Goddard Calls Upon Mexico AG to Help Improve Border Law Enforcement

(Phoenix, Ariz. – August 1, 2009) Attorney General Terry Goddard will meet with Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza, Attorney General of the Republic of Mexico, and other senior Mexican law enforcement officials later today to discuss ways to improve cross-border investigations of border crimes, such as human, drug and weapons smuggling. Goddard is also calling upon Mora to use Mexican criminal statutes to prosecute cross-border drug smugglers who are caught in the U.S., but possess amounts of drugs that do not meet U.S. prosecution standards.   

Goddard, Mora and the other officials are meeting this weekend in Idaho as part of a bi-national conference of state attorneys general from the Western U.S. and Mexican federal prosecutors. 

This is the latest in Goddard’s ongoing work to improve cooperation and investigation techniques of state, local and federal law enforcement officials from both sides of the U.S. – Mexico border in order to more effectively combat organized border smuggling cartels.  

At this weekend’s conference, Goddard hopes to build upon successes achieved at a bi-national conference Goddard hosted in Phoenix in March 2008. The agreements reached at the March 2008 conference called for increased cooperation and information-sharing among law enforcement authorities in the two countries in human, drug and weapons trafficking. It also established the broadening of a legal provision in the Mexican criminal code to investigate and prosecute organized crime.  

Additionally, since January 2009, Goddard or his staff has been invited to brief senior Obama Administration officials on anti-money laundering techniques that will help choke off the flow of funds to Mexican drug cartels.