The intelligence gathered is provided to the Mexican government because it has the authority to act on the information
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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been conducting surveillance flights with drones over Mexico in partnership with the U.S. neighbor to the south, to gather intelligence on cartels and fentanyl laboratories, according to a senior U.S. official.
The Biden administration authorized the use of MQ9 Reaper drones, which the official said are not armed and "not lethal," over Mexico to focus on locating fentanyl labs and cartels.
President Donald Trump’s administration continued the program, which is being done in coordination with the Mexican government.
The intelligence is shared with the Mexican government, which in turn has the authority to act on shutting down any illegal activities associated with the cartels and labs.
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INDIAN SPRINGS, NV - NOVEMBER 17: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been reviewed by the U.S. Military prior to transmission.) An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nevada. The Pentagon has plans to expand combat air patrols flights by remotely piloted aircraft by as much as 50 percent over the next few years to meet an increased need for surveillance, reconnaissance and lethal airstrikes in more areas around the world. (Isaac Brekken/Getty Images)
"This is not the Pakistan model," a senior U.S. official told Fox News. "It is being done in partnership with the Mexican government."
Felipe de Jesus Gallo, the head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, said last year that since the 1990s "Mexico has been the champion of methamphetamine production, and now fentanyl."
He made the statement while speaking at a U.S.-Mexico conference on synthetic drugs in Mexico City.
Bundles of blue pills containing fentanyl intercepted at the border. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection )
Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually.
While fentanyl is not widely abused in Mexico, methamphetamine addiction is commonplace.
Gallo said that Mexican cartels have launched industrial-scale production of meth in many states throughout the country and now export the drug around the world.
"Believe me, methamphetamine production has become industrialized, it's not just in the mountains anymore," Gallo said. "We now expect to see (drug) laboratories not just in the mountains of Sinaloa and Sonora, but in Hidalgo as well, Puebla, and also in Jalisco."
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Hundreds of pounds of fentanyl and meth seized near Ensenada in October arrive for officials from Mexicos attorney generals office to be unloaded at their headquarter in Tijuana, Mexico, Tuesday, October 18, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
He was apparently referring to thousands of drug labs detected in previous years in the hills and scrublands around Culiacan, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa. Those clandestine, rural production sites were often bare-bones, improvised labs covered with tree branches and tarpaulins.
Now, the meth trade has become so lucrative and so sophisticated that Mexican meth is exported as far away as Hong Kong or Australia, and the cartels have found ways to avoid detection of their drug money.
Fentanyl production is also huge, though because it is a more potent drug, the volume is smaller.
Soldiers seized more than a half-million fentanyl pills in Culiacan in 2023, in what the army at the time described as the largest synthetic drug lab found to date.
Soldiers found almost 630,000 pills that appeared to contain fentanyl, the army said. They also reported seizing 282 pounds of powdered fentanyl and about 220 pounds of suspected methamphetamine.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.
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