Law enforcement agencies in the United States announced the largest seizure of chemical precursors in U.S. history, at a Sept. 3 news conference in Houston.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro spoke to reporters while standing in front of 1,300 barrels of chemicals, and asked those in attendance to “imagine bodies where those barrels are,” saying the work of law enforcement would save lives by keeping drugs such as fentanyl off the streets.
Pirro said it would take 24 18-wheelers to transport the seized chemicals to a storage facility.
The chemicals, of Chinese origin, were headed to the Sinaloa cartel to be made into drugs that could be sold on the street.
When asked by reporters about the operation in which the chemicals were confiscated, officials said they were taken on the “high seas,” but declined to give further details.
“If I told you, then [the cartel] would know, and that wouldn’t be good,” Pirro said.
Had the precursors made it to their destination, they would have been made into hundreds of thousands of pounds of methamphetamine, with profits of more than $500 million, according to the officials’ statements.
Pirro said this seizure was made possible by the State Department’s decision to designate major drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations earlier this year.
Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also spoke to reporters about the importance of U.S. law enforcement agencies’ work, saying that in recent years, drug-related deaths in the United States have increased to more than 100,000 annually, and calling the deaths “tragic and senseless.”
According to Lyons, these chemical precursors would have led to more deaths in Houston and across the United States without this seizure, which was part of Operation Hydra. It was the first time that a warrant of this kind was issued for “material support of terrorism,” he said.
“Operation Hydra continues to be a tremendous success to bolster our efforts to combat drug trafficking,” Lyons said. “Operations like this [are] key to our Homeland Security task force.”
CBP Field Operations Director Jud Murdock noted that the Sinaloa cartel, which was slated to receive the chemicals, is one of the “most violent and brutal terrorist organizations in the world.”
According to Murdock, the cartel has produced and distributed record amounts of drugs worldwide and is responsible for countless deaths and destruction in the United States and abroad.
“The Sinaloa cartel activities are not merely criminal; they are acts of terror that threaten the safety and security of our nation,” Murdock said. “By targeting the supply chains and disrupting their operations, we are sending a clear message: DHS will not tolerate anyone or anything that wants to harm our community.”
Zambada García, the longtime leader of the Sinaloa cartel, admitted to playing a role in a drug-trafficking operation that funneled large quantities of illicit substances, including cocaine and heroin, into the United States for years.
The prosecutors said that the Sinaloa cartel became the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world because of Zambada García and cofounder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
