The Tijuana Cartel or Arellano-Félix-Cartel is a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Founded by the Arellano-Félix family, the cartel once was described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico". However, since the 2006 Sinaloa Cartel incursion in Baja California and the fall of the Arellano-Félix brothers, the Tijuana Cartel has been reduced to a few cells. In 2016, the organization became known as Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación and began to align itself under the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, along with Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) to create an anti-Sinaloa alliance, in which the Jalisco New Generation Cartel heads. This alliance has since dwindled as the Tijuana, Jalisco New Generation, and Sinaloa cartels all now battle each other for trafficking influence in the city of Tijuana and the region of Baja California.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, commonly referred to by his aliases El Jefe de Jefes and El Padrino, is a convicted Mexican drug kingpin who was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in the 1980s.
The Guadalajara Cartel, also known as The Federation, was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in 1980 by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered from the cocaine trade. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border. It had operations in various regions in Mexico which included the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Colima, Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa among others. Multiple modern present day drug cartels such as the Tijuana, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels originally started out as branches or "plazas" of the Guadalajara Cartel before its eventual disintegration.
Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, commonly referred to by his alias El Azul, was a Mexican drug lord and member of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guadalajara Cartel and Juárez Cartel, three large and powerful criminal organizations. Originally a member of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) police agency, he founded the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s along with other drug kingpins in Mexico. Following its disintegration in the late 1980s, he went on to lead the Juárez Cartel and eventually settled in the Sinaloa Cartel. He worked alongside Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García, once considered world's most-wanted, powerful and rich drug lords.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Guzmán-Zambada Organization, the Federation, the Blood Alliance, or the Pacific Cartel, is a large, international organized crime syndicate based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering.
The Chaldean mafia, or Chaldean organized crime, is a collective of criminal organizations composed of Chaldean Catholic Assyrians which emerged in the United States during the 1980s. Chaldean organized crime is active primarily in Detroit, as well as in San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona.
A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin, or lord of drugs is a type of crime boss in charge of a drug trafficking network, organization, or enterprise.
La Familia Michoacana, La Familia, is a Mexican drug cartel and organized crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Michoacán. They are known to produce large amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Michoacan. Formerly allied to the Gulf Cartel—as part of Los Zetas—it split off in 2006. The cartel was founded by Carlos Rosales Mendoza, a close associate of Osiel Cárdenas. The second leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco, preached his organization's divine right to eliminate enemies. He carried a "bible" of his own sayings and insisted that his army of traffickers and hitmen avoid using the narcotics they produce and sell. Nazario Moreno's partners were José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Enrique Plancarte Solís, each of whom has a bounty of $2 million for his capture, and were contesting the control of the organization.
The Iron Horsemen Motorcycle Club (IHMC) is an American outlaw motorcycle club that was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1967. Their insignia consists of a winged, metallic horse's head while their motto reads "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it weren't for the Iron Horsemen, the highways would rust".
The Illegal drug trade in Puerto Rico is a problem from a criminal, social, and medical perspective. Located in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico has become a major transshipment point for drugs into the United States. Violent and property crimes have increased due in part to dealers trying to keep their drug business afloat, using guns and violence to protect themselves, their turfs, and drug habits.
The illegal drug trade in Latin America concerns primarily the production and sale of cocaine and cannabis, including the export of these banned substances to the United States and Europe. The coca cultivation is concentrated in the Andes of South America, particularly in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; this is the world's only source region for coca.
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar was an American intelligence officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In February 1985, Camarena was kidnapped by corrupt police officers hired by the Guadalajara Cartel. He was interrogated under torture and murdered. Three leaders of the cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder. The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to ten more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime. The case continues to trouble U.S.–Mexican relations, most recently when Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the three convicted traffickers, was released from a Mexican prison in 2013. Caro Quintero again was captured by Mexican forces in July 2022.
Operation Diablo Express was a cross-border raid launched on 29 January 2016, by a combined force of Mexican and American police to apprehend members of the Sinaloa Cartel in Lukeville, Arizona, and the neighboring border town Sonoyta, in northwestern Sonora.
Operation Blue Storm was a successful police investigation of an illegal marijuana smuggling ring operating in Arizona and Nebraska. During a lengthy investigation in 2012, police investigators uncovered links between the South Family Bloods street gang of Omaha, Nebraska, and the Sinaloa Cartel of northwestern Mexico, which was supplying South Family with illegal marijuana smuggled into and out of Arizona. The Nebraska investigation resulted in the indictment and conviction of 15 individuals, and the seizure of $60,000 in property, while the investigation in Arizona resulted in the indictment of 11 others, who, according to police, were directly linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. Police officials also announced that the illegal marijuana ring was responsible for smuggling 16,000 pounds of product into the United States, with a street value of approximately $7.75 million.
Operation Terminus was a 30-month investigation into a Sinaloa Cartel drug smuggling ring in Arizona, California and Indiana. Beginning sometime in 2012, Operation Terminus investigators seized $7.5 million in cash, 485 pounds of methamphetamine, 50 Kilograms of cocaine, 4.5 pounds of heroin and 37 guns, including assault rifles, sniper rifles, and various other small arms. 77 suspects were indicted, and an "extensive drug trafficking network" stretching from Sinaloa, to Phoenix, Arizona, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis, was uncovered. Police officials have also reported that as result of the legalization of marijuana in some U.S. states, Mexican cartels are turning to more dangerous illegals drugs to make up for lost profits. A police spokesman in Tempe, Arizona, Lieutenant Mike Pooley commented on the situation: "They are plowing marijuana fields and planting opiates. It's killing our youths. It's an epidemic."
The Arizona borderlands are the geographic and cultural region north of the Arizona portion of the US-Mexico border. The area is unique in that it features both an international border and the Tohono O'oham sovereign nation along much of that border. Frequent and persistent topics of interest in the area include the presence of illegal immigration, the confluence of local, state, and national politics surrounding the border, conservation and sustainable living, and the presence of drug traffickers and paramilitary forces in the vicinity.
Carlos Landín Martínez, also known as El Puma, was a Mexican former police chief and convicted drug lord. He was a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and worked as the second-in-command of the cartel in Reynosa from 2005 to 2007. Landín Martínez was a trusted enforcer of the kingpin Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa. Among his responsibilities were managing international drug trafficking shipments from Tamaulipas to Texas, collecting taxes from independent traffickers who operated in his turf, and managing money laundering operations. Landín Martínez was also a commander in the Tamaulipas State Police, where he headed the homicide taskforce. According to a witness who testified against him in court, Landín Martínez worked for the Gulf Cartel while still employed by the state police.
Gilberto Lerma Plata is a Mexican former police chief and convicted drug lord. He began his career in 1993 as a police officer in the Tamaulipas State Police when his cousin Manuel Cavazos Lerma became Governor of Tamaulipas. Lerma Plata was eventually promoted to police commander in Reynosa and Miguel Alemán. In the late 1990s, while still working for the police, Lerma Plata joined the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, for whom he facilitated drug trafficking operations from Mexico to the US, coordinated cash smuggling operations, and aided in the procurement of firearms.
Ediel López Falcón, also known as La Muela or Metro 5, is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was the regional boss of Miguel Alemán and helped coordinate international drug trafficking shipments from South and Central America to Mexico and the U.S. His roles in the cartel were also to coordinate oil theft operations. In 2012, he was indicted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for drug trafficking activities. After fleeing Mexico to avoid gang-related violence, López Falcón was arrested in Texas during a sting operation in 2013. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2015. He is currently imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix in New Jersey. His expected release date is in 2029.
United States