The US Department of Justice has charged 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel as part of a fentanyl-trafficking investigation.
Among those indicted are three sons of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday. The men are known as the Chapitos, or little Chapos, and are believed to be part of the most violent and aggressive faction of the cartel, the Associated Press reported.
The Chapitos were identified as Ivan Guzman Salazar, 40, Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 37 and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 36. Thirty-three-year-old Ovidio Guzman Lopez is also charged in a separate indictment and remains detained in Mexico pending extradition proceedings.
Chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers were also charged.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram accused the Chapitos of pioneering the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl and flooding it into the United States for the past eight years, killing “hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Ms Milgram said the DEA infiltrated the Sinaloa Cartel and the Chapitos network in order to obtain intel and access to the organization’s highest levels.
“I am grateful to the men and women of the DEA for their exceptional work on this case, which is the beginning of our work as ‘One DEA’ to dismantle every part of the criminal cartels that are killing Americans at record rates,” Ms Milgram said on Friday.
The DoJ said in a statement that following El Chapo’s arrest and extradition to the United States in 2017, the Chapitos took over their father’s role as leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. They are also accused of using cargo, private and commercial aircraft, submarines, container ships, supply vessels, rail cars and tractor-trailers to transport cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl.
They allegedly kept a network of tunnels and stash houses throughout Mexico and the US as part of their drug-trafficking activities.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez was arrested by Mexican authorities in the city of Culiacan earlier this year in an operation that left 29 dead, the BBC reported. He was briefly arrested back in 2019 but Mexican officials ordered his release following a deadly wave of protests in Culiacan.
The youngest member of the Chapitos is now imprisoned at Federal Social Readaptation Center No 1 in Juarez, the same prison his father escaped from on a motorbike in 2015. The whereabouts of the other Chapitos are unknown.
The DoJ is now offering up to $15m for information that leads to the arrest of the Chapitos. According to the agency, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and is behind most of the importing of fentanyl for distribution in the US.
Also charged in the newly unleased indictment are Chinese and Guatemalan citizens who allegedly supplied chemicals for the manufacturing of fentanyl, or ran drug labs and provided security and weapons for drug trafficking.
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49. An average of 196 Americans died every day from fentanyl between 2019 and 2021, per the DoJ.
