How the United States is putting pressure on the Sinaloa Cartel | United States

The US siege on the Sinaloa cartel continues. In Washington’s war on fentanyl, which has killed more than 107,000 people by overdose in 2022, measures are increasingly aimed at stifling production and distribution beyond US borders. The pressure exerted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on one of the cartel’s four factions, the Chapitos, the sons of the now-imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, initially suggested that they were preparing to launch a major operation against Sinaloa. Since then, sanctions and arrests have followed. As the cartel fights to assert itself in Mexico, which led to the massacre of 19 people in Chiapas this week, it has been bombarded with attacks from the courts and the US government. The crusade against Mexican drug traffickers has intensified after a DEA report revealed the declining health of one of its infamous members. caposIsmael “El Mayo” Zambada.

On July 1, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on three individuals, one in Mexico and two in China, accusing them of money laundering and having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Diego Acosta Ovalle, based in Mexico, allegedly aided criminals in Mexico by “concealing and collecting drug trafficking profits before handing them over to cartel associates.” Meanwhile, Tong Peiji and He Jiaxuan were operating out of China, laundering the profits through a U.S.-based organization. This latest legal attack is part of a complex scenario that has been going on for a year and a half.

The anti-cartel activity became evident last January with the arrest and subsequent extradition of Ovidio Guzmán, a Los Chapitos member accused of producing and trafficking fentanyl. In April 2023, as Washington processed Guzmán’s extradition, the Justice Department filed charges against 28 members of the Sinaloa Cartel, including El Chapo’s three sons: Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Ovidio.

As part of the DEA's investigation into fentanyl trafficking, the 28 men were accused of organizing operations to flood the United States with fentanyl, which resulted in “filling the streets with addicts.” Last September, after his extradition, it was revealed that Ovidio, aka El Ratón, was charged with possession of drugs with intent to distribute, conspiracy to import, manufacture and distribute drugs, conspiracy to launder money, weapons possession and membership in a criminal enterprise.

The war against Los Chapitos did not end there. Last November, Mexican authorities arrested Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, aka El Nini, the cartel’s security chief. A few months later, during the final stage of the Mexican elections, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador extradited El Nini to the United States, where he was charged not only with drug trafficking, but also with the murder of Alexander Meza León, a DEA informant who had infiltrated the Sinaloa Cartel and who was found dead in October 2023 with eight other people in the state of Durango. Seven cartel members, two Mexicans and five Americans, were also convicted at the time for smuggling thousands of fentanyl pills and several kilos of methamphetamine and cocaine across the border into the United States.

A DEA report released in early May describes the Sinaloa Cartel not as an organization operating under a single leader, as is the case with the Jalisco-New Generation Cartel, but as four criminal groups. The report identifies one faction led by “El Mayo” Zambada, another by Los Chapitos, a third by El Chapo’s brother Aureliano Guzmán Loera, aka “El Guano,” and a final one created by Rafael Caro Quintero, known as the Caborca ​​Cartel. The report says that Zambada’s physical health has deteriorated, suggesting that he may no longer be fit to lead his faction.

The possibility that Zambada’s reign was over had no effect on activity. “The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have created the worst drug crisis in U.S. history,” the DEA’s May report said. U.S. authorities said at the time that the two organizations were present in all 50 states and insisted that the production network began in China, where the DEA is trying to exert influence. The fentanyl trade, the report said, involves a vast network of chemical exporters and producers, international shipping companies, haulers on both sides of the border, corrupt officials, tunnel builders, front companies and money launderers.

In early May, DEA Director Anne Milgram complained to Congress that cooperation with López Obrador's government had been “inconsistent,” a charge Mexico denied. The accusation shows how the fight against Mexican cartels can become cannon fodder for political wrangling.

But pressure is also increasing on China. “Combating the threat posed by money laundering organizations in China is a key Treasury Department priority, and today we are taking action to cut off the financial flows of major money launderers who fuel the trafficking of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the United States,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in announcing the new sanctions.

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