Everyone knows the cartels run Mexico but even this is pretty shocking.

Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who was Mexico's defense minister from 2012 to 2018, was arrested last night at LAX and will face drug and money-laundering charges in the U.S.

In case you don't know, the defense minister in Mexico RUNS THE MILITARY and reports DIRECTLY TO THE PRESIDENT.

The damage to Mexico is hard to overstate. General Cienfuegos's arrest comes only 10 months after another top Mexican official — who once led the Mexican equivalent of the F.B.I. — was indicted in New York on charges of taking bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful criminal mafias.

...

Both Mr. García Luna and General Cienfuegos served at the highest reaches of the Mexican government at a time when homicides spiked to historic levels, drug cartels waged war, and under Mr. Peña Nieto, military operations were expanded.

If the men are ultimately convicted, it means that two of the highest ranking and most widely respected commanders ever to oversee the war on drugs in Mexico were corrupted by organized crime — in the service of the very cartels that continue to kill record numbers of Mexicans.

A Mexican defense minister has never been arrested before. And the U.S. had to do it because Mexico is so corrupt.