U.S. Targets Cartels Abroad as Sinaloa’s Reach Spans 40 Nations

DEA leader tells The Bureau that while Trump’s cartel extraditions with Mexico demonstrate significant collaboration, Canadian police remain hesitant partners in the fight against fentanyl networks

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration says it has dealt a sharp blow to the Sinaloa Cartel — which is embedded in about 40 nations outside Mexico — after a week-long surge of operations across the United States and abroad that netted more than 600 arrests and the seizure of massive quantities of fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and cash.

From August 25 through August 29, DEA agents in 23 domestic divisions and seven international regions coordinated what officials described as one of the most significant enforcement pushes against the cartel in recent years, the agency announced yesterday.

The operation comes six months after the Trump administration designated the Sinaloa Cartel and seven other groups as foreign terrorist organizations, a move that heightened both legal pressure and political attention on the networks blamed for fueling the U.S. fentanyl crisis.

The crackdown produced 617 arrests, more than $11 million in currency seizures, and 420 firearms, alongside a cache of synthetic and traditional narcotics that investigators say could have fueled untold overdoses nationwide.

The seizures included 480 kilograms of fentanyl powder, more than 714,000 counterfeit pills, 2,200 kilograms of methamphetamine, nearly 7,500 kilograms of cocaine, and over 16 kilograms of heroin.

“Every kilogram of poison seized, every dollar stripped from the cartels, and every arrest we make represents lives saved and communities defended,” Administrator Terrance Cole said. His agency’s statement asserted there are tens of thousands of Sinaloa members, associates, and facilitators operating worldwide — in at least 40 countries — who are responsible for the production, manufacturing, distribution, and operations related to trafficking deadly synthetic drugs.

His predecessor, former DEA chief Derek Maltz, told The Bureau in an exclusive interview that President Trump has achieved unprecedented extraditions from Mexico, bringing dozens of senior cartel leaders into U.S. custody.

Maltz recounted being at Dulles Airport as military flights delivered figures such as Los Zetas bosses Miguel and Omar Treviño and the Sinaloa kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, wanted for the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena. “We’ve never seen that kind of result,” Maltz said, adding: “What’s happening is that we are seeing a drastic reduction in fentanyl seizures at the U.S. southern border. They’re pretty much cut in half over the last several months, which to me is a strong indicator of, number one, the production has gone down. And the cartels are clearly concerned about the optics and the deaths of Americans.”

But alongside the successes on extradition and southern border clampdowns, Maltz said, cartels are adapting. They are now pushing mass shipments of cocaine and synthetic drugs into and through other regions — notably Canada, which retains a geographic advantage for traffickers. Product moves by sea from China and Mexico up the coast into Vancouver, and via Canadian commercial trucks that collect cocaine and methamphetamine shipments from Mexican suppliers in California while also delivering fentanyl precursors from Vancouver to Los Angeles, according to a recent indictment targeting Indo-Canadian Vancouver gangs and Chinese suppliers.

“The cartels are definitely concerned about the optics and the deaths of Americans,” Maltz said. “But they’re not out of business — they’re pivoting to the global cocaine market, and they’re still producing meth in industrial labs.”

On the controversy in Canada — whether superlabs run by Mexican cartels are sending significant amounts of fentanyl or its precursors across the northern border, and whether Canadian police have failed to cooperate with U.S. enforcement, as President Donald Trump has charged — Maltz said Canadian denials ignore the reality of the networks involved.

“First of all, you don’t know what you don’t know. There’s so much wide-open border between Canada and the United States,” he told The Bureau. “I was the guy around 2006 when I ran the Special Operations Division. I invited the RCMP to come in and operate with us because at that time we started seeing massive cocaine movements up the West Coast of the United States into Canada. And we saw at that time gangs like the Hells Angels and others that were doing a lot of the distribution of mass amounts of cocaine for cartels. So we wanted to collaborate with the Mounties.”

Maltz recalled embedding Canadian officers in what became a growing international hub for cross-border enforcement. “We put somebody right in the middle of our synchronization center.”

But progress, he said, has remained halting. “Even when — I think it was February or March with the commissioner of the RCMP and his executive staff — I mean, they were very nice and they were trying to establish relationships again with the DEA. But it’s almost like Groundhog Day. They have to produce results. They have to demonstrate that commitment by action, not by words, not by get-togethers in one of these countries in the embassies and drinking tea or coffee. It’s about action to shut down these cartels. And I haven’t seen a lot of that.”