U.S. authorities ramped up their crackdown on Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel by bringing the first-ever narco-terrorism charges against a father and son duo who are accused of leading the gang’s sprawling fentanyl-trafficking network.
The Justice Department said Tuesday it indicted Pedro Inzunza Noriega, 62, and Pedro Inzunza Coronel, 33, on the terrorism charges over their suspected roles in running the cartel’s Beltran Leyva Organization — a violent faction of the gang that prosecutors said helps produce and move drugs from Panama and Costa Rica up to the U.S. southern border.
Neither of the two suspects is in U.S. custody. Both men face additional charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, and if captured and convicted could spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
“The Sinaloa Cartel is a complex, dangerous terrorist organization and dismantling them demands a novel, powerful legal response,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said. “Their days of brutalizing the American people without consequence are over — we will seek life in prison for these terrorists.”
The two suspects are accused of trafficking tens of thousands of kilograms of fentanyl into the U.S. over the past several years.
Mexican authorities in December raided several locations managed by the duo in Sinaloa, netting law enforcement a 1,500 kilogram seizure of the potent synthetic opioid. The Justice Department described that operation as the largest seizure of fentanyl in the world.
Officials said the narco-terrorism charges were made possible by President Trump’s executive order designating the Sinaloa Cartel as a foreign terrorist organization.
But the federal indictment did not specify how the two suspects allegedly engaged in narco-terrorism, which is defined as drug lords using violence and threats to dissuade government officials from going after trafficking networks.
Five other alleged accomplices of the father-son duo were also listed in the indictment on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, but are not facing the more severe charge of narco-terrorism.
Outside of the drug trade, officials said the Beltran Leyva Organization has a reputation for kidnapping, torturing and gunning down those who get in the way of their operations.
Adam Gordon, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said these “narco-terrorists operate as a cancer within a state.”
“They metastasize violence, corruption and fear,” he continued. “If left unchecked, their growth would lead to the death of law and order.”
Mr. Trump, a Republican, has labeled the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels both as foreign terrorist groups in order to stamp out the transnational gangs he blames for bringing fentanyl into the U.S.
The indictment unsealed Tuesday is part of Operation Take Back America, which the DOJ said aims to thwart illegal immigration and break the backs of cartel operations threatening the lives of Americans across the country.
