Chihuahua prosecutors said on Tuesday that their investigation found no evidence that Gov. María Eugenia “Maru” Campos Galván knew about or authorized the involvement of U.S. agents in the April raid on a meth lab. The statement came after Guillermo Arturo Zuany Portillo, a former state prosecutor, told The New York Times that Campos did know the CIA was in Chihuahua.
Mexico’s security secretary, Omar García Harfuch, said on Tuesday that both state and federal prosecutors have arrest warrants out for Zuany, who headed Chihuahua’s Operaciones Estratégicas y Antisecuestro unit. In Ciudad Juárez, Campos said the issue was for the courts and that Zuany should tell a judge what he told the newspaper.
Fall 2025 to April 18 — The training and the lab discovery
In fall 2025, Zuany introduced a CIA officer to the Chihuahua state police and told them the officer was there to help establish a special operations unit, according to the Times. The Times reported that U.S. agents trained state police officers and took part in some missions over more than six months. At an October hearing, Chihuahua prosecutors presented hotel and rental-car records and accounts from state officers who had understood the Americans to be U.S. Embassy personnel.
On April 18, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) Director Pedro Román Oseguera Cervantes told Zuany’s office that officers had found clandestine drug labs during the operation near El Pinal in the municipality of Morelos, according to a case file reviewed by La Razón. The Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) says it got a call from Chihuahua about the lab that day, after the state had already carried out the operation.
April 19 — The calls after the crash
Early the following morning, a vehicle en route from El Pinal to the city of Chihuahua went off a dirt road and into a ravine. Oseguera, his bodyguard Manuel Genaro Méndez Montes, and two Americans were killed. The Times identified the Americans as CIA officers. Chihuahua prosecutors refer to them as U.S. citizens in the file and have declined to say which agency they were with.
In an April 19 memo to then-state Attorney General César Jáuregui Moreno, Zuany wrote that state agent Jesús Manuel Campa Acosta called him at about 2:30 a.m. The memo lists all four people who died and describes the Americans as doing work involving drones, according to La Razón.
Campos says Jáuregui phoned her about the crash around 3 a.m., according to El País. She says he later told her that four U.S. agents had been there, two in the vehicle that crashed and two in another. In May, she told Radio Fórmula that she found out about the Americans after the crash.
April 20 to May 27 — What federal officials were told
On April 20, President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had been unaware of any direct security work between Chihuahua and U.S. Embassy personnel. Campos met with García Harfuch on April 23. He later said she told him at the meeting that she hadn’t known U.S. agents were working in the field. The next day, Campos announced a state investigation into the raid and the crash.
On April 25, Mexico’s Gabinete de Seguridad said that one of the Americans had entered the country as a visitor and the other on a diplomatic passport. It said neither man had formal accreditation to take part in security operations. Under rules added to Mexico’s Ley de Seguridad Nacional in 2020, state officials have three days to report any contact with foreign agents in writing to the federal foreign affairs and security ministries.
Jáuregui originally said the Americans had been picked up separately after the raid. He acknowledged that the information he had provided was inconsistent and resigned on April 27. Federal prosecutors called both Campos and Jáuregui as witnesses in May. Campos went to the FGR on May 27, objected to the summons in writing, and left without giving a witness statement.
October and November — The cases reach court
On Oct. 22, a state judge allowed the case against Jáuregui to go ahead on a charge of unlawful exercise of public office. Three days later, federal prosecutors announced that a judge had also allowed their treason case against him to proceed and had kept him in custody. Jáuregui has denied ordering, coordinating, or participating in the El Pinal operation.
Chihuahua prosecutors said on Tuesday that their file contains 150 statements from 86 people, together with documents and other evidence. They say the evidence indicates that information about the Americans’ involvement was withheld from Campos. The prosecutors said a judge found that account plausible when he allowed the state case against Jáuregui to go ahead. They said Zuany’s comments to the Times aren’t part of the file. The accounts made public so far don’t tell us who may have told Campos about the CIA before the crash or when.
On Wednesday, Sheinbaum said the federal investigation should go on. A judge granted Zuany temporary protection from arrest under the state warrant in October. The next hearing on his challenge to that warrant is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 13, at 11 a.m.