The Mexican government has requested the extradition of several US citizens accused of colluding with organized crime groups to smuggle stolen oil, exposing a persistent imbalance in the US-Mexico bilateral security relationship.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum made the extradition request for several members of an American family arrested last year for their alleged role in a fuel smuggling ring that trafficked crude oil from Mexico into the United States.
James and Kelly Anne Jensen, along with their two sons, allegedly trafficked nearly 5,000 shipments of oil, generating more than $300 million in illegal profits over just a few years. They are also accused of laundering money in coordination with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG), which has historically stolen oil from Mexico’s state oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
SEE ALSO: The Story of Mexico’s Multibillion-Dollar Fuel Theft Crisis
Court documents allege the family brought crude oil into the United States by falsely declaring it as “waste lube oil” and “petroleum distillates,” allowing them to evade tariffs of up to 25% percent on Mexican petroleum imports.
James Jensen and one of his sons also face charges of conspiring with a foreign terrorist organization after the US government designated the CJNG as such in February 2025.
The Jensens were arrested in May, marking the end of a three-year operation. Known locally as “huachicol,” fuel theft in Mexico is now a multibillion-dollar market and has generated violence across the country, and as this case shows, it has expanded beyond its borders into the United States.
A Power Imbalance
Sheinbaum’s extradition request shines a light on the inequalities in how the US and Mexican governments honor their bilateral security cooperation, which is so essential to combatting organized crime groups.
The ask came just days after her government transferred 37 prisoners to the United States at Washington’s request. Mexico’s government has sent a total of 92 individuals to the United States over the past year under pressure from US President Donald Trump. Lawyers representing several of those individuals have accused Sheinbaum’s government of bypassing due process, noting that many were sent without a formal extradition order — a requirement under the 1978 US-Mexico Extradition Treaty.
“Pressure makes you act that way,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, co-director of George Mason University’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center, said on Mexico’s position amid Trump’s military intervention against alleged drug operations in the Caribbean and the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Yet when Sheinbaum has sought reciprocal action from Washington, the president says that the US response has been inaction. “We keep insisting, because it still hasn’t happened,” she said in the Jan. 27 presser.
Sheinbaum has also emphasized repeated requests for the United States to expand investigations into the role of American gunmakers in US-Mexico firearms trafficking. The president’s push for symmetry is an attempt to reframe bilateral cooperation as a two-way street, Correa-Cabrera said. The involvement of US citizens in Mexican fuel smuggling networks is not new.
In 2016, for example, Pemex sued nearly 25 US companies and individuals for allegedly purchasing and distributing fuel stolen by criminal groups. In the three cases that went to trial, US courts ruled Pemex failed to provide sufficient evidence and dismissed the claims.
If the US government wants to curb the expanding oil theft market, Correa-Cabrera said it should intensify investigations into US actors as structural enablers of the trade, rather than treating cases like the Jensens as anomalies.
“That’s why this kind of crime is continuing and transforming itself and booming—because we’re not dealing with what happens on the US side of the border with criminals that don’t look like how they appear in a Netflix series,” she noted.
US authorities have recently signaled a greater awareness of the problem. In May 2025, the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an alert warning American institutions to be vigilant in patrolling oil smuggling schemes.
The notice acknowledged the presence of US importers along the southwest border who rely on shell companies and intermediaries to receive stolen crude from Mexican brokers, and outlined 14 red flags associated with fuel theft operations.
The Treasury specifically identified the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas and other areas along the US Southwest border as hotspots for illicit fuel activity from US importers who “often run otherwise legitimate business operations.”
James Jensen allegedly used his Rio Grande-based company Arroyo Terminals LLC to store profits made from the oil smuggling.
Featured Image: A Mexican marine stands guard in Tamaulipas after a major fuel seizure operation. Credit: Mexico’s government.