DEA to Close 2 of Its 'Hard-Won' Offices in China

The US Drug Enforcement Administration is shutting down two of its hard-won offices in China, the AP 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 in the US. "These closings reflect the need to harness [the] 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.

• What's left: The 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.
• The 'why' is murky: The US agency 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 [the] DEA intends to reallocate taxpayers' hard-earned dollars," said Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
• The China angle: 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 US deaths a year.
• Securing a presence there: It took years of US requests before China even agreed to allow the DEA to open offices outside 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 US official familiar with the closures 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 US-China relations soured.

• Other closures: Other offices slated to close are in the Bahamas, Egypt, the country of Georgia, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Senegal. Milgram also announced plans to open offices in Albania and Jordan.
• More: 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 US. Four of the offices slated to close—in 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.
• A criticism: Andre Kellum, who retired in 2021 as the DEA's 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."

(More DEA stories.)