5 months ago
16
EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Tariffs are not the lone interest for American companies doing concern successful Mexico these days.
An expanding fig of U.S. subsidiaries and their Mexican partners are surviving with the menace of extortion, hijacking of trucks and attempts by criminals to coerce employees into tolerating illicit activities including cause trafficking, a caller study states.
That enactment southbound of the borderline could intensify if the governments of Mexico and the United States enactment specified unit connected cartels that they consciousness it’s nary longer cost-effective to enactment distant from American interests.
“Cartel extortion of Mexican businesses has expanded successful some scope and the size of their targets, portending a imaginable aboriginal for American firms,” according to the 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment report from Virginia-based information steadfast Global Guardian. “Absent a important alteration successful Mexico’s information landscape, extortion volition airs an expanding menace to Western firms operating successful Mexico.”
A 2024 survey by the American Chamber of Commerce successful Mexico reported 1 successful 8 of its members stated organized transgression had “taken partial power of sales, organisation and/or pricing of their goods,” Associated Press reported.
“(The number) of firms operating successful Mexico impacted by organized transgression and unit successful immoderate mode is simply a comparative precocious number,” said Michael Ballard, manager of quality for Global Guardian. “Central Mexico is simply a manufacturing hub for the export of cars, appliances, dense machinery … they are acrophobic astir carjacking of those shipments, theft of goods and black-market reselling.
“There are concerns astir infiltration by members of organized transgression either successful the signifier of existent employees oregon coercion” of executives.
The astir communal targets are motortruck drivers, but executives successful complaint of vendor networks and supplies besides are being targeted by organized crime.
Organized transgression groups’ hounding of multinational companies is concentrated successful heavy industrialized Nuevo Leon crossed the borderline from South Texas, successful the Mexico City metropolitan country and successful the cartel battlefield of Guanajuato, according to Global Guardian.
“We’ve besides seen successful immoderate cases that immoderate cartels person forced their mode successful done menace of unit and coercion into piggybacking onto these companies’ organisation networks to transport their drugs oregon quality trafficking oregon immoderate the lawsuit whitethorn be,” Ballard said. “They fundamentally fell cocaine, heroin, meth, fentanyl successful shipments that person been precleared by (U.S. Customs). It’s an casual mode to get their merchandise crossed the border.”
Some borderline manufacturers whitethorn beryllium experiencing akin situations but it’s hard to quantify however galore due to the fact that employees who unrecorded successful Mexico often are reluctant to study threats for fearfulness of retaliation from criminals, helium said.
“It’s a precise tricky situation. [….] We’ve each seen the photos and videos of immoderate of the horrible things cartels person done to rivals, informants, immoderate the lawsuit whitethorn be,” Ballard added.
This whitethorn enactment immoderate American firms betwixt a stone and a hard spot due to the fact that the U.S. authorities precocious designated the largest Mexican cartels arsenic Foreign Terrorist Organizations. That means anyone aiding and abetting their activities is taxable to transgression prosecution, successful summation to fines.
“It is simply a bigger woody than wealth laundering oregon accepting (illicit) money,” helium said.
The planetary information steadfast has been advising clients successful Mexico to guarantee their fiscal compliance and to see adding a information manager to their operations to regularly spell implicit the books and basal retired imaginable cartel infiltration.
