On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram stated that the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) are “essentially working openly in Mexico” and “poisoning Americans at record rates” with fentanyl and meth. Milgram also stated that Mexico knows this is happening, “and they need to work to stop it.”
Milgram stated, “I think there are two things that are really important: The first is for everyone to understand what we see every day at the DEA, which is that these two Mexican drug cartels, Sinaloa and CJNG, are poisoning Americans at record rates. We lost 107,622 Americans last year. These two cartels are primarily responsible for the fentanyl and the methamphetamine that is flooding into the United States and is killing people. The second piece on Sinaloa and CJNG is that these two cartels, essentially, are working from China, where they are purchasing these chemicals that they’re using now to make into fentanyl and methamphetamine. These are not plant-based drugs anymore. It is a different and deadlier drug threat than we have ever seen in our country. Those two cartels are operating throughout Mexico. Sinaloa in 15 of the 32 Mexican states, CJNG, as we call it, in 23 of those 32 states. They’re essentially working openly in Mexico to take those chemicals and synthesize the fentanyl and meth.”
Co-host Bill Hemmer then asked, “Do they work with the Mexican government?”
Milgram responded, “So, one of the things I would say about drug trafficking — and I’m going to speak worldwide — because one of the things that’s critically important to me is that we attack this entire network, from China to Mexico, and then as those cartels spread throughout the United States. There are two things we know that are enabling drug trafficking worldwide: One is illicit finance, the money. And the money flows, as we’re talking about how chemical flows, there’s a huge Chinese underground money laundering system that we’re seeing. The second is political corruption throughout the world. That’s like oxygen. It’s oxygen for drug trafficking. And so, you saw the case we brought earlier this year against the former president of Honduras…wherever we see that there is corruption that is facilitating drug trafficking, the DEA will take action.”
She added, “The chemicals are coming from China. They’re then made in Mexico. And they’re made openly throughout the country. And just to sort of put a fine point on this, last year, we seized 20 million fake pills and 15,000 pounds of fentanyl. That’s 440 million potential lethal doses of fentanyl that we’ve already seized last year. This year, to date, we’ve already seized more than 20 million fake pills. So, we know that the vast, vast majority of that is coming from Mexico and we know that it is being synthesized openly. And so, Mexico, they know it’s happening, we know it’s happening, and they need to work to stop it.”