The son of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has accused the United States of revoking his visa in a politically motivated manoeuvre.
Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran made the allegation late on Thursday in a public letter addressed to US President Donald Trump and posted on social media.
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He accused US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his deputy, Christopher Landau, of ordering the visa revocation.
“There is no reason whatsoever to justify such an arrogant action,” Lopez Beltran wrote to Trump. “It is worth emphasising that these officials have no evidence against me regarding any immoral or criminal act.”
The US State Department has not publicly responded to his claim.
His letter comes as part of a trend of visa revocations from the US. Several Mexican officials, across the political spectrum, have had their visas cancelled, as part of what the Trump administration characterises as a broad crackdown on individuals linked to drug cartels.
Who is Lopez Beltran?
The 39-year-old Lopez Beltran is a prominent politician in Mexico, having recently stepped down from the leadership of the left-wing Morena party.
His father founded the party in 2011 and went on to govern Mexico as its president from 2018 to 2024.
Currently, another Morena politician, Claudia Sheinbaum, holds the presidency, and Morena boasts decisive majorities in both chambers of Mexico’s Congress.
Lopez Beltran is expected to run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies next year.
For much of his father’s presidency, Lopez Beltran stayed out of party politics, instead focusing on his chocolate business.
However, he was elected Morena’s secretary of organisation in September 2024, just weeks before his father left office.
In his letter, Lopez Beltran called the revocation “a crude and perverse act”, saying US officials target Mexican politicians by falsely labelling them as “communists”, “threats to US security” or “narco-terrorists”.
Sheinbaum reacts to letter
On Friday, Sheinbaum said she was unaware of any investigations by Mexican prosecutors into Lopez Beltran.
“This amounts to interference in Mexican politics,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news briefing. “I see no other reason for it.”
Sheinbaum has also walked a careful line in responding to the Trump administration’s hardline approach to cartels and cross-border crime, pledging to cooperate.
But she has also said she would protect Mexico’s sovereignty from any foreign interference, and while she has welcomed collaboration with US intelligence, she has reportedly declined Trump’s offers of US military action on Mexican soil.
Last month, she also rejected a statement by the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that her government has ties to organised crime, a frequent Trump talking point.
In April, she decried the US’s decision to charge Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha, another Morena party official, with drug trafficking and weapons-related offences.
She has argued that the indictment lacks evidence and that such investigations should be left to Mexican prosecutors.
The Trump administration has accused Rocha’s campaign of having worked with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organisation it considers a “foreign terrorist organisation”.
Rocha announced in May that he would take a temporary leave of absence from his position as governor to defend himself from the charges.