DEA closing 2 offices in China as the agency struggles to stem flow of chemicals

A bag of 4-fluoro isobutyryl fentanyl which was seized in a drug raid is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va., on Aug. 9, 2016. Cliff Owen/AP hide caption

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Cliff Owen/AP

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

"These closings reflect the need to harness DEA's limited and strained resources to target where we can make the biggest impact in saving American lives," DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told agents in an email last week that also included plans to close a dozen other offices worldwide to trim DEA's current footprint of 93 offices in 69 countries.

Though rumored for months, it was unclear exactly why DEA is shutting down its offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou, leaving only those in the capital Beijing and the autonomously-governed city of Hong Kong, and how that could affect its efforts on fentanyl. DEA said only that the move followed a data-driven process intended to maximize the agency's impact.

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

DEA veterans say it marked yet another setback in the often-halting cooperation between the two geopolitical rivals. Even though China has added dozens of fentanyl-producing chemicals to its list of controlled substances and warned companies against shipping them, the country remains the world's largest source of precursors in a fentanyl crisis blamed for nearly 100,000 U.S. deaths a year.

"We need to work with the Chinese and get them to help stop the flow of precursor chemicals," said Mike Vigil, a former head of DEA's foreign operations, "and it's hard to develop those relationships with less representation in the country."

It took years of U.S. requests before China even agreed to allow the DEA to open offices outside of the capital of Beijing in 2017. Hopes were high for its two-agent office in Guangzhou, a major center for trade and organized crime, and a similar outpost in Shanghai, the country's financial hub.

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

China suspended anti-narcotics cooperation in 2022 in retaliation for then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, a self-ruled island which Beijing claims. Those efforts appeared to improve more recently, however, following President Joe Biden's meeting last year in San Francisco with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

The DEA's Milgram traveled to China in January with Todd Robinson, the top anti-narcotics official at the State Department. A few months later, authorities in Beijing arrested a Chinese national who fled the U.S. after being named in a criminal indictment out of Los Angeles federal court for fentanyl trafficking.

Milgram has increasingly emphasized how such cooperation could help disrupt China's trade in precursors and its role as a magnet for the laundering of illegal drug proceeds worldwide.

"This work has been constructive so far, but I believe it's too early to know whether we'll see the results that we want to see," Milgram told a congressional panel earlier this year. "If we could stop the flow of precursors from China, we could have a significant impact."

China would not comment on what it said was a DEA internal matter. However, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for China's Embassy in Washington, praised recent cooperation between the two countries on fentanyl, citing the recent visit to DEA headquarters by a delegation led by the director general of the Chinese Narcotics Control Bureau.

"China hopes that, the U.S. side can work with China in the same direction and continue the pragmatic counter-narcotics cooperation based on mutual respect, managing differences and mutual benefits."

Collectively, the 14 offices DEA has slated to close account for more than 100 agents and employees, and include some, including in Russia, Cyprus and Indonesia, that are home to flourishing criminal underworlds with connections to Latin American cartels who smuggle the bulk of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl sold in the U.S.

Other offices slated to close are: 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 footprint that followed an AP investigation into a foreign corruption scandal involving José Irizarry, a disgraced former DEA agent in Colombia who confessed to skimming millions of dollars from drug money laundering operations to fund a worldwide joyride of partying and prostitutes.

That review noted the now-50-year-old agency had never conducted such an assessment to reflect changing threats, and recommended a "rightsizing" of resources to fight fentanyl.

Four of the offices slated to close – the Bahamas, Haiti, Myanmar and Nicaragua – are in countries that, along with China, were designated by the White House as major drug producing or transit zones.

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

"This is shortsighted," he said. "Those relationships are critical and aren't easily rebuilt."

William Warren, the DEA's former regional director in the Middle East, noted that the agency can also act as a vital extra set of American eyes in countries that are hotbeds for weapons smuggling, human trafficking and terrorist groups.

"The DEA is a force multiplier for national security," he said "It's not just about seizing drugs. The leads, information and intelligence the DEA passes on to other federal agencies keeps Americans safe from all kinds of threats."