Chemicals used to make fentanyl are streaming into the Port of Vancouver on their way to drug labs run by Mexican cartels on Canadian soil, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told senators in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
DEA administrator Terrance Cole said U.S. law enforcement officials are “very conscious” of fentanyl being manufactured in Canada for export across the border and there have been “significant seizures” of the drug in Canada over the past two months.
The Central Intelligence Agency vehemently denied reports of its participation in deadly operations against drug cartels in Mexico.
On Tuesday, CNN published a report alleging that the CIA had vastly expanded its operations in Mexico against drug cartels, including getting directly involved in assassinations of cartel figures. The most notable was its alleged facilitation of a car bombing on a busy Mexican highway that killed Francisco “El Payin” Beltran on March 28. CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons denied the report in strong terms, accusing the outlet of endangering American lives.
PHOENIX — Officials at the Departments of Homeland Security and War are gravely concerned about the security of the nation’s skies along the land border and have admitted that the airspace is incredibly easy to penetrate from Canada and Mexico.
Recent and continuing major improvements in infrastructure at the U.S.-Mexico border have already begun to push terrorist organizations and cartels into the air to get around ground infrastructure, such as walls, river barriers, and sensors, as they smuggle money and guns into Mexico and drugs into the United States, according to government officials leading efforts to counter unfriendly drones.
The United States Justice Department has charged the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state and nine other officials for their alleged involvement with the Sinaloa Cartel, it announced on Wednesday.
The Justice Department claimed that Ruben Rocha Moya and others conspired with leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel to import massive quantities of narcotics into the US in exchange for political support and bribes.
The nine others include current and former Mexican officials, some of whom have been accused of having participated in the cartel’s campaign of violence.
More than two dozen members and associates of the Mexican mafia were arrested during an early morning crackdown in southern California, federal authorities said on Thursday.
The FBI and other federal and local agencies executed search and arrest warrants at locations mostly in Orange county, south of Los Angeles, according to the US attorney’s office.
A total of 43 people have been indicted on charges including murder, kidnapping, extortion, running an illegal gambling operation and drug trafficking, prosecutors said.
Two U.S. embassy officials who died in an automobile accident in northern Mexico as they returned from the scene of a counternarcotic operation worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a significantly expanded role in battling narcotics trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The deadly car crash Sunday in the state of Chihuahua also took the lives of two Mexican officials and prompted Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to say she would investigate whether the operation ran afoul of the country’s national security laws.
The CIA declined to comment.
CJNG — already implicated in Iranian-directed death threats against a Canadian politician — was the intended recipient of a $58 million arsenal that included surface-to-air missiles, DOJ alleges.
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Virginia have charged four men — a Bulgarian arms trafficker with ties to the notorious Russian weapons dealer Viktor Bout, and several African co-conspirators with connections to the governments of Uganda and Tanzania — with conspiring to supply the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación with a $58 million military arsenal that included rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft drones, and high-powered explosives the brokers boasted could bring down helicopters.
No one seems to know exactly how El Mencho was killed. We are told the feared leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was captured by the Mexican army during a firefight in late February, and subsequently died of his wounds. Beyond that, there is very little information. Why are the Mexican and US governments being so secretive about his death?
El Mencho – real name Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes – was 59 when he died. He was Mexico’s most-wanted man; US authorities had offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest. I decided I had to go to Jalisco, where El Mencho made his last stand, to look for answers. Most of Mexico’s airspace had been closed after his death, such was the level of unrest. Cars and buses were torched, gunmen set up roadblocks on Mexico’s highways and more than 70 people were killed in widespread retaliatory fighting. Three days after his death, I disembarked at Guadalajara International Airport on one of the first flights into the region.
TAMPA/MONTREAL — Almost two years after Canadian federal police raided two synthetic opioid labs in Quebec and seized millions of deadly pills, a 49-year-old Montreal-area man has been indicted on charges of importing a narcotic three times more lethal than fentanyl into the United States — a case that connects, through prior federal filings, to a Chinese fentanyl precursor supplier and Mexican cartel-linked trafficking network operating out of Vancouver.
MEXICO CITY: Mexican drug cartels are increasingly calculated in their targeting decisions, often avoiding deliberately attacking American tourists and citizens out of concern it could prompt intensified U.S. retaliation, according to experts.
Following last month’s killing of Ruben “Nemesio” Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” the powerful leader of the Mexican Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt joined “Fox & Friends” and had a warning for the drug gangs: “The Mexican drug cartels know not to lay a finger on a single American, or they will pay severe consequences under this president.”
🚨 BOOM! I love that President Trump said this straight to Latin American heads of state 🔥
“We'll put a missile through the cartel boss's LIVING room if you want!” 🇺🇸
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 8, 2026
Canadians may need to brace themselves for violent Mexican drug cartels moving their operations north to escape the war on drugs in Mexico.
“There is a good, strong possibility of that,” former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Charles Noonan said in an interview.
“Manufacturing in Canada makes sense,” Noonan said. “In the next six months to a year, you could see a surge in the drug labs.”
El Mencho’s death has sparked mass violence in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state, but it is residents who have been the victims of the war on gangs
Arturo García was just finishing breakfast with his girlfriend last Sunday when he heard the screams. Armed men, their faces covered, were running through the market, spraying the stalls with petrol. They stopped cars and poured petrol over the people inside. Then they set everything alight.
“I could see people on fire,” García told me, one morning in Guadalajara last week. “They were screaming for help.”
“The fear is everywhere and the fear is constant,” said paramedic Héctor Torres, 53, from the front seat of the ambulance in Culiacán.
We had just come from the scene of a shooting inside a garage in the city centre.
The owner was lying dead in his office, blood spreading across the white tiled floor. As Héctor and the other paramedic, Julio César Vega, 28, entered the premises, a woman ran in wailing.
After the elimination of El Mencho by Mexican Army
Culiacán, Sinaloa (Mexico) was rocked by a violent clash between rival cartels.
"La Mayiza – Chapo Isidro, and "La Chapiza – CJNG."
This intense confrontation left three cartel members de!d pic.twitter.com/DxmWTMHlO9
— Blue Print🐾 👣 ™ (@haji_musteey) February 25, 2026
Locals and tourists in Mexico have described the “heartbreaking” unrest after one of the most powerful and feared cartels in the country unleashed a wave of violence across several states.
It comes after Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, Mexico’s most wanted man and leader of the Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel, was killed during a security operation to arrest him on Sunday.
Footage recorded by locals and tourists showed burnt vehicles and plumes of smoke rising above several towns and cities, including the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.
Footage out of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico allegedly shows Canadians looting an Oxxo convenience store.
When one is confronted with his alleged theft, he responds by accusing the man of being American.
Do you think this behaviour is reflective of the "elbows up" ethos? pic.twitter.com/7S7Zc9eenr
— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) February 24, 2026
JALISCO – On the morning of October 17, 2019, the Mexican state tried to arrest a Sinaloa Cartel boss and lost. Soldiers cornered Ovidio Guzmán — son of El Chapo — in the city of Culiacán, cradle of Mexico’s most powerful cartel. Within hours, thousands of gunmen in military-grade body armour and AK-47s flooded the streets. Buses and cars were seized and torched to block every route in and out. Family members of soldiers were taken hostage in their own homes. Barrett .50-calibre rifles were trained on government buildings. The Mexican Army, facing a city on fire, released Ovidio and retreated. President López Obrador called it a humanitarian decision. His critics said the cartel had shown it could bring the Mexican state to its knees.
VACATION TO VIOLENCE: What was meant to be a dream getaway in Puerto Vallarta is now a nightmare for hundreds of tourists.
After Mexico reportedly took out a major cartel leader, the city sees unprecedented violence — burning cars, ransacked stores, and blocked exits.
Witnesses… pic.twitter.com/U8eoKmuuYZ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2026
