Authorities in the United States said on Wednesday that they had seized “on the high seas” more than 300,000 kilograms of methamphetamine precursor chemicals. Officials said the chemicals were being shipped from China to Mexico, where they were destined for clandestine Sinaloa Cartel laboratories.
“This is the largest seizure of precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine in U.S. history,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.
“China was sending over 700,000 pounds [317,500 kg] on the high seas to the Sinaloa Cartel before my office seized them. Because President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio declared the Sinaloa Cartel a foreign terrorist organization, we can now strike faster and hit harder,” she said.
The chemicals — benzyl alcohol and N-methyl formamide — were shipped in 1,300 barrels, according to Pirro.
Speaking at a press conference held in a warehouse at the Port of Houston where the seized barrels were being stored, the U.S. attorney said that the chemicals were being transported in two different vessels “en route to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.”
“From China to Mexico. The port of lading was Shanghai, China. The port of discharge — Mexico,” Pirro said.
The U.S. attorney didn’t disclose where “on the high seas” the precursor chemicals were seized. The seizure occurred in late August.
Pirro said that the chemicals would have been used to make 420,000 pounds (190,508 kilograms) of methamphetamine, “which would have a street value here in Houston of US $569 million.”
Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said that a number of U.S. law enforcement agencies were involved in the record seizure, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and ICE.
He said that the chemicals came from the same vendor in China. The announcement of the seizure came the same day that the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said it had sanctioned Guangzhou Tengyue Chemical Co., “a chemical company operating in China that is involved in the manufacture and sale of synthetic opioids to Americans.”
Lyons said that after the chemicals were seized, HSI “worked closely with our foreign law enforcement partners to consolidate the shipments in Panama and divert them here to the Port of Houston.”
“Our agents in Panama, Guatemala and Mexico provided significant support to our Homeland Security Investigations team here in Houston throughout this whole investigation,” Lyons said.
He said that HSI used “significant analytical tools and techniques as well as our extensive investigative tools and our deep knowledge about cross-border trade to ensure that we identified these shipments before they got into any illicit hands.”
“This marks the first time a seizure warrant was issued for the material support of terrorism. … We were able to charge someone with material support of terrorism, and that’s the Sinaloa Cartel. The ability to obtain a warrant for this was only possible because of President Trump’s executive order … to designate major drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Lyons said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia obtained the warrant.
The designation of the Sinaloa Cartel as a foreign terrorist organization “provided federal prosecutors in the District the authority to execute the seizure under the terrorism forfeiture provision,” Pirro’s office said in a statement.
‘China’s undeclared war against America’
Pirro said that “every day tonnes of chemicals that are used to create synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl are shipped from China to Mexico in China’s undeclared war against America and her citizens.”
Drug cartels in Mexico ship large quantities of the locally-manufactured drugs to the United States, the world’s biggest market for narcotics.
Pirro said that “every day in funeral homes across this country, we see the tragic consequences of what has happened in this undeclared war.”
“… Before you leave I want to make sure that you look at those 1,300 barrels and I want you to have a visual of dead Americans instead of where those barrels are because that’s what would have happened,” she said to reporters.
The announcement of the record seizure of methamphetamine precursor chemicals coincided with a meeting between Secretary of State Rubio and President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City. The Mexican and U.S. governments said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they are committed to working together “to dismantle transnational organized crime through enhanced cooperation.”
Rubio said that that the U.S. and Mexico are “amplifying” their security cooperation as the two countries seek to combat organized crime groups and the narcotics they traffic on both sides of the border and around the world. His visit to Mexico came a day after the the United States carried out a strike on a drug-carrying vessel from Venezuela that United States President Donald Trump said killed 11 “terrorists” that allegedly belonged to the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico, but it has been weakened over the past year due to a bloody war between rival factions that escalated after the arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in the United States in July 2024.
Last week, Zambada pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in a U.S. federal court in Brooklyn, New York, where he confessed to trafficking huge quantities of narcotics to the United States during a decades-long criminal career.
Mexico News Daily
