Mexico is seeking “irrefutable evidence” to back up U.S. drug trafficking charges against a state governor and other officials before proceeding with extradition requests, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday.
The U.S. Justice Department unveiled charges on Wednesday against Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya and nine others, accusing them of working with the notorious Sinaloa poster to distribute “massive quantities” of narcotics to the United States.
Rocha Moya, a member of the Sheinbaum’s left-leaning Morena party and close ally of her predecessor, has governed the violent state since 2021. The other accused officials are also part of Morena.
“If the Office of the Attorney General… receives solid and irrefutable evidence in accordance with Mexican law, or if, in the course of its own investigation, it finds elements constituting a crime, it must comply” with the U.S. extradition request, Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference.
She added that if evidence was not provided or found, it will be evident that “the goal of these Justice Department accusations is political.”
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images 
Sheinbaum noted this was the first time that the U.S. had made narcotrafficking charges public against a sitting governor or other high-ranking official.
“We aren’t going to protect anyone,” she said.
Sheinbaum explained that among the proof presented was a piece of paper that shows alleged bribe payments to the accused politicians.
In a statement posted to social media, Rocha Moya said he “categorically and absolutely” rejects the charges from U.S. officials, saying the accusations were an “attack.”
“It is part of a perverse strategy to violate the constitutional order, specifically on national sovereignty, ” he wrote Wednesday in a post on X. “We will show them that this slander doesn’t have any sort of foundation.”
Rocha Moya was a staunch ally of Sheinbaum’s mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The governor enthusiastically backed the ex-president’s “Hugs, Not Bullets” policy, which involved avoiding direct confrontation with powerful drug cartels. López Obrador built a political platform by railing against endemic corruption plaguing Mexican politics.
The indictment alleges some of those named have themselves participated in the Sinaloa cartel’s campaign of violence and retribution.
The indictment alleged that they were closely aligned with the Sinaloa cartel faction known as the Chapitos, which is run by the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the ex-cartel leader now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
According to a 2023 U.S. indictment, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”