A U.S. court has sentenced Mexico’s former public security chief to more than 38 years in prison for taking bribes to aid drug traffickers.

A onetime drug trafficker has testified that he paid a former top Mexican security official millions of dollars for help that included U.S. government information about a huge cocaine shipment in Mexico.

An anonymous jury has gotten its first look at a rare U.S. trial of a former cabinet-level Mexican official charged with taking bribes to aid drug traffickers he was supposed to be neutralizing.

(AP Photo / Marco Ugarte )MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has tossed another hot potato to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden with a proposal that would restrict U.S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity. “The proposal is that foreign agents will not have any immunity,” according to a summary of the president's proposal to the Mexican Senate published Friday. “The proposal requires that foreign agents give Mexican authorities the information they gather,” according the proposed changes. It’s going to be leaked, it’s going to compromise agents, it’s going to compromise informants," Vigil said. “Ninety percent of the information sharing goes from the DEA to Mexico, rather from Mexico to the US.

The officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case. He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt Mexican officials. Mexican officials complained that the U.S. failed to share evidence against Cienfuegos and that his arrest came as a surprise. In the case of Cienfuegos, Mexican officials have taken no official position on whether he is innocent or guilty, saying that was up to the attorney general’s office to decide. U.S. civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby said the Cienfuegos case marks an odd capstone to the Trump administration.

FILE - In this Sept. 16, 2016 file photo, Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, left, and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, salute during the annual Independence Day military parade in Mexico City's main square. The U.S. Justice Department is dropping its drug trafficking and money laundering against former Mexican defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department is dropping its drug trafficking and money laundering case against former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos, Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday. Barr said the department would drop its case so Cienfuegos “may be investigated and, if appropriate, charged, under Mexican law.” Cienfuegos, who was charged in federal court in Brooklyn, was arrested in Los Angeles last month. Prosecutors alleged he helped the H-2 cartel smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defense secretary in 2012-2018.

FILE - In this April 16, 2016 file photo, Mexico's Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda salutes soldiers at the Number 1 military camp in Mexico City. Ambassador Christopher Landau had informed him that Gen. Cienfuegos has been arrested in Los Angeles. One of the people said the warrant was for drug trafficking and money laundering charges. He is the highest-ranking former Cabinet official arrested since the top Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas in 2019. Under Cienfuegos, the Mexican army was accused of frequent human rights abuses, but that was true of both his predecessors and his successor in the post.

NEW YORK – Former top Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to drug trafficking charges, including a new one of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise that could add 20 years to his sentence if convicted. In a hearing by video, to which reporters had access by phone, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan read all charges to Garcia Luna. The new charge, added in July, involves violations of trafficking 5,000 kilos of cocaine in 2008; 23,000 kilos in 2007 and 19,000 kilos that same year. In January, the former Mexican official pleaded not guilty to charges of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and a false statement. Garcia Luna lived in Miami before his arrest in 2019 in Texas.