicals to manufacture illicit drugs.
He added: “I mean, I could go on and on. So, I’m grateful for the successes we have had, but we need a heck of a lot more.”
Also in the hearing, Mr. Wray made note of an FBI raid in New Mexico that found enough fentanyl to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Agents, he said, also found “hand grenades, ballistic vests, you know, the whole nine yards” during the raid.
At one point, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked: “If you took the major Mexican drug cartels, which also traffic people into the United States and turned them upside down and shook them, President Lopez Obrador would fall out of their pockets. Wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know that I can comment on the specific individual’s corruption other than through cases that we bring. But I understand the point that you’re making for sure,” Mr. Wray said in response.
The FBI director made his comments in light of a request to Congress for $11.3 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, or around $660 million more than the previous year.
Jewish Community Targeted
He added that threats against Jewish people in the U.S. have been elevated since the Hamas attack targeting Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, sparking the subsequent, months-long war in Gaza.“We have seen a rouges’ gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies,” Mr. Wray said.
“Just in the time I have been FBI director, we have disrupted multiple terror attacks around U.S. cities. I would be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at the same time.”
“Religiously motivated hate crimes, close to 60 percent of them, are targeted at the Jewish community,” Mr. Wray testified.
He added that the agency is “increasingly” concerned about “the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, not unlike an attack we saw in the Russian theater.”
Mr. Wray has delivered similar warnings to Congress in recent months as he has pushed for more funding for his bureau or to seek passage of a bill renewing a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was ultimately passed in mid-April.
Again, he issued a warning on the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their “relentless efforts to steal our intellectual property,” although he did not provide more statements about the CCP this time around.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Mexican Embassy for comment on Mr. Wray’s statement.
