Pressure on Mexico after two e officials surrender to US over alleged cartel ties

Key points

• Pressure is mounting on Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, after two former top officials from the country’s Sinaloa state – both members of her Morena party – gave themselves up to US authorities over alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
• The state’s former security minister Gerardo Mérida Sánchez crossed the border into Arizona last week and was taken into custody by US marshals, Mexico’s security ministry said.
• Sinaloa’s former finance minister, Enrique Díaz Vega, was taken into custody in New York.
• Both Mérida and Díaz were charged last month as part of the indictment of 10 Sinaloa officials including Governor Rubén Rocha Moya for alleged ties to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, accusing them of aiding in the large-scale importation of illicit drugs into the United States.
• Moya has called the charges “completely untrue and without any basis”.