‘it’s Constant Work’: Mexico’s New Ambassador Navigates A High-stakes Moment With Washington

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has not spoken to President Donald Trump about the criminal complaints her government filed Monday over the deaths of its citizens in ICE custody or during enforcement operations, Mexico’s new ambassador to the U.S. Roberto Lazzeri told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Lazzeri, in his first sit-down interview since becoming ambassador last month, said the Mexican attorney general, through the embassy, filed the complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as state and district prosecutors, while the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations has sent cease and desist letters to a detention center in California where four Mexican nationals died. Foreign Minister Robert Velasco also sent a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asking for additional oversight.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the criminal complaints or whether the two leaders have spoken.

Mexico’s actions, in response to an ICE agent killing Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week, come amid a tumultuous period in the bilateral relationship. Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico escalated after the deaths of two CIA agents in Chihuahua this spring, and after the U.S. unsealed federal indictments against 10 current and former Mexican officials, including the governor of Sinaloa and other members of the ruling Morena party.

The two countries are in the thick of negotiations over the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which is now entering a rolling, annual review process after the countries missed a July 1 deadline. And Trump has repeatedly strained the relationship by threatening some sort of military action south of the border to combat drug cartels.

“You cannot argue that Mexico is not a full-blown democracy, that, according to international law, and every international standard, we have to be able to decide for ourselves and also decide what happens inside our territory,” Lazzeri said, though he framed recent challenges as bumps in the road for the bilateral relationship.

“You're constantly having good times, bad times, and you're constantly solving them. The U.S.-Mexico relationship will never be finalized. It's constant work,” he added.

In a wide ranging interview, Lazzeri addressed the USMCA talks, Mexico's demand for transparency in the deaths of its citizens in U.S. custody and how Mexico is responding to Trump’s threats of unilateral military action against cartels.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you see the state of the bilateral relationship broadly, and also specifically the one between President Trump and President Sheinbaum?

I don't know if there's any other leader in the world that has spoken more times with President Trump. He has, of course, recognized her work, and actually he speaks of her very highly. I think President Sheinbaum also sees in President Trump a strong leader who has a strong mandate, and the relationship, it's one to take care of.

Politics always will get in the middle. Some of that can become noisy. But we're always dealing with the people that are doing the work. That has been nonstop since I came back to the government in 2020 and started having an active engagement with the U.S. government in 2023. I see how the two neighbors basically live with each other. You're constantly having contact.

The U.S., Mexico and Canada missed the July 1 date to renew USMCA, though talks are continuing. What do you see as the likely outcome from Mexico's point of view?

It's not just for the outcome from Mexico's point of view, it's for the region and the agreement.

I would like to go top-down. So, at the top, what do we want? We want a strong region. We want to be able to compete with non-market economies. We want to be able to bring manufacturing jobs. For that, we're thinking about producing as much as we can and reducing dependencies from other parts of the world. The three of us make sense together. We complement each other very well. You have all the innovation and technology in the U.S. Big population, a big market. You have natural resources in Canada that no other country has. Among the three of us, we have a strong energy position. We have a young and technical workforce. If you see only the top elements of what an economic alliance should be, everything is there.

Of course, in the meantime, this agreement that was born as the NAFTA architecture and then changed in 2016 now probably requires an additional review. But the objectives, what we want, the overall economic policies in each country are aligned towards keeping it. In the meantime, we have to deal with the little issues and the constituents and the industries that probably have not benefited as much as others.

Trade agreements and specifically USMCA — which goes further than a trade agreement, it's a co-production system — cannot be seen as a zero-sum game. We have to acknowledge the benefit of it and and and we have to acknowledge the importance of it to be able to compete with other other markets.

Do you think we're just going to roll into this annual review process, or is there any hope that there could be a more permanent renewal?

I come from the finance world. Business plans are never done on a yearly basis, specifically the ones that involve capital expenditure. It will be less than ideal to have this uncertainty circling around.

At the end, there's a baseline, which is we have an agreement and it's reviewed yearly. You could argue that, right now, there's 10 additional years that the three will stay there. But I do believe that if we're doing this additional effort to bring back additional industries, to be able to compete further with non-market economies, we need also to give investment a higher degree of certainty, and not only that, to get to the table and and be able to think jointly as the three three economies about how are we going to incentivize these new industries.

What are the key sticking points right now?

Transshipment, I would say, is the biggest worry. Transshipment is what is pushing for this probable renewal of rules of origin, and it's also what's driving the economic security conversation if we aim to have a common front against non-market economies. I think that's the sticking point.

What is the chance of there being some sort of side letter or side agreement — some sort of framework like the U.S. struck with other trading partners like you know the EU or the UK — and that being a precursor to the actual extension of the agreement for 16 years?

The main objective for at least two of us — I've heard from USTR, and I've heard from us, of course, but I haven't heard from Canada — is that we don't want to go to Congress. We want to have a process where this is renewed, and if there's additional commitments, we should not go that route. In that sense, I am less of a perfectionist in terms of, we should include all this in the agreement.

If there are side letters, side agreements, or side protocols that we can establish so we can take care of additional items, we're okay with that.

Would that side letter though then be a precursor to the 16-year extension, or is that on top of just this annual review process?

I believe that if we're adding commitments, we want the certainty of the renewal for 16 years.

President Trump has expressed his ambivalence toward USMCA. How much is that a factor that complicates negotiations?

Well, I believe that's pretty much the same that he was voicing in the early stages of the USMCA process. I believe that there's probably constituents who have some issues that they have voiced to the president. But overall, everybody can tell you that the amount of jobs that have been created by USMCA, the amount of trade, the amount of production just overwhelms specific worries about constituents or sectors. It's the best bet. I do believe that maybe he has opinions on specific items, but I do not believe that the U.S. can stand by itself or produce by itself, or that they don't need anything from other countries.

Since the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Trump has directly threatened Cuba, Colombia and even Mexico. How seriously does Mexico take that kind of talk about putting U.S. boots on the ground in Mexico?

Mexico is a full-on democracy. President Sheinbaum had a mandate where 68 percent of people voted for her. We're even choosing our Supreme Court officials.

Those are principles that are non-negotiable.

The White House just published yesterday a decrease in fentanyl deaths of 22 percent. Our security secretary today just informed that we have seized 500 tons of drugs, 2,000 kilograms of fentanyl and 5 million fentanyl pills, and 2,600 clandestine labs have been dismantled. We do believe that results are there. The cooperation is there, that no one knows better how to do these operations in Mexican territory than our public security ministry, our navy, and our army.

Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico escalated after the deaths of two CIA agents this spring, and after the U.S. unsealed federal indictments against 10 current former Mexican officials. Have tensions eased since then, or are those extradition requests still a friction point between the two countries?

Just starting with extradition, that's an ongoing daily basis process. We have requested, for example, more than 200 extraditions that are being reviewed by the U.S. authorities. A lot of them, the U.S. authorities have requested additional evidence. We see it as a normal process that is ongoing on a daily basis, and we're asking for additional information on these 10 requests, and as soon as we have it — and it’s up to the extent of the burden of proof that requires for us to execute an extradition, then by all means we’ll do so.

The other, I mean, we have been very clear. There's a national security law that establishes how foreign officials have to be credited. If there are U.S. officials operating Mexican territory that have not been properly credited, that's an issue.

On immigration, President Sheinbaum said last week that Mexico intends to file criminal complaints regarding the Mexican citizens who died in custody of U.S. immigration officials or while targeted by U.S. law enforcement, especially after a Mexican citizen was fatally shot in Houston. What is the status of those complaints, and has President Sheinbaum spoken with the president about it?

No, she hasn't spoken to the president about it, but those complaints were filed yesterday. Basically, we have four different actions. Our attorney general, through the embassy, filed a complaint with the Department of Justice. This embassy has filed complaints with state and district prosecutors. The government of Mexico, through the Ministry of Foreign Relations, has sent cease and decease letters at least to one company — a detention center, the one in Adelanto, because that's where four Mexican nationals have died — and Minister Velasco has sent a letter to High Commissioner Volker Türk of the United Nations.

The first three actions aim to have full, independent investigations, to preserve all evidence and to find what the truth is, and, in the cease and desist actions, that companies review their processes, that medical attention is given promptly, and that human rights are being taken care of, and, finally, the additional oversight from the United Nations of the human rights treatment of our nationals.

I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the World Cup. The World Cup was supposed to be this moment of North American unity. Has it been?

I believe that it has been a major success. I think a lot of people — not in Mexico, because Mexico has a big fan base for the sport — but especially in the U.S. and Canada, it's not the main sport that people follow. But the attendance record and the ambiance that you see at the stadiums has been a major success.

I was able to go to the International Police Corporation Center, in Virginia, and also in the Embassy of the U.S. in Mexico, where you see these huge spaces where policemen and police forces and intelligence people and they're from all around the world, all working together on a daily basis, finding the threats, tending to the threats. It is a North American success because this was able to happen because of strong coordination.