(The Center Square) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers continue to target and arrest cartel members nationwide and the Department of Justice continues to prosecute high-level cartel members.
Key ICE arrests were in made Charleston, South Carolina, after a nightclub run by a suspected Los Zetas Cartel member was targeted.
The bust came after Mexico agreed to extradite the cartel’s leaders now being prosecuted in the U.S. for a range of violent crimes.
ICE agents arrested 72 illegal foreign nationals at “the Alamo,” an underground nightclub in Charleston after receiving a tip. An investigation found that the nightclub was being used as a base for weapons, narcotics and human trafficking, authorities said.
During the operation, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant and made 72 arrests, including of individuals with prior violent offenses. They also found six juveniles and turned them over to state social services.
One high-profile arrest was of Sergio Joel Galo-Baca, “a Honduran illegal alien and foreign fugitive with an active Interpol Red Notice for homicide in Honduras,” ICE said. ICE agents also seized cash, narcotics, and firearms during the operation.
Homeland Security Investigations-Charlotte led the June 1 operation in cooperation with local law enforcement.
Los Zetas cartel members are known for committing extreme violence. Founding members were former Mexican military officers acting as the armed militaristic wing of the Gulf Cartel, the most powerful drug trafficking organization in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and along Mexico’s gulf coast. The Gulf Cartel has controlled the human and drug smuggling and trafficking business along the Texas-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, authorities have told The Center Square.
For two decades, Los Zetas controlled a drug trade of cocaine and marijuana trafficked through Laredo and Houston, east along I-10 to Atlanta, and north along I-35, to Chicago, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point has explained.
The South Carolina bust came after two Los Zetas leaders, brothers Miguel Trevino Morales (Zeta 40) and Omar Trevino Morales (Zeta 42), were arraigned in Washington, D.C., in March. They were charged with “engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise that involved multiple murder conspiracies, conspiring to manufacture and distribute large quantities of cocaine and marijuana destined for the United States, using firearms – including a machine gun – during and in relation to drug trafficking crimes, and conspiring to launder monetary instruments.”
Miguel Morales took over the leadership of Los Zetas in October 2012 until he was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2013, according to the Department of Justice. Then his brother, Omar, took over until he was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2015, the DOJ said. After they were arrested, Los Zetas became the Cartel del Noreste (CDN). In February, the Trump administration designated it and other transnational criminal organizations as a foreign terrorist organization.
According to the indictment, CDN operatives continued Los Zetas’ criminal drug trafficking operation and committed murders, assaults, kidnappings, assassinations and torture.
DEA Acting Administrator Derek Maltz said the Morales brothers “continued to run their business while serving time in a Mexican prison. Now they will face justice in the United States.”
The brothers “represent some of the world’s most vicious cartel leaders, who oversaw Los Zetas’ reign of terror with grotesque impunity and ruthlessness, and a sheer disregard for anything beyond their wealth, power, and control,” ICE Homeland Security Investigations-New York Acting Special Agent in Charge Michael Alfonso said.
Each brother was charged with one count of continuing a criminal enterprise; conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana for importation into the United States; use of a firearm in relation to drug trafficking crimes; and international money laundering conspiracy.
The charges allege they engaged in “conspiracies to kill members of the Mexican government, Mexican citizens, members of rival cartels, members of the Guatemalan government, and Guatemalan drug traffickers.” They face a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment.
The U.S. had longstanding extradition requests for both brothers that weren’t honored by the previous Mexican Obrador administration. Within one month of President Donald Trump being in office, the Mexican government agreed to transfer them to the U.S.