Is the CIA car bombing narcos in Mexico?

On March 28, a pickup truck exploded on a highway north of Mexico City, killing two alleged cartel members. One of the victims was identified as Francisco Beltrán, alias ‘El Payín,’ a reported lieutenant of Sinaloa Cartel kingpin ‘El Meño’.

The story went largely ignored in the U.S. But recent reports from The New York Times and CNN suggest that the killings may be part of an illegal campaign by the CIA’s Ground Branch inside of Mexico.

The allegations come just weeks after the deaths of two CIA officers in Chihuahua, Mexico as well as a U.S. indictment of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya on drug trafficking charges. Dissatisfied that Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly ruled out a U.S. military intervention against the country’s drug cartels, the Trump administration appears increasingly open to testing the limits of longstanding cooperation on security between Washington and Mexico City.

While it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction in the allegations, the sad truth is that they seem quite plausible. In 2025, the Trump administration designated groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) as foreign terrorist organizations, granting agencies like the CIA legal justification for covert action against Mexican cartels. Much of the language used by both CNN and the Times is deliberately ambiguous, relying on unnamed sources in the agency.