A retired special agent at the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) said Mexico's infamous Sinaloa drug cartel has been deeply entrenched in major U.S. cities and small communities, and its influence has been “woven into our community.” “There's one,” he said.
The cartel reach is vast and more destructive than many people understand in both urban and rural America, Brian Townsend said.
“There are several big locations famous for Sinaloa control, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, Dallas, Atlanta and New York City,” he told Fox News Digital. “But they have distribution points all over the US, and from there they use those hubs, and then [the distribution] From there we spoke to our community. ”
The head of the DEA said last year that the US is facing a “most dangerous and fatal drug crisis” in history, with fentanyl and methamphetamine flowing across the border. ”
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A strong Sinaloan cartel companion has conspired with a Chinese group to cover up more than $50 million in drug profits. Many of them have been dealt with in the Los Angeles area, prosecutors said in a news release. (US District Attorney via the AP)
Townsend noted that 300 people die from drug overdose per day in the US
The former DEA agent who founded Eagle 6 Training shared that the Sinaloa Cartel will work with chemical suppliers to receive the “penny” material.
“It's mostly from China,” he said. “There are other countries like India and other suppliers involved. But China is far the best.”
“From the port, they're trucking to different places where fentanyl production occurs, and from there they're being smuggled into the US.”
Townsend said Mexican cartels are “very good at this,” and by adding fentanyl to the distribution, they “make a lot of money by killing Americans.”
On January 6, 2023, Mexican military and police patrol in Kaliacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. (AP)
Irina Tsukerman, president of Scarab Rising Inc., a US national security lawyer and strategic advisor for security and geopolitical risks, said Sinaloa Cartel “exceeds the impact of the peak of the Sicilian Mafia family.”
“With cities like Chicago, Denver and even Oklahoma, being transformed into major operation hubs, Sinaloa has a shadow state-holding within a nation that will be carrying a deadly war with the American people,” Tsukerman said. He told Fox News Digital.
supply chain
Tsukerman said what makes the Mexican cartel “exceptional” is controlling “every stage in the drug supply chain.”
cocaine: Imported especially from Colombia and South America.
heroin: Cultivated in the Golden Triangle (Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua) in Mexico
Fentanyl: Manufactured in a secret Mexican lab with Chinese chemicals
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Tkeman said that cartels manage production, allowing them to maximize profits and ensure the purity of the deadly drug.
Some of the types of regions that the Sinaloa cartel has established holds in the US include:
- Legal companies such as shell companies, restaurants, real estate, agriculture and more.
- Smuggled across borders and hidden inside vehicles and cargo
- Cryptocurrency transactions to avoid detection
- Continue trade-based laundry or trade transactions that overly infringe trade transactions to hide illegal revenues.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, is escorted by a helicopter in Mexico City after being captured in the beach resort town of Mazatlan. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo/File)
Sinaloa Cartel's organizational structure
Sinaloa's most infamous member is Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Drug Kingpin has been serving his sentence at Florence, Colorado's largest security prison after being found guilty of running an industrial-scale drug smuggling business.
Townsend said unlike most vertical organizational charts, the Sinaloa cartel operates on a “franchise model.”
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“Many of us are used to the Sinaloa cartels where big decisions are made at the top of the organizational chart, but the people at the bottom of the organizational chart make big decisions. ”
“They're going to stop and say, 'Hey, we need to get El Chapo in prison and see if he's OK with this,” Townsend said. “These are the main decisions that are taking place across the organization.”
Watch: Tom Homan calls the cartel a “game changer” as a terrorist organization
Terrorist organization classification
The Trump administration plans to designate more than half a dozen criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations. The movements being made by the State Department are Presidential Order President Donald Trump signed on January 20th calling for crackdowns on major cartels.
Townsend said Trump's more muscular approach to cartel violence “has many advantages,” but he said the US should “take light steps.”
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“It's going to provide law enforcement with additional resources within the US. It's usually more money and more talent,” he said. “It makes people doing business with these organizations illegal.”
“I think the reason this is being done is to increase the government's negotiating power with Mexico,” he said. “This gives us some leverage.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the DEA and the White House for comment.
