Father-son cartel leaders charged for allegedly running fentanyl network
A father-son duo and other Sinaloa cartel leaders were charged Tuesday with allegedly trafficking massive amounts of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin into the United States, the Department of Justice said.
Pedro Inzunza Noriega and his son, Pedro Inzunza Coronel, ran one of the largest and most sophisticated fentanyl production networks, federal prosecutors said in a news release. The Department of Justice said the duo were leaders of the Beltran Leyva Organization, a powerful and violent faction of the Sinaloa cartel. Five other leaders were also charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.
The pair trafficked tens of thousands of kilograms of fentanyl into the U.S., the federal government alleged, and more than 1.65 tons of fentanyl was seized from their holdings by the Mexican government — the largest seizure of fentanyl in the world.
"The Sinaloa Cartel is a complex, dangerous terrorist organization and dismantling them demands a novel, powerful legal response," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the statement. "Their days of brutalizing the American people without consequence are over — we will seek life in prison for these terrorists."
President Trump has designated eight Latin American drug trafficking organizations as terrorist organizations, including Mexico's two main drug trafficking organizations: the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House saying that the cartels "constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime."
In the months since, the Department of Justice has charged several alleged cartel leaders, including two brothers accused of being leaders of La Nueva Familia Michoacana. Johnny Hurtado Olascoaga and Jose Alfredo Hurtado Olascoaga are accused of participating in a conspiracy to manufacture cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl and importing and distributing the drugs in the U.S., authorities said during an April news conference in Atlanta.
Sixteen people were also arrested earlier this month and 3 million pills laced with fentanyl were seized in what federal prosecutors said was the "largest fentanyl bust in DEA history."
Democrats also urged Trump administration officials to use the designation of Latin American cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations to take action to curtail the flow of American-made guns across the southern border.
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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
‘Humanitarian rescue' of migrants, or the EU's dirty work?
Though illegal under international law, the Libyan capture of migrants on the Mediterranean Sea has become commonplace in recent years as the EU has outsourced its effort to stop refugees from crossing its borders. Of course, Europe is not alone in this effort; Australia detains undocumented migrants in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Under the Obama administration, the American government paid the Mexican government to detain undocumented people trying to enter the United States. The Trump administration has since gone a big step further: shipping hundreds of undocumented people from US soil to a notoriously brutal mega-prison in El Salvador. Migrant prisoners sit on the floor at Sabah Detention Center. Pierre Kattar / Mohammed David /The Outlaw Ocean Project Candé's story unfolds over the first three episodes of the new season of For more than a decade, the EU has supplied the coast guard cutters, supplies for detention centers, aerial intelligence, and vehicles that the Libyans use to capture migrants crossing the Mediterranean hoping for a better life. Efficient and brutal, the at-sea capture and internment of these migrants in prisons in and around Tripoli is what European Union officials hail as part of a successful partnership with Libya in their 'humanitarian rescue' efforts across the Mediterranean. But the true intent of this joint campaign, according to many human rights advocates, legal experts, and members of the European Parliament, is less to save migrants from trafficking or drowning than to stop them from reaching European shores. A handout from on Frontex aerial drones operating on the Mediterranean to locate migrant boats for the purpose of blocking them from entering Europe. Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project Though the Libyan Coast Guard routinely opens fire on migrant rafts, has been tied by the United Nations to human trafficking and murder, and is now run by militias, it continues to draw strong EU support. Since at least 2017, the EU, led by Italy, has trained and equipped the Libyan Coast Guard to serve as a proxy maritime force, whose central purpose is to stop migrants from reaching European shores. As part of a broader investigation, a reporter for The Outlaw Ocean Project, Ed Ou, spent several weeks in 2021 aboard a Doctors Without Borders vessel, filming its attempts to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean. The work is a life-or-death race. While the humanitarian ship tries to rescue migrants and take them to safety in Europe, the far faster, bigger, and more aggressive Libyan Coast Guard ships try to get to the migrants first so they can instead arrest them and return them to prisons in Libya. The EU has long denied playing an active role in this effort, but the reporters filmed drones operated by Frontex that are used to alert the Libyans to the exact location of migrant rafts. An aid worker on a MSF ship keeps an eye on a Libyan Coast Guard vessel cutting across their bow at high speed. Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project '[Frontex] has never engaged in any direct cooperation with Libyan authorities,' the Frontex press office said in a statement responding to requests for comment on the investigation. But a mounting body of evidence collected by European journalists and nongovernmental organizations suggests that Frontex's involvement with the Libyan authorities is neither accidental nor limited. In 2020, for instance, Aside from the EU role in helping Libya capture migrants at sea, the UN as well as humanitarian and human rights groups have roundly criticized European authorities for their role in creating and subsidizing a gulag of brutal migrant prisons in Libya. The EU has provided Libya with coast guard cutters, SUVs, and buses for moving captured migrants to prison. For the EU, the challenge of how best to handle desperate migrants fleeing hardships in their native countries will only grow in coming years. Climate change is expected to displace 150 million people across the globe in the next 50 years. Rising seas, desertification, and famine promise to drive desperate people to global north countries like the US and Europe, testing the moral character and political imagination of these wealthier nations. These factors were especially palpable for Aliou Candé, who grew up on a farm near the remote village of Sintchan Demba Gaira, Guinea-Bissau, a place without basic amenities like plumbing or electricity. Candé had a reputation as a dogged worker, who avoided trouble of any kind. 'People respected him,' his brother Jacaria said. In May 2021, journalists for The Outlaw Ocean Project reported from Libya, the Mediterranean, and Guinea Bissau to piece together the story of Aliou Candé. They spoke with friends, relatives, community leaders, and other prisoners held in cell four of Al Mabani to understand the circumstances leading up to his death. Critically, Candé's uncle had contacts for Candé's family back in Guinea-Bissau, and we were able to begin to put together a portrait. But the 28-year-old would become a climate migrant. Droughts in Guinea-Bissau had become more common and longer, flooding became more unpredictable and damaging, and Candé's crops — cassava, mangoes, and cashews — were failing and his children were going hungry. Milk production from his cows was so meager that his children were allowed to drink it just once a month. The shift in climate had brought more mosquitos, and with them more disease. He believed there was only one way to improve their conditions: to go to Europe. His brothers had done it. His family encouraged him to try. In the late summer of 2019, he set out for Europe with six hundred Euros. He told his wife he was not sure how long he'd be away, but he did his best to be optimistic. 'I love you,' he told her, 'and I'll be back.' In January 2020, he arrived in Morocco, where he tried to pay for a passage on a boat to Spain, but learned that the price was three thousand Euros, much more than he had. Candé then headed to Libya, where he could book a cheaper raft to Italy. In February 2021, he and more than a hundred other migrants pushed off from the Libyan shore aboard an inflatable rubber raft. After their boat was detected by the Libyan Coast Guard, the migrants were taken back to land, loaded by armed guards into buses and trucks, and driven to Al Mabani, which is Arabic for 'the buildings.' Candé was not charged with a crime or allowed to speak to a lawyer, and he was given no indication of how long he'd be detained. In his first days there, he kept mostly to himself, submitting to the grim routines of the place. The prison was controlled by a militia that euphemistically calls itself the Public Security Agency, and its gunmen patrolled the hallways. Cells were so crowded that the detainees had to sleep in shifts. In a special room, guards hung migrants upside from ceiling beams and beat them. In an audio message recorded on a hidden cell phone, Candé made a plea to his family to send the ransom for his release. In the early hours of April 8, 2021, he was shot to death when guards fired indiscriminately into a cellblock of detainees during a fight. His death went uninvestigated, his killer unpunished. Aliou Candé was buried in an overcrowded migrant cemetery in Tripoli, more than 2,000 miles from his family in Guinea-Bissau. Bir al-Osta Milad Cemetery where Aliou Candé and other dead migrants are buried. Pierre Kattar/The Outlaw Ocean Project One month after Candé's death, a team of four reporters from the Outlaw Ocean Project traveled to Libya to investigate. Almost no Western journalists are permitted to enter Libya, but, with the help of an international aid group, they were granted visas. Initially, Libyan officials said the team could visit Al Mabani, but after a week in Tripoli it became clear that this would not happen. So the journalists found a hidden spot on a side street, a half-mile from the detention center, and launched a small drone. The drone made it to the facility unnoticed, and captured close-ups of the prison's open courtyard. The team also interviewed dozens of migrants who had been imprisoned with Candé at the same detention center. A week into the investigation, the lead reporter, Ian Urbina, was speaking with his wife from his hotel room in Tripoli when he heard a knock at the door. Upon opening it, he was confronted by a dozen armed men who stormed into the room. He was immediately forced to the ground, a gun pressed to his forehead, and a hood placed over his head. What followed was a violent assault: The journalist sustained broken ribs, facial injuries, and internal trauma after being kicked repeatedly. Other members of the team — including an editor, photographer, and filmmaker — were also detained. The group was blindfolded, separated, and interrogated for hours at a time. Under Libyan law, authorities may detain foreign nationals indefinitely without formal charges. The US State Department became involved after the journalist's wife, who had heard the commotion over the phone, raised the alarm. American officials quickly identified the detaining authority and began negotiating for the team's release. After six days in custody, the team was unexpectedly told they were free to leave. No formal charges were filed and no official explanation for their detention was provided. They were lucky. The experience — deeply frightening but mercifully short — offered a glimpse into the world of indefinite detention in Libya. With no explanation from the government, fanfare by aid groups, nor coverage by domestic or foreign media, Al Mabani officially closed on January 13, 2022. In its roughly 12-month lifespan, the prison became emblematic of the unaccountable nature of Libya's broader detention system. The quiet shuttering of Al Mabani illustrates the ever-shifting nature of incarceration in Libya and how such transience makes protection of detainees nearly impossible. In the same month that Al Mabani was closed, the team behind the reporting presented details of their investigation to the European Parliament's human rights committee, and outlined the EU's extensive support for Libya's migration control apparatus. European Commission representatives took issue with the reporters' characterization of the crisis. 'We are not funding the war against migrants,' said Rosamaria Gili, the Libya country director at the European External Action Service. 'We are trying to instill a culture of human rights.' And yet, just a week later, Henrike Trautmann, a representative of the European Commission, told lawmakers that the EU was going to provide five more vessels to the Libyan Coast Guard to bolster its ability to intercept migrants on the high seas. A small wooden boat packed with refugees waving and smiling with elation after being found by MSF aid workers. Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project 'We know the Libyan context is far from optimal for this,' Trautmann conceded. 'We think it's still preferable to continue to support this than to leave them to their own devices.' Meanwhile, the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean continues. At least two thousand migrants died in 2024 while making this perilous passage, according to the UN, and, during the same period, the Libyan Coast Guard captured an additional twenty thousand that were brought back to prisons like Al Mabani in and around Tripoli. In February of this year, Libyan authorities held a training exercise with the EU border officials. The Trump administration has also taken note: In May, The status of both of those plans remains unclear.
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Judge orders Abrego Garcia's release, but government expected to detain him
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador then returned to the U.S. amid a legal battle, was ordered released from jail on Sunday by a Tennessee judge while he awaits federal trial. The government, however, is expected to quickly detain him upon his release, which U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes scheduled a Wednesday hearing to discuss. The Justice Department has filed a motion to appeal the judge's release order. At a detention hearing on June 13, prosecutors said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would take Abrego Garcia into custody if he were released on the criminal charges, and he could be deported before he has a chance to stand trial. The new charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia was stopped for speeding, and an officer questioned why he was traveling with so many people without luggage. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia falsely told the officer he was driving construction workers from St. Louis, but he was actually on one of multiple trips organized to transport migrants who were living in the country illegally. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia have cast the case as trumped-up charges and a way for the administration to save face after allowing him to be wrongly imprisoned for nearly three months. The Trump administration had resisted court orders directing Abrego Garcia be returned to the U.S., but he was swiftly returned in early June as the Justice Department announced charges for the Maryland resident, who is a Salvadoran national. Holmes acknowledged in her ruling Sunday that determining whether Abrego Garcia should be released is 'little more than an academic exercise' because ICE will likely detain him. But the judge wrote that everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and 'a full and fair determination of whether he must remain in federal custody pending trial.' Holmes wrote that the government failed to prove that Abrego was a flight risk, that he posed a danger to the community or that he would interfere with proceedings if released. 'Overall, the Court cannot find from the evidence presented that Abrego's release clearly and convincingly poses an irremediable danger to other persons or to the community,' the judge wrote. Rebecca Beitsch and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Michigan Student Arrested By ICE While On School Trip Deported
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Maykol Bogoya Duarte, an 18-year-old former Detroit high school student who was arrested by Border Patrol agents whilst on his way to a field trip on May 20, has been deported back to his native Columbia according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records seen by the Detroit Free Press. Newsweek reached out to DHS via email on Sunday for comment. Why It Matters President Donald Trump's administration has made cracking down on illegal immigration one of its top policy priorities, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel carrying out an intensified series of raids across the United States. Beginning on June 6 several days of largescale anti-ICE demonstrations took place in Los Angeles, some of which turned violent. In response the Trump administration deployed 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines, against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom. What To Know The Detroit Free Press reported that DHS records indicate Duarte was deported back to Columbia on June 19. On May 20, whilst on the way to a high school trip to Lake Erie Metropark, Duarte was pulled over by local police officers who said he was tailgating an unmarked police vehicle. Due to language barriers the police called Border Patrol agents who took Duarte into custody after checking his immigration status. Stock photograph showing federal agents patrol the halls of an immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on June 20, 2025 in New York City. Stock photograph showing federal agents patrol the halls of an immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on June 20, 2025 in New York City. Spencer Platt/GETTY At the time of his detention, Duarte was a student at Detroit's Western International High School and only three and a half credits away from graduation. Detroit House Democrats Shri Thanedar and Rashida Tlaib both asked for Duarte to be allowed to stay in the U.S. until he graduated, but this request was turned back by ICE on June 11. Records from ICE's Executive Office for Immigration Review show Duarte and his mother applied for asylum on January 29, 2024; after entering the U.S. saying they were trying to escape violence in Columbia. Duarte was refused asylum, and his appeal was rejected on June 25, 2024, at which point "he was in the country illegally, having ignored a judge's removal order and lost his appeal" according to a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection. What People Are Saying Speaking to the Detroit Free Press Duarte's attorney Ruby Robinson said: "We're concerned that for anybody who contacts the police or are interacting with police — whether somebody suspected of committing a crime or whether it's a victim coming forward — if local law enforcement is going to rely on federal officials to do interpreting, that's going to have a chilling effect on people trusting law enforcement." Western International High School teacher Kristen Schoettle said: "The police did not have to call Border Patrol, but they did." Speaking earlier this year to NPR Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said: "We know that our ICE agents across the country are following proper protocol and proper procedures, and we are working every day to make ourselves excellent for the American people." What Happens Next Trump's crackdown on suspected illegal migrants is likely to continue with more ICE raids taking place across the country. There could be further tensions with Democratic governors who object to federal government policy.
