Mexico's three top security officials are visiting Sinaloa on separate days this week on President Claudia Sheinbaum's orders, after what she called a rise in homicides in the state over the past two months. Defense Secretary Gen. Ricardo Trevilla Trejo inspected troops in Mazatlán on Tuesday, October 27. Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch met the state's interim governor in Culiacán on Wednesday and said the federal Security Cabinet will now review the strategy in Sinaloa daily; she took over after the elected governor stepped aside over a U.S. drug-trafficking indictment he denies. The Navy secretary, Adm. Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, is due on a day not yet announced. The federal government says Sinaloa's daily homicide rate in July was about half its June 2025 peak, but national public-security figures show homicides up 10 percent in August and September over the two months before, and the state leader of the opposition National Action Party (PAN) says the visits accomplish nothing: "How many times has Harfuch come to Sinaloa? What does he come for? For nothing." (Quotes from Spanish are Profoundd's translations.)
What the government announced
García Harfuch announced the schedule on X on Tuesday morning: "This week we will carry out a coordinated agenda of supervision visits in Sinaloa," with the Defense secretary going that day and the Security and Navy secretaries on other days. Spreading the visits out, he wrote, "will make it possible to extend the Security Cabinet's presence and supervision on the ground." The agenda covers the federal deployments, the needs of the state police and the municipal police of Culiacán and Mazatlán, the C4 command-and-control center, and the land set aside for a new prison. The Defense Ministry said Trevilla met regional commanders at the Third Military Region headquarters in Mazatlán "to verify the conditions in which the personnel of the Mexican Army, the Air Force and the National Guard carry out their missions." The same day he visited troops and the governor in neighboring Nayarit, La Razón reported.
Wednesday in Culiacán
García Harfuch, with the National Guard's commander, Gen. Guillermo Briseño, met Gov. Graciela Domínguez Nava, who has led the state since August 25. Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya first took leave on May 1, after a U.S. indictment unsealed in New York on April 29 charged him and nine other current and former officials with drug-trafficking and weapons offenses, accusing them of shielding Sinaloa Cartel leaders from investigation and feeding the cartel law-enforcement and military information; those charged include a former state public security secretary, a former deputy director of the state police and the mayor of Culiacán. Rocha Moya "categorically and completely rejects" the accusations as baseless and calls them an attack on the ruling Morena party. Mexico's federal prosecutors said on July 8 that, based on the U.S. request, there was no evidence meeting "the minimum standard of proof that Mexican law requires"; their inquiry covered only the drug-trafficking crimes named in that request and did not review the officials' finances. Citing that finding, Rocha Moya returned to office on August 21 and requested a new leave the next day, after Sheinbaum, the Interior Ministry and Morena criticized his return. None of the ten faces judicial action in Mexico, the TV Azteca news channel ADN40 reported Thursday.
García Harfuch wrote afterward that they reviewed a plan to strengthen the state police and Culiacán's municipal police, identifying their needs in "personnel, training, equipment, technology, infrastructure, intelligence and investigation," inspected the C4 and the prison site, and would take up Mazatlán's police at a later visit. Marcela Figueroa, head of the national public security system's executive secretariat, will track those plans. The Security Cabinet "will maintain permanent supervision" in Sinaloa, he wrote, "with daily evaluations of progress, follow-up on operations and the adjustments needed to strengthen the strategy." The visit was made "with extreme secrecy," with no press conference and details released only after he left, the Culiacán newspaper Noroeste reported. His stop in Mazatlán did not happen. Mayor Estrella Palacios said he had to leave for Mexico City "for reasons of force majeure" and still plans to visit.
Why now
"There has been an increase in homicides in Sinaloa in the last two months, and particularly in recent weeks," Sheinbaum said at her Wednesday morning press conference. "There is all the intelligence analysis of why this happens, but what matters to us, obviously, is protecting the people of Sinaloa." Figures from the national public security system show homicides up 10.2 percent in August and September over the previous two months, from 283 to 312, La Razón reported. Earlier this month, riots on October 8 and 9 at El Castillo prison in Mazatlán left 12 dead, 11 inmates and a visiting child, the state prosecutor said; the three secretaries appeared with the governor in Sinaloa on October 9, when a new federally funded prison was approved. On Tuesday a human head was found in front of Mazatlán's city hall. On Monday, García Harfuch said, a Navy unit returned fire after being attacked, and two people died, one of them provisionally identified as Jesús González Peñuelas, "Chuy Peñuelas," an operator of the Guasave cartel for whom the United States had offered up to $5 million.
The violence stems largely from a war between two Sinaloa Cartel factions, known as Los Chapitos and La Mayiza, that broke out in September 2024 after Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada was taken by force to the United States that July. A tally by the news site Infobae, combining official records, families' search groups and press reports, counts 3,821 violent deaths and 4,406 people disappeared in Sinaloa since July 2024. The federal government says the state's homicide rate has fallen by about half, from a peak of 6.9 a day in June 2025 to 3.3 a day in July 2026. The research group México Evalúa ranked Sinaloa first in the country in 2025 for disappearances, at 29.9 per 100,000 residents, and warned that in such states disappearance serves to hide killings and distort the count of violent deaths, the weekly Zeta Tijuana reported; Sheinbaum has said the national registry of disappeared people has "many problems" and that the government's aim is to correct it, not to hide cases.
The opposition's view
Wendy Barajas Cortés, the PAN's leader in Sinaloa, said Wednesday that federal commanders' presence has not contained the violence. "What has happened that is different?" she asked, pointing to the head found at Mazatlán's city hall. "No matter how many personnel they bring us in Sinaloa, it is not working." She said Mazatlán has had more than 100 homicides this month, a figure Profoundd could not check against official data, though the broadcaster UnoTV counted 22 homicides in Mazatlán in the first seven days of October and the state's public security secretary, Sinhue Téllez López, acknowledged on October 7 that homicides were the one crime the deployment had not contained. She also criticized conditions for the troops sent to the state: "They have already militarized our streets, and honestly we see soldiers sleeping even on the sidewalks." Sheinbaum, for her part, told Sinaloans on Wednesday that "we are there to protect you, and we will keep working," and the Security Cabinet said the visits reaffirm its commitment to building "a lasting peace."
This article reflects reporting through Friday morning, October 30, 2026. Sources: Omar García Harfuch on X, October 27 and October 28; the Defense Ministry and the Security Cabinet on X; La Razón, October 27 and October 29; Infobae, October 28; Noroeste, October 27 and October 28; Los Noticieristas; Luz Noticias; EFE via Diario de Yucatán; The Rio Times, October 29; Infobae on the El Castillo riots and two years of war; the Associated Press via WTOP, April 29, on the indictment; Zeta Tijuana, July 8, on the federal prosecutors, and February 10, on México Evalúa; Grupo Animal and ADN40, August, on Rocha Moya's leaves; ADN40, October 29; UnoTV, October 7.
