Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration dealt a “major blow” to two Mexican drug cartels following the Coast Guard’s seizure of half a billion dollars’ worth of illicit drugs during recent deployments.
Bondi announced in Fort Everglades, Florida, on Wednesday that two Coast Guard cutters returning from deployments in the Eastern Pacific Ocean had intercepted $509 million worth of illegal drugs interdicted from smuggling boats near Ecuador, Peru, and the Galápagos Islands.
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“This is a textbook example of the Justice Department supporting the fight against violent crime,” Bondi said during a press conference staged in front of the ship. “We believe two cartels, [Jalisco New Generation] and Sinaloa, were heavily tied to these shipments. This is a major blow to their financial operation and their efforts to distribute drugs throughout our country.”
The 48,400-pound seizure was composed of more than 90% pure, uncut cocaine, as well as 3,800 pounds of marijuana.
Smugglers on board the vessels were associated with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, which the State Department in February declared foreign terrorist organizations.
Coast Guard cutters typically deploy for two-month stints and may seize several millions to tens of millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine, making this latest haul by cutters James and Mohawk significant. Cocaine is largely produced in Colombia and then trafficked by sea to Mexico and the United States.
FBI Director Kash Patel said this large seizure was the result of cooperation between the DOJ, military, and Department of Homeland Security to target cartels that smuggle narcotics and immigrants into the United States.
“This is what it looks like when the United States whole-of-government approach brings every resource to bear,” Patel said during the press conference. “They are going to get all the drugs off the streets, off the markets, and as Attorney General Bondi said, we are going to lock them up. They are no longer going to be free to roam. We are going to dismantle the next-man-up theory that has been breeding in these Mexican cartels for generations.”
The 11 smugglers arrested by the Coast Guard will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida on federal drug trafficking charges.
The massive seizures come three weeks after Coast Guard cutters Stone and Mohawk returned home from deployments with $517 million of illicit drugs.
Drug overdose deaths involving cocaine have risen steadily over the past two decades. In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 6,784 cocaine-related deaths.
In 2022, the last available year for data, deaths from cocaine rose to 27,569.
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The reason for the increase is due to illicit drugmakers mixing fentanyl into cocaine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“The number of deaths in combination with fentanyl has increased significantly since 2015 and is the main driver of cocaine-involved overdose deaths,” NIDA wrote in a statement.
