A Mexican senator called out some of her country’s executive officials for meeting with cartel gunmen who claim to be self-defense groups operating near the Texas border.

During a hearing, Senator Kenia Lopez Rabadan (PAN) challenged Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Olga Sanchez Cordero over a series of meetings between members of the federal government and cartel operators. In a video posted on her social media account, Lopez Rabadan questions one of Mexico’s highest federal officials during a hearing.

Nos preocupa que desde la @SEGOB_mx se esté pactando con el crimen organizado: ➡️ ¿Con qué grupos se inició un proceso de negociación? ➡️ ¿Cuáles fueron los términos? ¡Las y los mexicanos exigimos CLARIDAD en este tema! Aquí mis cuestionamientos pic.twitter.com/CpwjzBX99h — Kenia López Rabadán (@kenialopezr) September 27, 2019

“Madame Secretary, we are very concerned that from the inside of the Secretariat of the Interior, there are dealings with organized crime,” Lopez Rabadan said. “Now they tell us that they have stopped it, but our question is with which armed irregular groups has a negotiation process started?”

Lopez Rabadan, a senator with Mexico’s conservative National Action Party, is referring to a series of questionable meetings in August in Tamaulipas, where Mexico’s Undersecretary of the Interior Ricardo Peralta met with a faction of the Gulf Cartel that claims to be a self-defense group called “General Pedro J. Mendez.” At the time, officials claimed the cartel operators were willing to lay down their arms. However, according to Milenio, after word of those meetings became public, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ordered Peralta to halt further discussions.

“When you met with them, what where the terms of your negotiations and in exchange of what,” Lopez Rabadan questioned Cordero in the video. “Because we find it very suspicious that the President canceled the topic if you were, as you say, only going to promote productive projects. You [Madame Secretary] say one thing and the undersecretary does another. In Tamaulipas, they clearly warned the undersecretary that these are not self-defense groups, they are organized crime groups and even then, this government that you represent met with them.”

The questioning of federal officials by PAN leaders comes at a time of great controversy where senators from the ruling party MORENA recently called for the removal of the Tamaulipas governor, claiming that cartel violence was out-of-control there. The talking points presented by MORENA senators come from a cartel-connected human rights activist from Nuevo Laredo who has a long history of defending members of Los Zetas. The activist claimed state police officers kidnapped and murdered innocent civilians in order to dress them as cartel gunmen for a staged shootout scene.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.