5 White Collar Enforcement Trends to Watch in 2026

Peter Jeydel, a partner with Troutman Pepper Locke, was quoted in the January 2, 2026 Law360 article, “5 White Collar Enforcement Trends to Watch in 2026.”

“The elephant in the room is Mexico,” said Peter Jeydel, who leads the sanctions and trade controls team at Troutman Pepper Locke LLP. There could soon be an “unprecedented wave of prosecutions against not just Mexican companies, but U.S. and global companies,” he forecast.

Over the past year, the administration has devoted unprecedented amounts of federal resources to large-scale immigration enforcement operations in places including Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Charlotte, North Carolina. But more government attention could soon be devoted to cartel-focused sweeps, according to Jeydel.

“We may see widespread investigations of companies doing business in areas of the Mexican economy,” he said. “We’re not seeing that yet, but it could shift.”

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“What does that mean for the thousands of businesses that touch that port? Are they at criminal risk?” Jeydel said. “There are really big questions about whether the administration is going to go after ordinary businesses that have kind of unavoidable touchpoints to the cartels in Mexico,” which has been the U.S.’s largest trading partner.

He added, “What is their approach to white collar crime in Mexico going to be now that there is this ugly stew of legal risks?”

In response, some companies have been expanding their compliance programs by, for example, hiring outside diligence firms to put boots on the ground in Mexico to carry out deep dives into the extent of their potential contacts with cartels, according to Jeydel.

“Others still have their heads in the sand on this and are not doing much,” he said.