The U.S. Department of the Treasury recently sanctioned three Sinaloa Cartel operators, who are known as violent criminals, with the blocking and reporting of all their properties in the United States. The sanctions came from the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, according to a Treasury Department release.
"Today’s action targets key individuals responsible for facilitating the illicit trafficking of deadly drugs, including fentanyl, into the United States, where it wreaks havoc on our communities," Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in the release. "Treasury remains committed to leveraging our tools in support of our whole-of-government effort to aggressively target all aspects of the supply chain and starve these criminal groups of the funding they need to operate."
Based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the oldest and most significant cartels. Led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán until his arrest in 2017, it still has one of the largest international operations of the Mexican drug cartels, and has been described as the “most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere,” according to InSight Crime.
It also has been successful in forming relationships with Mexico’s political and business elites, giving the cartel protection and causing corruption, InSight Crime reported.
The Sinaloa Cartel was the most dominant cartel before Guzmán’s arrest. Since then, in-fighting and other challenges have led to other cartels gaining power, as much of the recent cartel violence has been due to the Sinaloa Cartel fighting the Jalisco Cartel, Global Guardian reported.
According to Anne Milgram, the administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Sinaloa Cartel has more than 26,000 members, associates, facilitators and brokers associated with it throughout the world and has a presence in 19 of the 32 states in Mexico. It imports drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine into the United States, Milgram said in a statement.
The three Sinaloa Cartel members who were sanctioned are Alfonso Arzate Garcia, his brother Rene Arzate Garcia and Rafael Guadalupe Felix Nuñez. According to the Treasury news release, the Garcia brothers are responsible for the cartel’s drug trafficking operations in Tijuana and the surrounding areas, and import large amounts of illicit drugs, such as fentanyl, into the U.S.
They are currently fugitives in the United States, the release reported. Nuñez reportedly started out as a hitman for the Sinaloa Cartel, and since then his responsibilities have grown to the point where he trafficks large amounts of drugs and is a known leader in the cartel. He has been indicted on drug trafficking charges in California and is a fugitive as well.
This action was coordinated with the government of Mexico and other U.S. government agencies. It is part of the government’s initiative to decrease the number of deaths in the United States from drug overdoses, the release said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were an estimated 109,680 overdose deaths in the United States in 2022.
