| Date | 2012–2013 |
|---|---|
| Location | Arizona, California, Indiana |
| Outcome | Successful operation, 77 arrests, $7.5 million and hundreds of pounds of narcotics seized. |
Operation Terminus [1] 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." [1] [2]
The Tijuana Cartel or Arellano-Félix-Organization 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.
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, commonly referred to by his aliases El Jefe de Jefes and El Padrino, is a convicted Mexican drug lord Kingpin. He was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border.
The Guadalajara Cartel also known as The Federation was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in the late 1970s 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.
The Mexican drug war is the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the U.S. federal government, an ongoing asymmetric low-intensity conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military began to intervene in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels, and preventing drug trafficking demand along with U.S. functionaries.
Operation Tijuana or Operation Baja California of the Government of Mexico is taking place in Tijuana and the surrounding areas of Baja California and Baja California Sur. This operation is part of the Joint Operation Against Drug Trafficking.
Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, commonly referred to by his alias El Azul, was a Mexican drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. 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, once considered Mexico's most-wanted drug lord.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Loera Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. It was established in Mexico during the late 1980s as one of a various number of subordinate “plazas" operating under a predecessor organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel. It is currently headed by Ismael Zambada García and is based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in many world regions but primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. It also has a notable presence in a number of other regions in Latin America, such as Colombia; as well as in cities across the U.S. The United States Intelligence Community generally considers the Sinaloa Cartel to be the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere, making it perhaps even more influential and capable than the infamous Medellín Cartel of Colombia was during its prime. It is frequently referred to by the media as one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world and indisputably the most powerful in Mexico.
The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
The Beltrán Leyva Organization was a Mexican drug cartel and organized crime syndicate, formerly headed by the five Beltrán Leyva brothers: Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo, Mario Alberto, and Héctor. Founded as a Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva cartel was responsible for transportation and wholesaling of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. It controlled numerous drug trafficking corridors, and engaged in human smuggling, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, murder and gun-running.
Operation Sinaloa or Operation Culiacan - Navolato is an ongoing anti-drug trafficking operation in the Mexican state of Sinaloa by the Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. Its main objective is to cripple all cartel organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel, Beltrán-Leyva Cartel and Los Zetas that operate in that state. The Military was deployed in response to the murder of Mexico's Federal Police commissioner Édgar Eusebio Millán Gómez.
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, commonly referred to by his alias El Mochomo, is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former leader of the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords. Beltrán Leyva was responsible for smuggling multi-ton shipments of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States from Mexico and South America between the 1990s and 2000s. He worked alongside his brothers Héctor, Carlos, and Arturo.
Los Ántrax is a large enforcer unit and hit squad for the Sinaloa Cartel, a major crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The group was led by the drug lords Jesús Peña, José Rodrigo Aréchiga Gamboa, René Velázquez Valenzuela, among others, and they are responsible for a number of homicides and for providing armed security services to Ismael El Mayo Zambada. The gang operates in the capital city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, where its members conduct homicides and violent attacks. Los Antrax is the Sinaloa Cartel's largest and deadliest enforcer unit.
Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, commonly referred to by his alias El Macho Prieto, was a Mexican drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a Mexican transnational criminal organization. He worked as the cartel's assassins chief under the tutelage of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and as the regional leader of the cartel in the states of Baja California and Sonora. His base of operations was in Mexicali, where he coordinated marijuana and cocaine shipments through the Calexico–Mexicali border region. On 18 December 2013, Inzunza Inzunza was killed in a shootout with Mexican authorities in the resort area of Puerto Peñasco, Sonora. Before the gunfight was over, several of his gunmen took the corpse of the drug lord with them.
Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, commonly referred to by his criminal alias El Chapo Isidro, is a Mexican drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. He is also the alleged leader of Los Mazatlecos and was right-hand man of the now deceased drug lord Héctor and the incarcerated Alfredo Beltrán Leyva. The FBI is offering a US$5 million bounty.
Inés Coronel Barreras is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former high-ranking leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal group based in Sinaloa. He is the father-in-law of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the former leader of the cartel and once considered Mexico's most-wanted man. Coronel Barreras was arrested by Mexican security forces in Agua Prieta, Sonora on 30 April 2013. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on April 28, 2017 for drug trafficking and illegal possession of firearms.
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 Black Swan was a joint U.S. and Mexican-led military operation that resulted in the recapture of the Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, following a deadly firefight in the city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, on January 8, 2016. Officials in the Mexican government announced that the operation was planned and executed by the Mexican Navy Special Forces, and that they had originally targeted an important Sinaloa Cartel assassin at a home in Los Mochis, and happened to find Guzmán as well. U.S. government officials announced that members of the United States Army's Delta Force and the U.S. Marshals assisted the Mexican Marines in the January 8 mission, and will pursue the extradition of Guzmán to the United States.
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 Kruz Control was a twelve-month, multi-agency investigation of a drug trafficking organization in southern Arizona, between December 2012 and December 2013.
