The State Department has opened an investigation into the activities of Mexico’s 53 consulates in the United States—and Eric Eggers, Vice President at the Government Accountability Institute, says the move follows directly from his and Peter Schweizer’s reporting in The Invisible Coup.
In an appearance with Eric Bolling, Eggers called the development significant but overlooked. “I think it’s an important story and underreported,” he said, noting that the probe was reported in The New York Times a couple of weeks earlier.
The numbers, Eggers argued, are the starting point.
“The United States has nine consulates in Mexico. Mexico has 53 in the United States,” he said. By his count, that exceeds the totals of two countries the U.S. is far closer to: “Countries that we’re very close with, like Great Britain and China, have like six and maybe seven respectively. So the fact that Mexico has 53 is quite alarming.”
The Sinaloa Indictment
Eggers traced the investigation’s origin to a Justice Department indictment. DOJ officials charged the governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa under suspicion of — as Eggers put it, “if you can believe it” — working with the Sinaloa Cartel. When the administration asked President Claudia Sheinbaum for cooperation, she declined.
The consulate probe, in his telling, is the response.
“The next arrow in the quiver to try to apply some diplomatic pressure,” Eggers said. “They said, okay, fine, we’re going to begin an investigation into what exactly you’re up to with these consulates.”
He noted that coverage of the consulates has not all been skeptical. He pointed to a piece in the Associated Press describing how helpful the consulates are to Mexican Americans—including, he said, an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrants of Mexican descent in California alone.
But Eggers urged officials to take Mexican leaders at their word. “In their own words, Mexican officials have said that they’re encouraging people to kind of re-conquer the area in the Southwest, reconquer California, claim this land back,” he said—land they argue was taken from them 170 years ago. “I think it’s well time for American officials, Department of Justice officials, to take a look and believe Mexican officials at their own word when they say what they’re up to.”
The Oklahoma City Meeting
Asked what actually goes on inside the consulates, Eggers cited the meeting documented in Schweizer’s book.
“There was a meeting in Oklahoma City, and this is in Peter’s book,” he said. “It’s not a secret.” Mexican consulate officials and members of the Democratic Party gathered, in his account, for what amounted to a political strategy session: “Okay, let’s strategize. How can we try to stop Donald Trump from winning this election? How can we stop Republicans from winning?”
The driving disagreement, he said, was immigration. Mexican officials favored the open-border posture of the Biden years — Eggers recalled Xavier Becerra saying he thought the southern border should have a welcome mat on it. The incentive, as Eggers framed it, is economic as much as territorial: Mexico likes “having access to the American economy and the amount of money that comes here, that gets then sent back to Mexico.”
Remittances, he noted, are “literally a huge part of Mexico.”
The Fentanyl Pipeline Runs Through China
Pressed by Bolling on why the administration is playing nice with Sheinbaum when far more drugs reach the U.S. from Mexico than from Venezuela, Eggers pointed to the scale of the business relationship — then widened the lens to China.
“Who are the two countries that are most linked to the drug cartel trade? It’s Mexico and China,” he said, citing prior GAI work with Schweizer. “They’re using Chinese equipment, they’re using Chinese bank accounts, they’re using Chinese chemicals, the precursor to make the fentanyl that makes its way into this country.” The result, he said, is not a two-sided arrangement: “It’s not bilateral, it’s multilateral.”
That trilateral structure, in Eggers’s view, makes the consulate investigation inseparable from the broader pressure campaign on Beijing. He framed the probe as one more lever.
“For Mexico to have 53 consulates, including a consulate in every state — like, does Alaska need a Mexican consulate? I’m not sure, but they have one.” The administration, he said, is “even threatening to say, listen, we may close some of these” if cooperation on the drug war doesn’t improve.
Two Layers of Immunity
On whether consulate workers carry diplomatic immunity in the United States, Eggers said he wasn’t certain. But he highlighted a structural protection on the Mexican side that he found more striking.
The indicted Sinaloa governor, he explained, is shielded by two separate layers of political protection.
“They have immunity — not just within the Mexican government, but within the Mexican legislature,” Eggers said. “So there are two different layers of political immunity they have in Mexico that would have to be released for those people to be charged with a crime in Mexico. So they’re heavily protected there.”
He contrasted Sheinbaum’s demand for evidence with the realities of cartel country. She said she’d like to see proof, Eggers recounted, but the only evidence presented was a list of witnesses—witnesses whose identities are being kept secret for good reason. In the United States, naming them would be one thing; in Mexico, he said, “those people would be disappeared with the quickness.”
Eggers credited the current approach with making headway after years of inaction.
“The Biden Administration looked the other way on this for so long,” he said. “The Trump Administration’s beginning to apply pressure and hopefully starting to seem to make a difference.”
Watch the clip above.
