The U.S Drug Enforcement Administration claimed it arrested 171 high-level members of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel in New England this August. In the small New Hampshire city of Franklin alone, there were 27 arrests.
But an investigation from the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team found many of those arrested were instead low-level offenders, with little to no link to the Sinaloa drug cartel. The Boston Globe’s Steven Porter joined NHPR’s Morning Edition host Rick Ganley to talk about what they found.
Transcript
There were 33 arrests in total here in New Hampshire, the majority of them in the city of Franklin. If these arrestees aren't — as they were claimed to be — high level cartel members, then who are they?
My colleagues on the Spotlight investigative team and I looked into this, and we found dozens of defendants in Franklin who were drug users, unhoused people, and some of them were accused of shoplifting. So although some of the allegations did involve alleged drug sales and drug possession, a lot of the defendants in Franklin were low-level offenders, allegedly.
Now, what are they charged with?
There's a variety of charges in the Franklin cases. Some of them do involve small dollar drug sales. There was one defendant who had the highest level of charges, and they are state-level felony charges for dealing drugs. I would describe her as an alleged retail drug dealer in Franklin.
Now, the DEA has kind of classified this as a major sweep and a major arrest. And the DEA, according to your reporting, says we don't deal with low-level offenders. Your reporting would clearly point to that's not the case.
Correct. So fundamentally, this is a story about a disconnect between what federal officials are saying about law enforcement actions on the ground and what's actually happening on the ground. My colleague spoke to the police chief in Franklin, and he said that the way that the DEA has characterized these arrests really made a mockery of what were legitimate arrests, but not Sinaloa Cartel high-ranking member arrests.
Well, what do we know about the Sinaloa Cartel, precisely? And are they operating in New England?
There have been cases in the past where Sinaloa Cartel members have been prosecuted, including in New Hampshire. There was a big case about a decade ago. But what sets those prosecutions apart from what we saw in our investigation here is the allegations that were involved in these Franklin arrests did not specifically outline facts that would substantiate the notion that they were high level Sinaloa Cartel members. There were allegations, if true, substantiate the alleged illegality of drug possession and drug sales and some non-drug related offenses, but nothing of the sort of detail that we would see with these historical prosecutions of high ranking Sinaloa Cartel members.
Indeed, in some of the reporting from the Spotlight team, a former DEA official said something about this being political theater.
Absolutely. And I think it's important to remember the context in which this is happening. Because the Trump administration earlier this year designated the Sinaloa Cartel and seven other drug trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. And if you look in the reporting, there's a reference to The Washington Post and reporting that they did earlier this year showing that there was an effort by the DEA to advocate for action in Mexico. Remember that the Sinaloa Cartel is a Mexico-based cartel. The White House reportedly batted down that effort by the DEA to seek action in Mexico. But subsequently, we have seen this administration carry out deadly strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats with other organizations.
Steven, what have DEA officials said in response to the Globe's reporting?
My colleagues and I contacted the DEA with our findings, and they said that they could not engage in a back and forth because of the government shutdown. They did provide some information that they suggested would substantiate the original claims that DEA special agent in charge [Jarod] Forget had offered earlier this year or earlier this fall, but the information they provided did not ultimately substantiate what they had said.
Your reporting found that neither court documents, nor agency spokespeople, were able to provide evidence that those arrested were high ranking members of the cartel. So why are these arrests being characterized the way they are by the DEA?
I think it's important to remember the context in which this operation is happening. The Trump administration has been escalating a war on Latin American drug cartels. And we have seen this with the deadly boat strikes both in the Caribbean and the Pacific now. And so there has been rhetoric around that ramping up and now kinetic action as well, ramping up on international waters. And so I think it's fair to view some of the rhetoric from the DEA as being part and parcel to the larger war on Latin American drug cartels that we've seen from the Trump administration. And one of the sources that I spoke to said, the disconnect that we're seeing between the rhetoric and the reality on the ground ultimately boils down to fear mongering.
Typically, when you hear about these so-called high level busts, you would hear names, presumably, of those who were arrested. Has the DEA done that?
Not with the New Hampshire defendants. With the 27 arrests in Franklin, I reached out in early September to the DEA and asked, "tell me who you arrested." And they said, "well, none of them are facing federal charges, so we're going to send you to the Franklin PD." And so I reached out to the Franklin PD, and they said, "you'll need to file a public records request if you're going to get the names of the people that we've already announced that we arrested."
To this day, I do not have a definitive list of who those defendants were who were arrested among the 27. The absence of the names from the press releases and the public statements was one of the things that really initiated the investigation here by my colleagues and I to try and figure out what exactly the government was not sharing about these arrests that they had announced.