Mexican governor and mayor indicted by U.S. for drug trafficking step down

Sinaloa state Gov. Ruben Rocha waves as he takes part in an annual earthquake drill in Culiacan, Mexico, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

MEXICO CITY — Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party in northwestern Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step down from their posts after the United States charged them and eight other serving and former politicians and security officers with drug trafficking in a bombshell indictment that has shaken Mexico’s political establishment.

In a short video announcement posted at midnight Friday, Gov. Ruben Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the powerful Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle drugs into the U.S. in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.

“My conscience is clear,” said Rocha, a prominent ally of Sheinbaum’s mentor, former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. “To my people and to my family, I can look you in the eye because I have never betrayed you, and I never will.”

But he said he would take a temporary leave of absence from the position he has held for six years to defend himself against what he called the “false and malicious” allegations and cooperate with the Mexican government’s investigation.

Juan de Dios Gamez Mendivil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital Culiacan named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges. The city’s comptroller became interim mayor on Saturday.

As governor and mayor, Rocha and Gamez Mendivil enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution, requiring Mexico’s Congress to first impeach them if they are to face charges. Their decision to take temporary leave rather than resign allows them to retain their immunity.

Sheinbaum, who has struggled to strike a balance between the interests of her progressive Morena party and pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to step up the fight against cartels, says she hasn’t seen credible evidence against the 10 indicted officials but vowed that Mexican authorities would gather their own information.

She declared that the officials would be tried in Mexico, not the U.S., if “irrefutable” evidence emerged linking them to cartel crime -- a move that risks backlash from an American administration that has threatened military action against cartels on Mexican soil.

“We will never subordinate ourselves because this is a matter of the dignity of the Mexican people,” she said Friday.

Pending investigation, the Mexican attorney general’s office said it would not arrest Rocha or the other accused officials, as requested by the U.S.

Rocha, a point person for the hands-off “hugs not bullets” approach to dealing with organized crime that Lopez Obrador pioneered and Sheinbaum has since ditched, insisted in the video that the indictment represents a political attack on Morena.

“I will not allow myself to be used to harm the movement to which I belong -- one that has improved the lives of millions of Mexican men and women,” he said.

Born in the same town as the notorious Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo,” Rocha has been embroiled in scandal involving the Sinaloa cartel before. In 2024, he was named in a published letter written by a then-Sinaloa cartel capo who was kidnapped by leaders of a rival faction and handed off to U.S. law enforcement. In the letter, the capo said that he was on his way to meet with Rocha when he was abducted.