Category Archives: Drug Cartels

Jeff Sessions/FBI and MS-13

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Four members of the violent, foreign MS-13 gang were convicted on federal racketeering charges, some of which involved murder.

Miguel Zelaya, 20-years-old, Luis Ordonez-Vega, 36-years-old, Jorge Sosa, 24-years-old and William Gavidia, 23-years-old, were all convicted on a count of conspiracy to commit racketeering, according to the Charlotte Observer:

Zelaya, who also goes by “Most Wanted” and “Ne Ne” is a member of MS-13’s “Coronados Little Cycos Salvatrucha” clique. On Dec. 18, 2013, he shot and killed Jose Orlando Ibarra, an associate of The Latin Kings, a rival gang, the release said.

Ordonez-Vega, also known as “Big Boy,” is a member of the Brentwood Locos Salvatrucha” clique, according to the news release. On June 6, 2013, Ordonez-Vega shot and killed Noel Navarro Hernandez in a strip mall parking lot in Charlotte, believing the victim was a member of a rival gang.

Sosa, who goes by “Koki” and “Loco” is a member of the “Charlotte Locotes Salvatrucha” clique. Prosecutors say he’s been involved in multiple gang-related crimes. In Feb. 2008, he flashed MS-13 gang signs at a rival gang member’s mother and pointed a gun at her while they were stopped in traffic. In June, 2013, he was involved in a gang-related shooting where he and another person followed victims in a neighborhood in Charlotte and opened fire with a high-caliber rifle, the release said.

All of the gang members are either immigrants or the children of immigrants in the U.S. and they are also facing state charges for their crimes.

“Today’s guilty verdicts underscore that even though gang membership may in some ways ‘protect’ gangsters from outsiders, it certainly won’t protect them from the vast reach of the US. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Jill Westmoreland Rose said in a statement.

The MS-13 gang members were four of 37 who were charged with racketeering after an investigation into the criminal activity by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Thirty of the other gang members charged with racketeering are either awaiting sentencing or have pleaded guilty to the charges.

According to the U.S. District Attorney, Ordonez-Vega and Zelaya were convicted on charges to murder in aid of racketeering. Those charges are connected to two separate murders. Meanwhile, Sosa was convicted for attempted murder in the aid of racketeering.

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Image result for ms-13  InSightCrime

In 2015 the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of three members of the gang who were funneling funds back to higher-ups in El Salvador from prison. These actions were an attempt “disrupt” MS-13’s financial network by cutting off profits from illegal activities in the United States, the Treasury Department said. In 2012 the Obama administration designated MS-13 a transnational crime organization and implemented sanctions against six members in 2013.

While the U.S. government attempts to target MS-13’s earnings, targeting its culture is proving more difficult. The fierce loyalty among members is unique, Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, told FOX Business.

“They’re very cohesive and often directed by imprisoned bosses in El Salvador to recruit and expand in American communities. That tends to mean there’s an aggressive internal enforcement mechanism which equates to internal discipline involving physical violence and murder for disrespect or betrayal,” he said.

The FBI in El Salvador Because of MS-13:

Slave Labor Markets in Libya and Beyond

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So, the United Nations reports this but so what? Is anyone at the United Nations taking action? Never heard anything out of the Obama White House either, did you? How about out of the Hillary Clinton or John Kerry State Department? Anything? Did WikiLeaks cables include any of this? Nah….

That whole Hillary Libya operation did not work out well at all, the country remains in a tailspin.

Migrant Smuggling – a deadly business

Currently, data is too scattered and incomplete to paint an accurate picture of numbers of people who are smuggled each year and the routes and methods used by those who smuggle them. Still, available evidence reveals the following trends and patterns:

  • Criminals are increasingly providing smuggling services to irregular migrants to evade national border controls, migration regulations and visa requirements. Most irregular migrants resort to the assistance of profit-seeking smugglers. As border controls have improved, migrants are deterred from attempting to illegally cross them themselves and are diverted into the hands of smugglers.
  • Migrant smuggling is a highly profitable business in which criminals enjoy low risk of detection and punishment. As a result, the crime is becoming increasingly attractive to criminals. Migrant smugglers are becoming more and more organized, establishing professional networks that transcend borders and regions.
  • The modus operandi of migrant smugglers is diverse. Highly sophisticated and expensive services rely on document fraud or ‘visa-smuggling’. Contrasted with these are low cost methods which often pose high risks for migrants, and have lead to a dramatic increase in loss of life in recent years.
  • Migrant smugglers constantly change routes and modus operandi in response to changed circumstances often at the expense of the safety of the smuggled migrants.
  • Thousands of people have lost their lives as a result of the indifferent or even deliberate actions of migrant smugglers.

These factors highlight the need for responses to combat the crime of migrant smuggling to be coordinated across and between regions, and adaptable to new methods. In this regard, UNODC seeks to assist countries in implementing the  Smuggling of Migrants Protocol while promoting  a comprehesensive response to the issue of migrant smuggling.

  More here. Has anyone heard from the African American community on this issue at all?

Image result for slave labor markets  PBS

Back in 2013, the UN essentially reported the same conditions in North Korea.

North Korea’s hidden labor camps exposed: A new UN panel is vowing to hold North Korea’s Kim regime to ‘full accountability’ for decades of mass crime and murder. Will Pyongyang face ICC indictment?  More here from CS Monitor.

The Global Slavery Index also provides insight into the estimated absolute numbers of people in modern slavery, in 162 countries. When the estimated number of enslaved people is considered in absolute terms as a single factor, the country ranking shifts considerably.

The countries with the highest numbers of enslaved people are India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Taken together, these countries account for 76% of the total estimate of 29.8 million in modern slavery.

The country with the largest estimated number of people in modern slavery is India, which is estimated to have between 13,300,000 and 14,700,000 people enslaved. The India country study suggests that while this involves the exploitation of some foreign nationals, by far the largest proportion of this problem is the exploitation of Indians citizens within India itself, particularly through debt bondage and bonded labour.

The country with the second highest absolute numbers of enslaved is China, with an estimated 2,800,000 to 3,100,000 in modern slavery. The China country study5 suggests that this includes the forced labour of men, women and children in many parts of the economy, including domestic servitude and forced begging, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and forced marriage.

The country with the third highest absolute number in modern slavery is Pakistan, with an estimated 2,000,000 to 2,200,000 people in modern slavery. Read the 2013 report here.

 

 

Veteran Wounded Warriors Become Hunters, Great Story

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In War on Child Porn, US Turns Wounded Soldiers Into Hunters

A group of military veterans take the oath at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ceremony, swearing them in to serve as analysts on child exploitation cases, at ICE headquarters in Washington, March 31, 2017. (B. Hamdard/VOA)

A group of military veterans take the oath at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ceremony, swearing them in to serve as analysts on child exploitation cases, at ICE headquarters in Washington, March 31, 2017. (B. Hamdard/VOA)

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WASHINGTON — 

The language at a small graduation ceremony inside a federal office building in Washington Friday morning was militaristic: Fighting. Frontlines. Enemies. War.

For a fifth year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rather quietly has trained a small team of injured, wounded or sick military veterans for a different type of deployment – supporting the agency’s lesser-known investigative arm as analysts on child exploitation cases – the ones who will be able to take photos off a hard drive in a child pornography investigation, then help identify the perpetrator and build the case for an arrest.

“It is a battle. It is a war. And it needs to be,” said Daniel Ragsdale, ICE Deputy Director.

Since 2013, more than 100 veterans have learned computer forensics through the H.E.R.O. Child-Rescue Corps, an 11-week program in the nation’s capital, followed by a nearly year-long internship in ICE field offices around the country.

Chris Wooten, a U.S. Army ranger who was injured in a helicopter crash seven years ago while serving with a special operations regiment in Afghanistan — his fifth tour in Iraq and Afghanistan — felt like the program could return that sense of purpose and pride he felt serving in the military.

“I did have a lot of buddies who weren’t able to make it home, that were killed overseas or even individuals that took their own lives when they made it back just because they didn’t have that sense of purpose anymore,” he explains after the ceremony, before flying home to southwest Florida, where he starts his internship next week.

“I think this opportunity, even though we’re all wounded and can’t do our military job anymore, that this program allows us to serve our country again, and not only that, but help save some kids.”

‘Daunting’ task

It’s unpaid work that first year, working alongside agents to find suspects and build the cases, often looking at graphic, violent content for clues about the perpetrator, the victim, or even the location. But the program regularly leads to job offers from ICE, according to an agency spokesman.

The collaboration between ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the National Association to Protect Children builds the ranks of child sexual abuse investigators, as law enforcement across the United States scrambles to keep up with networks of elusive online suspects — the ones supplying the images and the ones demanding them.

Non-profit organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that also work on these cases report that the trade in child pornography images is growing “exponentially.” They report receiving thousands of requests from law enforcement agencies to analyze millions of images and videos in one year.

Ragsdale, the second in command at ICE, says there aren’t enough analysts to meet the investigative demand. The agency is only one of several federal bureaus trying to dismantle the online exchange of child pornography, and in the week before Friday’s graduation, it posted three updates on three such cases:

  • “Tucson man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography”
  • “Idaho man sentenced to 25 years on federal child pornography charges”
  • “Southwest Texas man sentenced to nearly 16 years in federal prison for distributing child pornography”

“It’s daunting to see case after case after case… when you see 100-year sentences or multiple life sentences,” Ragsdale told the graduates. “Unfortunately, it’s still not enough. It’s certainly not tipping the scale to dissuade people who abuse children.”

“You are joining a fight that law enforcement is having a hard time winning,” he added.

*

‘Horrible photos’

Chosen to speak for the class at the ceremony, Wooten’s voice faltered at the podium; he spoke about friends who died in combat or after returning home. He mentioned the veteran suicide rate in the U.S. — about 20 a day. He talked of “scars, visible and invisible.”

More than the adrenaline rush of military work under high stress, Wooten says with the investigatory work “you get that sense of pride back.”

“In the military, you’re very proud to serve your country. And this, you almost get a sense of pride that ‘I’m able to handle the images,’” said Wooten, who at 29, is the father of five children. “I knew the struggle was going to be looking at horrible photos and videos that everyday people don’t even know goes on.

“This job, I’m actually going out and saving kids and stopping bad guys, and help putting bad guys behind bars by analyzing evidence and different things that help them get a prison sentence,” said Wooten. “Before, I was just sitting at a desk basically doing paperwork.”

Sanctuary Cities Don’t Comply Face Loss of Federal Dollars/Clawback

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AG: Sanctuary Cities Face Ineligibility for Future Federal Funds, ‘Clawback’ of Funds Already Awarded

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that states and localities that refuse to comply with federal immigration laws will be deemed ineligible for federal grants.

“Today, I’m urging  states and local jurisdictions to comply with these federal laws, including 8 U.S.C. Section 1373. Moreover, the Department of Justice will require that jurisdictions seeking or applying for Department of Justice grants to certify compliance with 1373 as a condition of receiving those awards,” he said, adding that the policy “is entirely consistent with the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Program’s guidance that was issued just last summer under the previous administration.

“This guidance requires state and local jurisdictions to comply and certify compliance with Section 1373 in order to be eligible for OJP grants. It also made clear that failure to remedy violations could result in withholding grants, termination of grants, and disbarment or ineligibility for future grants,” Sessions added.

“The Department of Justice will also take all lawful steps to clawback any funds awarded to a jurisdiction that willfully violates 1373. In the current fiscal year, the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Program and Community Oriented Policing services anticipates awarding more than $4.1 billion in grants,” he said.

The attorney general said that in one week alone, “there were more than 200 instances of jurisdictions refusing to honor ICE detainer requests with respect to individuals charged or convicted of a serious crime,” according to a report released recently by the Department of Homeland Security.

“The charges and convictions against these aliens included drug-trafficking, hit-and-run, rape, sex offenses against a child, and even murder. Such policies cannot continue. They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on the streets,” Sessions said.

He pointed to the murder of 32-year-old Kate Steinle who was killed two years ago in San Francisco as an example.

“The shooter, Francisco Sanchez, was an illegal immigrant who had already been deported five times and had seven felony convictions,” Sessions pointed out.

“Just 11 weeks before the shooting, San Francisco had released Sanchez from its custody, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had filed a detainer requesting that he be held in custody until immigration authorities could pick him up for removal. Even worse, Sanchez admitted the only reason he came to San Francisco was because it was a sanctuary city,” the attorney general said.

“A similar story unfolded just last week, when Ever Valles, an illegal immigrant and a Mexican national was charged with murder and robbery of a man at a light rail station. Valles was released from a Denver jail in late December, despite the fact that ICE has lodged a detainer for his removal,” he said.

“The American people are not happy with these results. They know that when cities and states refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe. Failure to deport aliens who are convicted of criminal offenses puts whole communities at risk, especially immigrant communities in the very sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to protect the perpetrators,” Sessions said.

Sessions said recent polling shows that 80 percent of Americans “believe that cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crime should be required to turn them over to immigration authorities.”

“DUIs, assaults, burglaries, drug crimes, gang rapes, crimes against children, and murderers — countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended. Not only do these policies endanger lives of every American — just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these policies also violate federal law,” he said.

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Nine Bipartisan Homeland Security-Related Bills Passed by House

What the House Committee on Homeland security described as an “unprecedented number of bipartisan [bills] aimed at keeping Americans safe,” were passed this last week by the House which deal with a variety of aspects of homeland Security.

The nine pieces of legislation, the committee said, are designed “to … also save taxpayer dollars by improving the acquisition process at the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] and make important reforms to the operations of the Transportation Security Administration [TSA].”

“It is critical that we continue to re-examine our strategy, technology and the infrastructure we currently have in place to strengthen the Department of Homeland Security and stop terrorists from reaching our shores,” said committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX). “The evolving threats we face demand action to address vulnerabilities in our defenses. I commend the work of my Committee—particularly the bipartisan nature in which these bills were advanced—to make our country safer.”

The nine bills out the Homeland Security Committee passed by the House included a key counterterrorism bill, the Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act of 2017 (HR 1302), which expands on the work of last Congress.

The other key pieces of legislation passed this past week include the:

DHS Multiyear Acquisition Strategy Act of 2017 (HR 1249), introduced by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require a multiyear acquisition strategy of DHS.

DHS Acquisition Authorities Act of 2017 (HR 1252), introduced by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for certain acquisition authorities for the Under Secretary of Management of DHS.

Reducing DHS Acquisition Cost Growth Act (HR 1294), introduced by Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for congressional notification regarding major acquisition program breaches.

TSA Administrator Modernization Act of 2017 (HR 1309), introduced by Rep. John Katko (R-NY), streamlines the office and term of the administrator of TSA.

Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Technical Corrections Act of 2017 (HR 1297), introduced by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make technical corrections to the requirement that the Secretary of Homeland Security submit quadrennial homeland security reviews.

Transparency in Technological Acquisitions Act of 2017 (HR 1353), introduced by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require certain additional information to be submitted to Congress regarding the strategic 5-year technology investment plan of the TSA.

Read Homeland Security Today’s report on the bill here.

Securing our Agriculture and Food Act (HR 1238), introduced by Rep. David Young (R-IA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Health Affairs responsible for coordinating the efforts of DHS related to food, agriculture and veterinary defense against terrorism.

Read Homeland Security Today’s report on the legislation here.

Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel Exercise Act of 2017 (HR 1302), introduced by Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), requires an exercise related to terrorist and foreign fighter travel, and for other purposes.

Department of Homeland Security Acquisition Innovation Act (HR 1365), introduced by Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require certain acquisition innovation.

What you Should Know About “Las Moicas” and Why

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Is there any reason why the Trump administration has not called for all drug cartels to be listed as terror organizations?

Ten Cartels are fighting for control of Guerrero with more brutality and violence

Subject Matter: Organized crime in Guerrero
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge requiredGuerrero occupies the third place in terms of most poverty at 62% of the population and first place for homicides at 2884 in 2016 at the national level. It is the state most disputed among organized crime groups. There is a presence of 10 cartels, five of them top level. Its central zone has converted into a battlefield between two organizations Los Rojos and Los Ardillos and possibly others that authorities have not completely identified yet. The presence of 500 military and state police has not contained the disappearances and executions and the criminals come back each time more brutal.

In the last decade, Guerrero has converted in the land of cartels and death; the dispute between the Sinaloa cartel, CJNG, the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Knights Templar, La Familia Michoacana and no less than five local organizations have converted the state into the most violent with 18,000 executions since 2006, when the call to war against the narco was initiated.

In Guerrero, 12 of the 81 towns are considered neutral zones. The geographic location of Chilapa has converted it into a demarcation most fought over since 2012 by Los Ardillos and Los Rojos, and not only because it is an essential corridor for the transit of drugs, also its land is utilized for the growing of poppys, “that has just finished its first harvest of the year”, according to the Guerrero Coordination Group.

What has happened this year, in Chilapa, there have been 48 executions related to the war between Los Rojos and Los Ardillos, Rojos and a third group of civil organizations known as “Los Jefes” or “Gente Nueva”, different to the Gente Nueva of the Sinaloa cartel, only have a presence int he communities,  and with a population of 129,867 only has 500 soldiers and 100 Municipals to police it.

This last weekend was a violent one in the State with no less that 23 deaths, 10 of them in Chilapa, two women and three men were killed by gunfire in different events and five bodies were incinerated in the interior of a taxi.

At the Start of the month, on Tuesday the 7th, 6 dismembered bodies in a state of decomposition appeared inside 13 plastic bags. On Thursday the 9th, they found another five bodies charred inside a vehicle. The brutality with which they perpetrate the executions in the indigenous town, “is very strong” assured the Governor Hector Astudillo Flores.

The growing wave of violence in the town led to the implementation of Operation Chilapa, in January of 2016. One year after the security strategy was put in place, the Mayor Jesus Parra Garcia blamed social networks and media for “inventing facts that affect the image of the town”. With recent executions of PRI members he had to admit that the violence was aggravated during his administration.

These are times of crisis, of adversity, and are very complex. I have had to govern in the most difficult times for Chilapa, he told reporters.

Who are Los Rojos and Los Ardillos

In the period of 2012 – 2015, when the municipality was governed by PRI Francisco Javier Garcia Gonzalez, Los Rojos settled in Chilapa under the command of Zenen Nava Sanchez “El Chaparro”, alleged family of Jesus Nava Romero ” El Rojo”.

He was a Lieutenant of Arturo Beltran Leyva and who was slaughtered in June of 2013 in Puebla. During this administration, the population lived through the first mass kidnappings, huge extortion of transport and businesses and brutal executions.

Jesus Nava Romero dead in the street (Borderland Beat archive)

Los Ardillos, a gang that comes from the Quechultenango region, whose leaders Celso and Antonio Hernandez Ortega are brothers of ex PRD deputy Bernardo Ortega Jiminez, have extended into the regions of Chilapa, Zitlala, Tixtla, Totoloapan and Acapulco in only one year, 2014, during the transition of the governorships of Angel Aguirre Rivero and Rogelio Ortega Martinez bot of the PRD.

The battle for the central zone of Guerreo tainted at this moment Aguirre Rivero as well as Garcia Gonzalez and also the ex PRI Mario Moreno Arcos of Chilpancingo, and Ignacio Bacilio and Eduardo Nero all accused publicly of ties to Los Rojos.

In 2015, with the change of State Government and municipal, things had begun to escalate. The President of the organization Siempre Vivos, Jose Diaz Navarro, assured that a reduction in the violence would be felt because Zenen Nava, who in January of 2016 escaped after a two hour confrontation with the armed forces, had returned. According to the PGR, El Chaparro in one of the 13 priority objectives of Guerrero and Morelos.

In the last three years, Los Ardillos and Los Rojos, in their dispute for territory, have committed executions of extreme cruelty, torturing, decapitating, and incinerating corpses that were left in public places.

They have also been responsible for the disappearance of 130 persons, according to the Centre for Human Rights. The mass kidnappings in the towns of Zitlata and Chilapa, where the criminal groups kidnap the inhabitants, all in the presence of Military and State Police, denounce the ONG.

The confrontations between various cartels, as well as the kidnappings and executions against the inhabitants, have caused fear in Chilapa. Families prefer not to leave their houses aftern 7 at night , the schools are secured with padlocks and checkpoints that are reinforced.

Nevertheless, the organization Siempre Vivos considers that part of the violence that affects the towns of Tixtla and Zitlala, is a strategy of terror of the State and Federal Governments so that the population calls for the law of Homeland Security, that is pending for discussion at the Congress of the Union.

Totoloapan and the Tequileros

Located in the region of the Tierra Caliente, Totoloapan is, along with Ajuchitlan, Arcelio and Coyuca, the Municipality most threatened by Los Tequileros, a group that separated from La Famila Michoacana and since 2013 have occasioned the displacement of families from no less than 16 communities.

According to reports of the newspaper El Sur, Raibel Jacobo de Almonte, El Tequilero, was a plaza jefe for La Familia Michoacana. Once he had formed his own organization, he began controlling the San Miguel Totolapan and some rural populations in the border area of Rio Balsas. In 2016 his epower extended to populations of the municipalities of Ajuchitlan, Tlapehuala and Arcelia.

In the Tierra Caliente, six out of every ten homicides are attributed to Los Tequileros, who are also linked to a politician, PRI deputy Saul Beltran Orozco. Before the omission, complicity and participation of the local authorities, the local population had chosen to arm itself to the face this criminal organization.

The violence in Guerrero is generalized by the number of cartels that are disputing the third poorest State of the country, but also by the failed security strategy implemented by the Federal and State Governments, that while advising of “big changes” and advances in security the State remains the number one in the list for malicious homicides.  Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Sinembargo article

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Not finished yet:
Image result for Las Moicas
Meet the Little-Known Mexican Cartel Operating in California

A little-known drug trafficking group in Mexico called “Las Moicas” has not only successfully defended its foothold in the US heroin market for years against Mexico‘s most powerful cartels, but recent reports suggest that it might be expanding.

In an interview with BBC Mundo published on March 15, a spokesperson for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said that the Moicas had been expanding their territory in Mexico and that the little-known group had come into conflict with some of Mexico‘s biggest criminal organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel – New Generation (CJNG).

According to a July 2015 report from the DEA, eight major Mexican transnational criminal groups were known to be operating in the United States. Alongside prominent players like the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, appeared a trafficking organization called Las Moicas.

According to the report, the Moicas are based in the Mexican state of Michoacán and have ties to the Familia Michoacána, an organization largely displaced by its splinter group, the Knights Templar. Despite the decline of the Familia Michoacána after the death of its top leader in 2014, the Moicas group “remains a regional supplier in California and operate[s] on a smaller scale relative to other major Mexican” criminal organizations.

The Moicas’ first reported run-in with the DEA dates back to 2009, when US authorities seized 50 kilograms of heroin and $250,000 in cash, in addition to arresting several of the 21 suspects from the group later charged in connection with the seizure.

The DEA’s press release concerning the operation asserts that a total of 200 kilograms of heroin, with an estimated retail value of $17.5 million, were smuggled during the run. The group allegedly hid both drugs heading north and drug profits heading south “in elaborate vehicle engine compartments” that allowed them to cross the border undetected.

At the time, the Moicas operated solely in California, but the group has since reportedly expanded to Reno, Nevada, and it operates in some areas of California dominated by the Sinaloa Cartel, according to the DEA’s 2015 report.

As of March 2016, VICE News reported, Mexican authorities had no record of Las Moicas.

InSight Crime Analysis

Mexico’s criminal landscape has become increasingly fragmented as larger cartels continue to rely heavily on smaller groups for specialized criminal tasks and as the government continues to take down top leaders of major criminal organization. In an illustration of this dynamic, Mexican authorities stated that nine cartels — not including the Moicas — operated throughout the country as of July 2016, relying on a total of 37 criminal cells.

Within this context, it appears that the Moicas may have succeeded in quietly growing by maintaining a low profile, as suggested by the absence of official acknowledgement of the group by the Mexican government as well as the scant public information available about the organization. According to the DEA spokesperson contacted by BBC Mundo, the US anti-drug agency does not even know the composition of the Moicas’ hierarchy.

It is possible that the Moicas have followed the blueprint of earlier Mexican drug trafficking organizations, such as the Xalisco Boys who achieved a striking expansion across the United States in the 1990s by investing in the heroin market while maintaining a low profile.

And it is likely that the Moicas’ rise and reported expansion has been fueled by the booming US demand for heroin. The US consumption market for this particularly addictive drug is believed to have tripled over the past decade, boosted by over-prescription of legal opioid drugs and even allegedly criminal activity by executives of some companies in the US pharmaceutical industry.