Lawfare Archive: Stephanie Leutert on Violence in Mexico and Central America
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
From October 8, 2016: Stephanie Leutert, the Mexico Security Initiative Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Lawfare's "Beyond the Border" series, joined Benjamin Wittes on this week's podcast to talk about the epidemic of violence plaguing Mexico and Central America. Despite the brutality, extremity, and remarkable scale of the violence going on immediately to our south, those of us in the United States who work and think on national security issues rarely consider it to be relevant to national security. Why is that? How bad is the violence in these countries? What's causing the crisis, and the waves of migration it generates, in the first place? And what, if anything, can be done to stop it?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Electronic Communications Privacy Act turns 40 this year, and it's showing its age. |
| 0:06.0 | On Friday, March 6th, Lawfare and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars, |
| 0:11.1 | practitioners, and former government officials for installing updates to ECPA, a half-day event |
| 0:16.6 | on what's broken with the statute and how to fix it. The event is free and open to the public, in person and online. |
| 0:23.2 | Visit lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event. |
| 0:26.4 | That's lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event for details and to register. |
| 0:48.3 | Music I'm Marissa Wong, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare from March 1, 2006. In the past year and a half, the Mexican government has launched its most aggressive offensive |
| 0:57.4 | against domestic drug cartels and organized crime groups in more than a decade. As part of this campaign, |
| 1:03.7 | on February 23rd, Mexican security forces killed Mexico's most wanted crime boss, Nemesio Oseguera |
| 1:10.8 | Serantes, or El Mentiono, the leader |
| 1:13.5 | of the Halisco New Generation Cartel. In response to El Mancho's killing, the cartel launched |
| 1:19.5 | a campaign of violence, including the burning of cars, buses, and businesses. At least 74 people |
| 1:26.9 | were killed as a result of the operation and the subsequent |
| 1:30.0 | cartel violence, according to Mexican authorities. For today's archive, I chose an episode from |
| 1:35.9 | October 8, 2016, in which Stephanie Loiter joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the state of violence in Mexico and Central America, |
| 1:46.0 | how cartels and organized crime groups have contributed to this crisis, how it affects U.S. national security, and more. Steph Loiter, thank you very much for joining us. |
| 2:10.6 | So let's start with the Mexico Security Initiative, which readers of lawfare will have seen associated with your column. |
| 2:21.9 | But what is it and what are you doing with it? |
| 2:25.9 | What's your role in it? |
| 2:27.7 | So the Mexico Security Initiative is a new program out of the Stroud Center at UT Austin. |
| 2:33.0 | And it was created to fill the void |
| 2:35.0 | that we were seeing in terms of policy relevant research for Mexico, for the Mexican government, |
... |
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