Amid the Iran War and midterm U.S. electioneering, most Americans probably missed a potentially game-changing shift in President Donald Trump’s war against Mexico’s drug cartels. The administration has pivoted to a consequential new tactic that, according to some Mexico experts, could cripple the cartels if expanded. Though it has received little U.S. press coverage, this new strategy has the potential to be more effective than anything ever tried.

The shift is epitomized by a recent 34-page Department of Justice indictment that named ten past and present senior government officials of Mexico’s ruling Morena party in Sinaloa State, which is home base for the Sinaloa Cartel. All ten have denied wrongdoing.

The indictment alleged that Governor Rubén Rocha Moya (who briefly stepped down but has returned) and his current and former security service appointees took “veritable fortunes” in bribe money to dramatically aggravate America’s crisis of fentanyl-related deaths.

Allegedly, Moya’s suited coterie tasked the cartel with murdering, threatening, and kidnapping political opponents and helped its leaders torture rivals to death, including at least one suspected U.S. law enforcement informant and his relatives. The indictment can help raise American awareness of how tightly Sinaloa State officials and the cartel allegedly enrich and empower one another.

But the major significance of the indictment is that it breaks sharply with a long U.S. tradition of regarding Mexico’s political elite as largely untouchable. In the past, standard operating strategy was only to target cartel workers and leaders, who were quickly replaced, rather than the political class that has shielded the whole system from any lasting damage. U.S. experts on cartel politics tend to agree that attempts to eliminate the problem will fail unless the attack starts with Mexico’s political system.

“In all these years, going after the political class was the one thing that would show we mean business, but we were never that serious about fighting this war,” said Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen, lawyer, and professor at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. “You’ve not seen a systemic attack on the political elite. The metrics of success were always how many tons of cocaine were seized and how many thugs were arrested. It was never a fight against the political structure, which is the only way to go after cartels.”

Jaeson Jones, a retired captain for the Texas Department of Public Safety and Newsmax border correspondent, said the intelligence community long recognized that Mexico’s untouchable politicians are indispensable to cartel tenacity.

“That’s the intelligence we’ve been receiving for decades,” Jones said. “What’s new is that we’re targeting them. The big takeaway is, if a piece of the company that was never a U.S. government focus is now a priority, then the cartels…end—at least as we know them today.”

Corruption from Top to Bottom

The indictment accurately describes the Sinaloa Cartel as “one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in the world,” not only for its “thousands of murders” in Mexico but also for facilitating “the massive increase in fentanyl distribution into the United States” that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans since 2021.

Covering the period from 2017 to early 2026, the indictment purports to show how high Mexican government officials conspired with the three sons of captured Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the so-called “Chapitos” who run the cartel’s most powerful faction. Every month, the corrupt officials took their cut from a box full of cash from the cartel.

At the top of the food chain was Governor Moya, elected in 2021, who appointed or influenced the selection of Sinaloa State’s state and local police forces, as well as prosecutors. Moya allegedly owed the Chapitos leaders for ordering operatives to steal the ballots of Moya’s opponents. The indictment also alleges that they kidnapped and intimidated opposition candidates to quit and used guns and paddles to force voters to vote for Moya.

In exchange for those campaign services and a lot of cash, Governor Moya let the cartel produce fentanyl, smuggle drugs, and kill rivals “with impunity.” He also let the Chapitos choose their own preferred officials to run law enforcement agencies.

Enrique Diaz Vega, a local businessman selected to serve as the Secretary of Administration and Finance, handed over the names of Moya’s political opponents “so that the Chapitos could threaten and force those opponents to drop out of the gubernatorial race,” the indictment alleges.

Moya also reportedly stacked the state’s Attorney General’s office with corrupt prosecutors like Deputy Attorney General Dámaso Castro Zaavedra and several others with access to federal law enforcement information. Beyond releasing accidentally arrested cartel operatives, their job was to warn the Chapitos of planned U.S.-backed law enforcement operations against drug labs and weapons depots so “the Chapitos could destroy or move evidence…”

Then there is the current mayor of Culiacán, a city well-known as Mexico’s production hub for U.S.-bound fentanyl. Mayor Juan De Dios Gámez Mendivil (who took an extended leave of absence following the indictment) is charged with creating a sort of free enterprise zone for the Chapitos drug trafficking operations free of local government interference.

A particularly venal participant in these operations, as the indictment describes them, was Culiacán Police Department Commander Juan Valenzuela Millán. In addition to lending the cartel 40 police officers to work in and protect its drug operations, he personally helped the Chapitos kidnap and murder enemies. In October 2023, Millán helped kidnap a confidential source working with U.S. law enforcement and some of his relatives, including a 13-year-old boy. The Chapitos are said to have tortured and killed some of them, apparently including the boy.

What Happens Next

The biggest looming question is whether the Trump Administration plans to continue this line of attack beyond Sinaloa State. Early signs suggest that doing so might set off a cascade of salutary political changes in Mexico.

President Claudia Sheinbaum must surely fear catastrophic political fallout if the administration continues to pursue this approach. The indictment has set off a serious diplomatic row, as she defiantly refuses to extradite her own party’s accused leaders.

But this might just be the beginning. A New York Times report indicates that many other frightened Mexican politicians are now volunteering their testimonies to the U.S. in exchange for immunity. Should Trump’s DOJ press on, a door should open for opposition parties to upend the Morena party’s lock on the presidency and 23 of Mexico’s 32 states, Professor Nieto-Gomez said.

It is in America’s national interest that it should.

“This might just be the only way to actually take down the political state,” Nieto-Gomez said. “Otherwise, it’ll be the same game we’ve been playing since the 1950s.”