Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back throughout a press convention Thursday on ideas that regulation enforcement within the nation labored carefully with the FBI to apprehend former Canadian Olympic snowboarder and alleged cocaine kingpin Ryan Wedding.
Instead, Sheinbaum mentioned Wedding had self-surrendered and was handed over to US authorities.
“We are never going to accept joint operations or operations by US federal or state forces on our territory,” Sheinbaum mentioned when requested about feedback made by FBI Director Kash Patel on the operation. “If we collaborate, they give us information and we also give them information, but the operations on our territory are Mexican forces, that must be very clear.”
On Friday, after coming back to the US with Wedding apprehended, Patel particularly thanked Sheinbaum, different Mexican officers “and the military and law enforcement officers of Mexico” for working “hand-in-glove with our teams on the ground there to apprehend (Wedding) last night in Mexico City.”
Patel’s feedback, made throughout a press convention on the California airport the place Wedding landed back within the US didn’t point out, nonetheless, that Wedding had surrendered.
Wedding, who’s accused of working with the Sinaloa Cartel to ship cocaine via Columbia to the US and Canada, had been hiding in Mexico for a decade, in accordance with officers.
Wedding pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking expenses earlier than a California court docket on Monday. His legal professional, Anthony Colombo, mentioned this week that Wedding didn’t give up and that US regulation enforcement was half of an arrest operation.
In a social media publish final week, Patel claimed the FBI had arrested Wedding as half of “a zero-margin, high-risk operation.”
“I’m not going to get into further discussion with the FBI director,” Sheinbaum mentioned Thursday, “but let it be clear that we are not going to accept operations, we always say this to President Donald Trump and they have seen that we have been making progress.”
Throughout the primary yr of Trump’s second time period, Sheinbaum has repeatedly pushed back on ideas that US regulation enforcement ought to be allowed to function within the nation, noting that Mexico will cooperate with its neighbor with out subordinating itself or permitting its sovereignty to be violated.
Mexico’s secretary of safety and citizen safety, Omar García Harfuch, and the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, have each mentioned that Wedding surrendered following the announcement of his arrest final week.
García Harfuch wrote on social media that Wedding “voluntarily surrendered” on the US Embassy in Mexico City the day earlier than he was transported by the FBI to the US. Johnson additionally referred to as it a “voluntary surrender.”
Patel, who was fast to tout the arrest of Wedding — one of the FBI’s high ten most needed — didn’t say throughout his press convention whether or not Wedding turned himself in. The FBI has not responded to NCS’s questions on Wedding’s give up.