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They are one of the biggest fentanyl producers and traffickers in the world and they use murder, kidnapping, torture, and extreme violence as just another part of their business plan.
They terrorize communities.
They destroy families.
And let’s be real, for way too long, these guys were basically operating with a free pass, playing games with international law and jurisdictional loopholes.
So when the US attorney stood in front of those 1,300 barrels at the Port of Houston, she dropped a line that really gets to the punchline of this whole thing.
That’s not your average drug bust.
That’s yanking the plug on a supply chain that would have been mainlining destruction into American communities for months, possibly even years.
And let’s be real, for way too long, these guys were basically operating with a free pass, playing games with international law and jurisdictional loopholes.
So when the US attorney stood in front of those 1,300 barrels at the Port of Houston, she dropped a line that just chew on that for a second.
That’s 2,000 pounds of poison flooding into neighborhoods every seven days.
Now start multiplying that over a few months and you start to grasp the absolute catastrophe these chemicals were about to unleash.
It stopped the planned drug labs from ever opening for business.
Money was already sunk.
Infrastructure was going up.
Supply lines were all mapped out.
And now poof, the whole enterprise is dead in the water.
The financial haymaker the cartel just took is massive.
But way more important is the immeasurable human tragedy that was prevented.
The US attorney then said something else that should stick with everyone watching this.
And before you leave, I want to make sure that you look at those 1300 barrels.
And I want you to have a visual of dead Americans instead of where those barrels are because that’s just chew on that for a second.
Not one ton total, one ton every single week.
That’s 2,000 lbs of poison flooding into neighborhoods every 7 days.
Now start multiplying that over a few months unless you really get into the nuts and bolts.
The Sinaloa cartel labs they were building to process these chemicals.
They were set up to crank out more than one ton of meth a week.
Dead Americans.
That’s not just talk.
She wasn’t exaggerating for effect.
In the past few years, the death toll from this stuff in America has exploded to more than 100,000 casualties every year.
100,000 Americans die annually from drugs.
That’s more than we lost in the entire Vietnam War, happening year after year.
And a huge chunk of that number can be traced right back to operations just like the one they shut down at the Port of Houston.
Every single funeral, every family shattered, every kid left without a parent, every parent who has to bury their own child, working hand glove with manufacturers in China.
This wasn’t a lucky break.
They didn’t just stumble onto this shipment by accident.
This was the result of some seriously next level intelligence work.
Insane coordination across a bunch of agencies.
And so, how’d they do it? Let’s get into the mechanics behind the seizure.
So, how exactly did law enforcement pull off what’s being called the single largest seizure of precursor chemicals in the history of the United States? How do you even intercept massive shipments sailing across the ocean from China to Mexico? How do you ID, track, and ultimately snatch 1,300 barrels of chemicals before they end up in cartel run labs? The answer pulls back the curtain on a level of sophistication and teamwork that marks a whole new chapter in America’s fight against narot trafficking.
And it all revolves around something called Operation Hydra.
I also want to thank Customs and Border Protection for hosting us today, as well as all the other law enforcement partner agencies that were involved in this seizure.
the FBI, the DEA, the Department of Defense Joint Inter Agency Task Force, US Northcom, as well as the Texas National.
It all leads back to shipments like these to organizations like the Sinaloa Cartel, and to this undeclared war being waged on American citizens by foreign criminal corporations, the Department of Defense, US Northcom, and the Texas National Guard.
This wasn’t one agency going it alone.
This was a coordinated multi- agency super team and get a load of the guest list, the FBI, the DEA, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security investigations.
It’s a pretty brilliant strategy when you think about it.
Traditional enforcement is all about chasing the finished product, seizing the cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, or meth times after asterisk.
It’s already been cooked up and is being moved or sold.
But Operation Hydra completely flips that script.
Instead of waiting for the bad stuff to be made, and then trying to play catch-up, Operation Hydra targets the chemical precursors, the raw ingredients you need to even start the recipe.
So, why is this so insanely effective? It all comes down to the multiplier effect that brought together the best minds from across the federal government and state military forces.
But what makes Operation Hydra so radically different from your standard drug bust? You’ve completely sabotaged an entire production pipeline.
You’ve sent the cartels scrambling for new suppliers, new shipping routes, new pop-up labs.
The two shipments they nabbed in this operation came from the very same vendor in China and were headed straight for the Sinaloa cartel.
Just think about the intel work it took to make that connection.
Someone had to ID the Chinese manufacturer.
Someone had to follow the money.
Someone had to watch the shipping logistics.
And someone had to definitively link it all to the Sinaloa cartel.
When you seize a finished product, you’ve taken that specific amount off the board.
But when you seize the precursor chemicals, you’ve stopped multiple tons of drugs from ever even existing and some serious brain power on crossber trade to flag these packages before they landed in the wrong hands.
And when I say sophisticated, that’s putting it mildly.
We’re talking about sifting through mountains of shipping data, playing follow the money across the globe and basically listening in on some very interesting communications and their labs that were under construction in Mexico.
Under Operation Hydra, HSI unleashed sophisticated analytical tools and a whole slew of advanced investigative techniques.
Now, this is where that FTO designation became the absolute key to this whole operation success.
For the very first time, a seizure warrant was handed down using the laws against providing material support to terrorists, all while buddying up with international spies to solve a giant jigsaw puzzle where the bad guys are actively trying to burn the pieces.
And the fallout from this should be giving cartels and anyone on their payroll some serious night sweats.
Under title 18 USC2339B, the material support of terrorism statute, anyone caught helping these newly labeled terrorist groups is looking at some major league federal heat.
Getting busted for drug running is bad.
Sure, you’ll be away for a while.
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