US News: The United States Department of Justice said that two top leaders of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel were arrested on Thursday in Texas. The two leaders who were arrested included the co-founder of the drug cartel Ismael Zambada Garcia.
Terming the cartel “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Ismael Zambada Garcia, or ‘El Mayo,’ cofounder of the Cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of its other cofounder, were arrested today in El Paso, Texas,” as quoted by news agency AFP.
Garland also said that the duo faces “multiple charges in the US for leading the Cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
The United States witnessed more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Out of the total number of deaths, fentanyl accounted for about 70 percent of them.
The Joe Biden-led US government said that fentanyl is often made from products sourced in China and then is smuggled across the border from Mexico by drug traffickers, especially the Sinaloa cartel, AFP reported.