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La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, February 6, 2026, p. 6
Washington. The U.S. Department of Justice is turning its attention to the financial sources of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, focusing on middlemen who prosecutors say have adapted to intensified law enforcement by increasingly funneling profits from the cartels. narco through cryptocurrencies from American cities to the leaders of the Mexican cartels.
The cases of four defendants recently sent from Mexico to the United States for prosecution offer a glimpse into the shadowy money laundering networks that enable the Jalisco cartel New Generation and other violent groups continue to introduce dangerous drugs into that country.
By focusing on suspected financial intermediaries rather than street dealers, prosecutors say they are targeting an essential element in preventing cartels from maintaining their operations, as law enforcement pressure on the most visible drug routes increases.
“If you cut off the money, you hurt the cartels, and that’s what we try to do,” Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview with The Associated Press news agency.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Mexican government has handed over more than 90 high-level defendants linked to the cartels. The defendants were wanted by US prosecutors for crimes including drug trafficking, human trafficking and money laundering.
Among the transferred defendants are alleged financial intermediaries residing in Mexico, who oversee the movement of profits and keep a percentage of the money that returns to the cartels as commission, according to court documents.
Middlemen arrange cash pickups in American cities and hide the money to get it across the border, often through digital assets, as law enforcement has cut off other methods.
Mantecas charged with importing fentanyl
The US justice system charged the Mexican Ivan Valerio Sainz Salazar, Buttersfor importing fentanyl into the United States and crimes related to firearms, within the framework of its operations against Los Chapitosa faction of the Sinaloa cartel.
Sainz Salazar, arrested in Sinaloa on January 19, is considered “an important producer behind the supply chain of Los Chapitos” stressed the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton.
The four accusations presented against Sainz Salazar, 40, carry minimum sentences of 10 years in prison and maximum sentences of life imprisonment each.
(With information from the Editor)
