Monday, March 30, 2026
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT
Weakening Mexico’s organized crime groups is a priority for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has even threatened to use military force–despite Mexico’s firm rejection of the idea. Mexican authorities claim they are making progress against cartels, pointing to the recent elimination of the top drug trafficker Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera. How might that killing affect Mexico’s organized-crime landscape? Why have the crime groups continued to flourish, despite repeated anti-drug campaigns in Mexico and billions of dollars in U.S. aid? What might be the effects of the Trump administration’s policies? To address these questions and more, the Georgetown Americas Institute is pleased to host a panel featuring experts Falko Ernst, a former senior analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group, and Steven Dudley, co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime. The conversation will be moderated by GAI Visiting Fellow Mary Beth Sheridan.
Featuring
Falko Ernst served as senior analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group from 2018 to 2024. He was responsible for conducting research on the country’s lethal conflict and the challenges the incoming president faces, particularly the country’s many regional conflict settings and intra-institutional realities that underpin corruption and collusion by state actors. He provided field-based insights and recommendations, through reports and contributions to media, about how these should be factored into sound security policy. Ernst has worked on criminal governance, organizeed crime-state collusion, and new forms of conflict in Mexico and Latin America since 2010. As a Ph.D. researcher in sociology at the University of Essex (United Kingdom), he lived in organized crime-controlled communities in Mexico. He went on to become a freelance researcher and author based in Mexico City, collaborating with Crisis Group, the Ford Foundation, the London School of Economics, and national and international media. Prior to this, he worked as a research assistant in Germany’s federal parliament in Berlin, and he completed a master’s degree in Latin American area studies at the University of Passau, Germany.
Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime and a senior research fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, DC. In 2020, Dudley published his second book, MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (HarperCollins), which in 2019 won the Lukas Prize for work-in-progress. Dudley is the former bureau chief of the Miami Herald in the Andean Region and the author of Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (Routledge, 2004). Dudley has also reported from Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Miami, and Nicaragua, for National Public Radio and the Washington Post, among others. He holds a B.A. in Latin American history from Cornell University and an M.A. in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Mary Beth Sheridan is a visiting fellow with the Georgetown Americas Institute. Sheridan is a veteran journalist who spent 14 years as a correspondent in Latin America for the Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, and most recently, The Washington Post. She has won three Overseas Press Club prizes for her reporting on Mexico as well as the Maria Moors Cabot award, the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas. At The Washington Post, she also covered immigration, homeland security, and diplomacy and served as deputy foreign editor from 2015 to 2018. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross and has been a resident fellow at Columbia University’s journalism school and Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.