Drug Trafficking Organizations (Cartels)

According to a December 20, 2019 report by the Congressional Research Center:  Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations

“Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) pose the greatest crime threat to the United States and have “the greatest drug trafficking influence,” according to the annual U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) National Drug Threat Assessment. These organizations work across the Western Hemisphere and globally. They are involved in extensive money laundering, bribery, gun trafficking, and corruption, and they cause Mexico’s homicide rates to spike. They produce and traffic illicit drugs into the United States, including heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and they traffic South American cocaine. Over the past decade, Congress has held numerous hearings addressing violence in Mexico, U.S. counternarcotics assistance, and border security issues.

Mexican DTO activities significantly affect the security of both the United States and Mexico. As Mexico’s DTOs expanded their control of the opioids market, U.S. overdoses rose sharply to a record level in 2017, with more than half of the 72,000 overdose deaths (47,000) involving
opioids. Although preliminary 2018 data indicate a slight decline in overdose deaths, many analysts believe trafficking continues to evolve toward opioids. The major Mexican DTOs, also referred to as transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), have continued to diversify into such crimes as human smuggling and oil theft while increasing their lucrative business in opioid supply. According to the Mexican government’s latest estimates, illegally siphoned oil from Mexico’s state-owned oil company costs the government about $3 billion annually”

WHO ARE THEY

Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations have constantly changed over the last 12 years.  Currently there are 9 well organized DTOs  in operation, the DEA has identified those 9 organizations as follows:

  • Sinaloa
  • Los Zetas
  • Tijuana
  • Juárez
  • Beltrán Leyva
  • Gulf
  • La Familia Michoacana
  • Knights Templar
  • Cartel Jalisco-New Generation (CJNG).

In mid-2019, leader of the long-dominant Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin (“El Chapo”) Guzmán, was sentenced to life in a maximum-security U.S. prison, spurring further fracturing of a once dominant Sinaloa Cartel.  However, despite the apprehension and conviction of El Chapo, the Sinaloa and CJNG Cartels are two of the most significantly active DTO’s in the United States today.

In 2019, Mexico’s national public security system reported more than 17,000 homicides between January and June, setting a new historical record for homicides. Towards the end of 2019, several offshoot groups from formerly stable cartels were responsible for increasingly flagrant and extreme acts of violence including:

  • The October capture by Mexican authorities of a son of imprisoned Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin (“El Chapo”) Guzmán. Guzmán’s son was briefly detained for trafficking, until the Sinaloa Cartel responded with overwhelming force that brought chaos to the city of Culiacan and prompted authorities to release him.
  • The November 4 slaying of nine U.S.-Mexican dual citizens of an extended Mormon family (including children) in the border state of Sonora in Mexico.
  • A shootout near the Texas-Mexico border in which some 21 people were killed over two days, including police, criminal group members, and civilians.

Violence is inextricably linked to the trade in illicit drugs. Traffickers use violence to settle disagreements, to maintain employee discipline and for them it provides a means of order with suppliers, creditors, and buyers, while also intimidating potential competitors.

The level of  violence that is now associated with drug trafficking organizations in Mexico has risen to levels never seen before.  In Mexico, the violence is not only used to resolve disputes, maintain discipline, or intimidate rivals but now it also has been directed toward the government, political candidates, and the media.  Periodically, when organized crime-related homicides in Mexico have spread to important urban centers or resulted in the murder of U.S. citizens, Members of Congress have considered the possibility of designating the criminal groups as foreign terrorists, as in 2019.  However, despite the growing risks and documented evidence of the very extreme levels of brutality and violence associated with these increasingly dangerous TCOs no serious Congressional action to make this declaration has been undertaken, this needs to change.

As these criminal organizations continue to infiltrate the United States and our communities the violence and brutality routinely associated with these criminal organizations will also become part of our communities along with their deadly narcotics.