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The United States Department of Justice announced charges against 28 individuals accused of being involved in operations to traffic fentanyl into the United States. Among the defendants are 24 members of the Sinaloa Cartel and four Chinese businessmen, owners of chemical companies that would allegedly supply the substance to the cartel.
“We went after the entire network, from the precursors to the importation into Mexico, through the manufacturer, the weapons, the money launderers and the distribution in the United States,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland, announcing the charges at a press conference this Friday, April 14.
Among the defendants are Ovidio Guzmán López, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, the three lead a cell of the Sinaloa Cartel known as ‘Los Chapitos’. In addition, they are the children of the well-known drug trafficker Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera.
The brothers are accused of leading a complex fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking network, which would originate from Chinese and Guatemalan individuals who would supply the cartel with the chemicals necessary to manufacture the drug. The ingredients would then arrive at laboratories in Sinaloa, where they would be processed. From there the shipment to the United States would also be created..
“They know they are poisoning and killing Americans. They just don’t care because they make billions of dollars doing it,” said Anne Milgram, head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Among the dozens of defendants, eight of them are in jail. One of them is Ovidio Guzmán, who was turned over to the Mexican authorities in a police raid carried out in Culiacán, Sinaloa, earlier this year.
In addition, the US authorities called on the Chinese government to redouble its efforts in the fight against fentanyl trafficking. A request that seeks to counteract especially the chemicals necessary for its preparation, which they say come mostly from laboratories in Chinese territory.
“The Government of the People’s Republic of China must stop the uncontrolled flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals leaving China,” Garland said.
The official added that this week there were meetings between his country and Mexican authorities to coordinate joint strategies that would manage to “continually hit this enemy,” referring to the trafficking of said substance.
“Mexico is the main ally of the United States in the fight against fentanyl”
The Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, specified his country’s position on the fentanyl crisis in the United States. The foreign minister assured that the government headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador is willing to collaborate with his neighbor to “reduce fentanyl trafficking and the deaths caused by this synthetic drug.”
“The instruction we have is to identify the additional actions that we can take so that the Bicentennial Agreement has better results in two indicators: reduction of fentanyl and deaths from fentanyl, and reduction of violence in Mexico due to firearms,” Ebrard said in a press conference prior to a meeting with representatives of the Biden Administration.
Despite the conciliatory stance of the foreign minister and his team in their meeting with officials from the US Department of Justice and the DEA, the Mexican president has described the fentanyl crisis as an internal issue of the United Stateswhich his own government must manage.
López Obrador has remarked, on several occasions, that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico. However, he has acknowledged that the manufacture and shipment of the drug to US territory does occur in his country.
In early April, the Mexican president sent a letter to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, requesting stricter control of chemical trafficking into Mexico.
On April 10, the Chinese government responded to López Obrador’s request by denying that there is trafficking in the chemicals necessary to produce fentanyl in China.
“And here I make it clear again that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico, the raw material for fentanyl is not produced and, if those of the Chinese government say that they do not produce it either, then it is interesting to know who is producing it, and we must continue investigating,” the Mexican president declared at his press conference on Monday.
The opioid crisis in America
According to official data, seizures of fentanyl shipments by the United States Department of Customs and Border Protection have increased by 400% since 2019.
Additionally, nearly 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, two-thirds of them caused by fentanyl.
American society is currently experiencing an alarming drug crisis. The increase in the popularity of the use of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and the ease of acquisition of this substance have contributed to worsen the panorama.
With Reuters, AP and EFE
