The efforts of the governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar Ávila (Mexicali, Baja California, 40 years old), to recover her United States visa have become a problem for the government of Claudia Sheinbaum and the ruling party, Morena. The audios in which Ávila is heard talking with a U.S. intermediary, allegedly from the FBI, to offer information to Washington, dealt a blow to Sheinbaum’s discourse defending national sovereignty against U.S. government interference. But the governor insists that her conversations were only efforts to recover the visa that the neighboring country canceled for her and her husband, Carlos Torres, in May of last year and, supposedly, without explanations. The governor, who denies having collaborated with U.S. authorities beyond institutional channels as governor of a border state, has not yet recovered the permit to cross to the other side.
Ávila denounces that Jaime Bonilla, her predecessor in the governorship, former party colleague and with whom she has a deep enmity —with some momentary truce—, set a trap to record her in December 2025 by making her believe he would help her recover the document. The governor says Bonilla sent her an intermediary who said he worked with “the FBI or HSI,” although he does not specify which agency (the first depends on the Department of Justice; the second, on the Department of Homeland Security). This was “a psychological ambush” with which he wanted to make her believe that the United States had her in its sights and could even extradite her. “I am governor, but I am also a mother. When they started talking about investigations and possible extradition, I thought about my children, because nothing like this had ever been suggested to me before,” the governor says in an interview with EL PAÍS in Mexico City.
Question. How should the relationship of a border state be with U.S. security agencies?
Answer. There has to be a lot of communication and coordination, without subordination. The president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said so. I govern one of the most important borders in the world. That implies having common challenges with the United States, not only in security, but also in migration, economic, social, and environmental issues. There are many topics we address; we have binational security tables to work together.
Q. Regarding the leaked audios, with which authorities did you have conversations about the cancellation of your visa?
A. A person recommended by former governor Jaime Bonilla came to me at a time when there was communication with the former governor. He told me: ‘This is someone who can help you, can give you information regarding your visa issue.’ I received him thinking we were going to talk about the matter, but he started presenting scenarios I had not heard before: charges, sanctions, he even spoke of extradition, of letters. I felt it was a psychological ambush. It was an ambush. I said: ‘What are you talking about? I had not heard any of this.’ The first thing that came to mind was my children. I have a 13-year-old girl and a 4-year-old baby. I heard proposals from a person expert in trying to intimidate, to frighten, to generate fear, to even induce certain responses. I told him: ‘I will review all that with my lawyers; I thought we were coming to talk about the visa.’
Q. When did this happen?
A. In mid-December 2025. I told them to see everything through formal channels, with an advisor. Of course, I sought advice, asked what was happening. In one of the calls he made to me, they talked about Panama. I have never been to Panama, not even on vacation. The proposals made in the audios were never carried out. They never sought the people who advised me. Today I know it was a trap. It is so clear that they recorded me, induced the conversation, tried to corner me.
Q. How did that person present himself?
A. As an advisor, an intermediary who came to help me because he was close to the former governor. Bonilla is an American citizen, lives in San Diego, participates in politics, is a member of a party in the United States [the Republican], and it seemed to me that he was really someone who came to explain the visa issue to me.
Q. What is the status of your visa issue? Have they explained the reason for the cancellation?
A. The status is ‘administrative process,’ and no, I do not know the reason.
Q. In the audios, you mention that you are willing to provide information from the Security tables. What did you mean?
A. At the tables, we see crime incidence, how the common jurisdiction crime issue develops, thefts, homicides… We have binational Security tables constantly, which take place within the legal framework. And the information shared is within the legal framework. And it is information for the benefit of both sides of the border and in the fight against crime.
Q. In the context of the visa, what did that offer have to do with it?
A. No, it was not in the context of the visa, it was the context of that particular meeting, which was recorded in order to later publish fragments, decontextualized audios, as pressure in this regard.
Q. Who was the advisor Bonilla sent you?
A. I cannot say more because yesterday I filed a complaint against those responsible for this situation. I have the name and phone number, but their identity will be known in due course.
Q. What are you denouncing?
A. The crimes that the authority determines. There was a recording, he presents himself as an advisor of an agency; among other facts, there is the psychological ambush with which they seek to intimidate me, this violence I felt at the time. I was alone, there was no lawyer, no one who could explain to me what they were talking about at that moment.
Q. Which agency did he say he represented?
A. He told me he was an external advisor to the agencies, could be FBI or HSI.
Q. Did you inform President Claudia Sheinbaum or someone from her Cabinet, like Secretary Omar García Harfuch, that you were seeing these contacts for your visa?
A. They knew I was making efforts to process the visa.
Q. Did they know about the external advice?
A. No, I look for advisors because they made all these kinds of proposals and speculations. Of course, I seek legal advice.
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Q. Do you stand by your word and maintain that you only talked about the visa issue with U.S. authorities or advisors?
A. Of course, it is a strictly personal issue and also in terms of coordination within the legal framework, for cross-border, binational issues, all within the legal framework.
Q. Will we hear a new audio from you about negotiations, judicial benefits, or accusations against other Mexican politicians?
A. I don’t know if there will be more audios. However, I know the context in which they were given, an ambush where they try to infer responses, where they make me proposals of complex scenarios.
Q. Did you feel fear?
A. I thought about my children. I didn’t quite understand what was being referred to. It was even mentioned that I could be extradited.
Q. Can you affirm that no U.S. authority has informed you that there is an investigation against you?
A. What I can affirm is that we continue working. At this moment I have not received more information. I continue working in coordination with U.S. authorities.
Q. What repercussions do you think these leaks will have for Morena ahead of the 2027 elections?
A. Our movement is strong and united. In Baja California, there are many results. We have achieved a decrease in practically all crimes, we are doing works like never before. And, for me, one of the main achievements is the reduction of poverty.
Q. In the face of opposition attacks, would you be willing to step down to reduce political pressure, and even be investigated?
A. I have a clear conscience and hold my head high. I do not hide, there has not been a single day when I have stopped working for the people. I am in the territory, in the neighborhoods, supporting those who need it most. I do not participate in politics for power. I do it to help others.
Q. Why did you ask Jaime Bonilla for help?
A. I did not ask for help, he offered it. We had a meeting in the summer of 2025, which I agreed to attend because of the movement we come from and in the spirit of generating political peace in the state. And I accepted his help in good faith. This [the confrontation with Bonilla] comes from 2022 and starts with the cancellation of a 40 billion peso contract with the company Next Energy to build a photovoltaic plant that did not have federal permits. My responsibility as governor was to cancel that contract. And that is where the revenge, the persecution begins. It is not a personal or political issue, it is a matter of justice, of responsibility. I was not going to be an accomplice to that scam.
Q. Why, despite the background of your bad relationship with Bonilla, did you accept his help?
A. It was a moment when we were communicating. It was a strictly personal issue: the visa. I listened to the proposals and then this person [Bonilla’s envoy] looks for me to meet with me. Since it is something I would never do to someone, I started from good faith. And yes, it was a mistake to have received [the envoy], I recognize it was a mistake to have trusted this person. It was a trap.
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Q. Was it a mistake to trust whom?
A. Both of them.
Q. Are you still trying to recover your visa?
A. Of course. For a border citizen, it is an important document.
Q. If you recovered it, would you go to the United States? Aren’t you afraid?
A. If I ever recover my visa, of course I would go to the United States.