Mexican federal prosecutors have charged a former state attorney general with treason, accusing him of letting American personnel take part in a drug-lab raid earlier this year that Mexican law reserves strictly for national security forces — a raid that ended with two U.S. government employees dead in a car crash on their way back from the scene.

Cesar Jauregui, who served as attorney general of the border state of Chihuahua, was arrested Oct. 17 after an investigation found he may have allowed foreign agents to join an operation against a suspected drug lab without the federal authorization Mexican law requires. Federal prosecutors filed the formal treason charge on Oct. 21, and a judge has ordered him held in pretrial detention while the court weighs whether the case proceeds, according to Mexico News Daily. He faces five to 40 years in prison if convicted.

Treason charges are rare in Mexico, and this one traces back to a chaotic April day. The U.S. government acknowledged at the time that two embassy employees had died, but did not say which agency they worked for. Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources, that the two were CIA officers working on anti-narcotics efforts — a detail the U.S. government has not confirmed on the record. The raid itself only came to light, Reuters reports, after the pair died in a car crash while driving away from the scene.

A raid with no official sign-off

Mexican authorities say the Chihuahua raid went ahead with American personnel present but without the federal sign-off required any time foreign nationals take part in an operation touching national security. Some reporting puts the number of U.S. personnel involved at four; Reuters attributes that detail to unnamed sources and notes neither Washington nor Mexico City has confirmed it publicly.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has tried to spread the blame in both directions, faulting Chihuahua state authorities for allowing the arrangement in the first place while also accusing the U.S. government of overstepping into operations that belong exclusively to Mexican forces. Chihuahua Gov. Maru Campos, for her part, said back in May that she neither authorized nor knew about a CIA presence in her state — distancing the governor's office from a case that has become a flashpoint over how far American law enforcement can reach onto Mexican soil.

A RAID WITH NO SIGN-OFF, TWO DEAD AMERICANS, AND A STATE'S TOP PROSECUTOR NOW FACING TREASON CHARGES

The case adds to a fraught stretch for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, which has leaned heavily on joint operations against drug cartels even as both governments insist publicly on respecting each other's sovereignty. Washington has pushed for a bigger operational footprint inside Mexico as cartel-linked violence and fentanyl trafficking remain top political issues on both sides of the border; Mexico City has pushed back whenever that cooperation looks, in its telling, like foreign agents acting unilaterally on Mexican soil.

Jauregui's legal team has not yet laid out a public defense strategy. Neither the CIA nor the U.S. State Department has commented publicly on the identities or affiliations of the two Americans who died, and it remains an open question whether any American personnel will face consequences of their own for a raid Mexican prosecutors say never should have happened.

What happens next largely rests with a Mexican judge. Jauregui stays in pretrial detention while the court decides whether the treason case moves to trial, a process that can take months under Mexico's federal system.