The DEA’s ‘Last Mile’ operation leads to the arrest of thousands of members of the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels

A joint operation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, for its acronym in English) cut off the fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking operations by the Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco in the United States.

“The results of this operation – more than 3,000 arrests and the seizure of nearly 44 million fentanyl pills – demonstrate the Justice Department’s relentless commitment to working with our state and local partners to keep fentanyl out of our communities and save lives. Americans,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Friday.

The US is facing a true pandemic of deaths caused by the use of fentanyl, with about 200 daily deathsaccording to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A unique detail of the ‘Last Mile’ operation is that the traffickers used popular social networks – such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Wire and Wickr – to commit these crimes.

“What’s also alarming: American social media platforms are the means by which they do it,” DEA chief Anne Milgram said.

In a statement In addition, the DEA attacked the indicated cartels because they “use violent local street gangs and criminal groups and individuals in the United States to flood communities with enormous amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine, which generates addiction and violence and kills Americans.”

The operation began in May 2022 and ended on May 1, which included 1,436 investigations that led to the seizure of firearms, 6,500 pounds of fentanyl powder, and more than $100 million in cash.

This week the FBI announced the arrest of about 300 people involved in fentanyl trafficking using the dark web, in a global operation.

The “Chapitos” stand out

Last April, the DEA and other US federal agencies reported on the accusatory process against “28 members and associates of the Sinaloa Cartel that operate in Mexico, China and Central America”, among which are included the leaders of the Cartel known as the ” Chapitos”, sons of the now imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.

Recently, the children of the drug trafficker sentenced to life imprisonment in the US rejected the nickname “Chapitos” in a letter at the same time denied their involvement in fentanyl trafficking and attributed the accusations to “an advertising effort”.

[Parte de la información para este reporte provino de comunicados del Departamento de Justicia, la DEA y la agencia The Associated Press]

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