DEA closes two offices in China as agency struggles to contain flow of chemicals: NPR

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is closing two of its hard-won offices in China, the Associated Press has learned. The move comes as the agency tries to stem the flow of precursor chemicals from the country, which have fueled a fentanyl epidemic blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“These closures reflect the need to focus DEA's limited and overstretched resources where we can make the greatest contribution to saving American lives,” DEA Director Anne Milgram told agents in an email last week. The email also said she plans to close a dozen more offices worldwide to reduce the DEA's current presence of 93 offices in 69 countries.

Although rumors have been circulating for months, it was unclear why the DEA was closing its offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou, leaving only those in the capital Beijing and the autonomous city of Hong Kong, and how that might affect its efforts to combat fentanyl. The DEA said only that the move followed a data-driven process designed to maximize the agency's impact.

“Americans have a right to know why this decision was made and where the DEA plans to reallocate taxpayers' hard-earned money,” said Republican Rep. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

DEA veterans say it's another setback in the often halting cooperation between the two geopolitical rivals. Although China has added dozens of chemicals used to make fentanyl to its list of controlled substances and warned companies against supplying them, the country remains the world's largest supplier of precursor drugs in a fentanyl crisis blamed for nearly 100,000 deaths a year in the United States.

“We need to work with the Chinese and get them to help us stop the flow of precursor chemicals,” said Mike Vigil, a former head of DEA's foreign operations. “And it's hard to build those relationships when we have less of a presence in the country.”

It took years for China to allow the DEA to open offices outside the capital, Beijing, in 2017. High expectations were placed on the office, which had two agents in Guangzhou, a major center for trafficking and organized crime, and a similar outpost in Shanghai, the country's financial center.

However, a U.S. official familiar with the closures, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter, said China's cooperation was largely in name only and that agents assigned to the field offices faced difficulties in obtaining visas and numerous restrictions amid deteriorating U.S.-China relations.

China suspended anti-drug cooperation in 2022 in retaliation for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by Beijing. But those efforts appeared to improve recently after President Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year.

The DEA's Milgram traveled to China in January with Todd Robinson, the State Department's top anti-drug official. A few months later, authorities in Beijing arrested a Chinese national who had fled the United States after being named in a Los Angeles federal court indictment on charges of fentanyl trafficking.

Milgram has increasingly stressed that such cooperation could help stop China's trafficking in precursors and its role as a magnet for laundering illicit drug proceeds around the world.

“This work has been constructive so far, but I think it's too early to know whether we'll see the results we want,” Milgram told a congressional committee earlier this year. “If we could stop the flow of precursor drugs from China, we could have a significant impact.”

China declined to comment on the allegedly internal DEA matter. However, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, praised recent cooperation between the two countries on fentanyl, pointing to the recent visit of a delegation led by the director general of China's drug control bureau to DEA headquarters.

“China hopes that the US side can work with China in the same direction and continue pragmatic cooperation in the fight against drugs on the basis of mutual respect, managing differences and mutual benefit.”

In total, more than 100 agents and staff work in the 14 offices the DEA plans to close. Some of them – including in Russia, Cyprus and Indonesia – house a thriving criminal underworld with ties to Latin American cartels that smuggle most of the cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl sold in the United States.

Other offices to be closed include: Bahamas, Egypt, Georgia, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Senegal. Milgram also announced plans to open offices in Albania and Jordan.

The actions come 18 months after an outside review of the DEA's global presence followed the AP's investigation into a foreign corruption scandal involving Jose Irizarry, a disgraced former DEA agent in Colombia who had admitted to embezzling millions of dollars from drug-laundering operations to finance a worldwide pleasure tour of parties and prostitution.

That review found that the now 50-year-old agency had never conducted such an assessment to reflect evolving threats and recommended “right-sizing” resources to combat fentanyl.

Four of the facilities to be closed – in the Bahamas, Haiti, Myanmar and Nicaragua – are located in countries that the White House has classified as important drug production or transit areas alongside China.

Andre Kellum, who retired as regional director for Africa in 2021, was particularly critical of the closure of the office in Senegal, where an elite local police unit trained and vetted by the DEA was behind numerous major raids. Close ties with authorities in Mozambique, where the DEA opened an office in 2017, were key to capturing Brazil's largest drug trafficker.

“This is short-sighted,” he said. “These relationships are crucial and will not be easily restored.”

William Warren, the DEA's former regional director for the Middle East, noted that the agency could also serve as an important additional American eye in countries where arms smuggling, human trafficking and the emergence of terrorist groups play a major role.

“The DEA is a force multiplier for national security,” he said. “It's not just about seizing drugs. The tips, information and intelligence that the DEA shares with other federal agencies protect Americans from all kinds of threats.”