President Claudia Sheinbaum opened her Saturday morning press conference at the Palacio Nacional with the next procedural step in the answer she gave Friday. The Fiscalía General de la República, Mexico's federal prosecutor's office, has formally requested from the U.S. Department of Justice the underlying evidence supporting the SDNY indictment of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, she said, "this morning." The request asks for grand-jury exhibits, electronic intercepts, witness statements, and chain-of-custody documentation. [1] The paper's Friday account of the parallel-investigation announcement framed the response as a third path between cooperation and refusal. The Saturday request is the procedural mechanism by which that third path enters the international record.

The formal request is the clean version of what Sheinbaum's office had to do. Mexico's Federal Code of Criminal Procedure (CFPP) gives the FGR concurrent jurisdiction over federal organized-crime cases involving Mexican nationals on Mexican soil; the parallel-investigation route requires the FGR to demonstrate, on the record, that the evidentiary basis for the U.S. charges has been considered. Without the request, the parallel investigation would be a political gesture. With it, the gesture acquires Mexican procedural status. The Saturday filing converts Friday's lectern phrase into Article 211 CFPP. [2]

The U.S. Justice Department has not responded publicly to the request. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's office referred questions to the SDNY, which referred them back to Main Justice. U.S. Attorney for the SDNY Damian Williams's office issued a one-paragraph statement Saturday afternoon noting that "the United States is committed to working with the Government of Mexico under the bilateral mutual legal assistance framework" without acknowledging that a formal request had been received. [3] The framework Williams referenced is the 1991 U.S.-Mexico Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which obliges the U.S. to share evidence in proceedings where Mexican prosecutors have jurisdiction. The treaty does not specify a timeline. The treaty does not specify what counts as cooperation.

Rocha Moya remains in Culiacán, the Sinaloa capital. Sheinbaum confirmed Saturday that he has not been asked to surrender his passport, has not been placed under any restriction by the FGR, and continues to perform the functions of governor. The constitutional fuero under Article 111 — which protects sitting elected officials from federal criminal prosecution without prior congressional authorization — applies to federal Mexican charges only, not to U.S. charges. But it is the procedural shadow under which the parallel investigation proceeds: Rocha Moya cannot be arrested by Mexican authorities for the SDNY-charged conduct unless the Chamber of Deputies first removes his fuero, which would require a majority vote and a Sheinbaum administration request. Neither has been announced. [4]

The U.S. side's procedural problem is different. SDNY's charging document refers to "Sinaloa Cartel collaboration" by twenty-eight named individuals, including Rocha Moya. Of the twenty-eight, four are in U.S. custody, fourteen are in Mexican custody on related charges, and ten — Rocha Moya among them — are in Mexico without restriction. The case file the FGR has now requested is the same file U.S. prosecutors will need to make admissible at any future trial of the four U.S.-custody defendants. Sharing it with the Mexican prosecutor's office under the MLAT framework does not waive admissibility, but it does place the file outside U.S. grand-jury secrecy under Federal Rule 6(e). The DOJ's reluctance to share is operational, not political. [5]

The X register Saturday tracked two registers in parallel. Latin America-watcher accounts read the formal request as Sheinbaum holding a sitting Mexican governor's body inside the Mexican judicial system, refusing to extradite, and acquiring procedural credibility for the refusal. Trump-aligned U.S. accounts read the request as a stalling tactic and amplified administration sources who said cross-border action remained on the table. Carlos Pérez Ricart's framing from Friday — "no way out given Washington's pattern of escalating demands regardless of concessions made" — is the thread the formal request now sits inside. [6]

USMCA's six-year review window opens in October 2026. The trade-deal calendar is the longest of the calendars in this story; the SDNY indictment, the FGR parallel investigation, and the bilateral evidence request all sit inside that window and will be settled — or unresolved — by the time the trade ministers meet to extend or revise the agreement. Sheinbaum's Saturday move is the second-week procedural artifact of a multi-month sovereignty argument. The asymmetric posture — Mexico filing through the treaty, the U.S. responding through ambiguity — is itself the document. [7]

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo