No. Uh Let me give you a call back from the barrios of Jalisco and Miaa Mexico. The Jalisco new generation cartel casts a dark shadow that extends far beyond the borders of a single nation and into the streets and communities of places like Houston and beyond. The CJ NG is one of the most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations in Mexico characterized by a business model of extreme violence and trafficking in the most deadly of substances, cocaine, heroin, meth and fentaNYL. My name is Alamar Hamdani and I am the United States attorney for the southern district of Texas and I am here to announce the DOJ s next efforts to disrupt the CJ NGS activities. A 50 count indictment charging 41 people of drug trafficking in cocaine, heroin, meth and fentaNYL as well as money laundering. Those charged are alleged to have sourced the drugs from Mexico, smuggle the drugs from Mexico across the border into the southern district of Texas, into Houston and into places like Atlanta, Pensacola, New Orleans, Nashville and Chicago. The charges allege that all 41 defendants operated under the overall control of the CJ and G of the 41 defendants DEA Uni United States Marshal Service and other law enforcement partners have taken 20 defendants into custody over the course of the last week, three were already in custody. Two have passed away and 16 remain at large including Roque Zamunda Mendoza of Michoacan. The main source of supply of the drug trafficking alleged in the indictment. There are fugitives in Mexico in Houston and as far as Laos, the arrests are a combination of a 63 month os ad organized crime drug enforcement task force investigation has spanned from early 2019 to the present. All charged all charged face life in federal prison as well as other penalties for other kinds of counts. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the drugs. The drugs that have been seized are 219 kg of cocaine, 34 kg of heroin, 550 kg of meth and 22,600 pills laced with fentaNYL. Have you ever heard the term? One pill can kill when it comes to fal 22,600 deadly pills. In 2021 over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses with 66% of those deaths related to synthetic opioids like fentaNYL. The cartel's ruthless pursuit of profit has come at the cost of countless young lives, leaving families and communities across the country, devastated the fight against the CCGNJ CJ NG, deadly, deadly fentaNYL trade remains an ongoing battle and I can tell you that battle requires every one of the people up here. A TFHPD DEA United States Marshal Service and the Gals Galveston pe D. It takes an all of government approach to stem the tide of the CJ NG. With that. I'm gonna turn it over to my good friend Danny Como with the DEA. This is a very significant case for the city of Houston. We work together as a team as one here from the city, Federal State and the US Attorney's office to dominate this drug cartel. And we have made a difference. Not only have we made a difference, we saved lives by these individuals being arrested, the drugs being taken off the street, we have saved lives. I want the citizens to understand we're doing our part as a team has won to make the citizens of Houston safe. Howdy. I'm T, Mike Low Connor, I'm the US Marshal of the southern district of Texas. You probably heard this saying justice is coming. Well, I can assure you justice is here. And here's a prime example of a collaboration of multi agencies from local state and federal. The Marshal service is well known for pursuing the fugitives. I consider them predators to our society as all and they are so good at doing this. You see the successes that we have across the nation in one of the collaborations that I have been a part of that has been in sync from the day one and it now shows the results. I can only assure you that we will continue to collaborate with the agencies here and make a difference in keeping our community safe and have assisting the law enforcement, local law enforcement as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I just wanna say good afternoon to everyone um eyes just like everyone else. Extremely proud of our partnership. Uh state, local federal, um all of our partners and the US Attorney's office, the southern district, the city of Houston has got more support to me than anybody in the nation. And I just wanna thank you. This is a five year over five year investigation. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes and I just wanna thank everyone, but I wanna spell special thanks to those task force officers, the men and women that are on the front line is really doing the dangerous work. I want to commend them for what they do. But a me a quick message to any cartel or any organized criminal activity. We stand strong here and I'm very proud of it and we'll continue to stand strong. Um There's some outstanding um defendants out there. Uh We're gonna get them as well and this is a message to everyone in this city in this region. Uh The partnership that we have is second to none and we're strong and we're moving forward and I just wanna thank you for your support. Um And everybody else that's, that's standing with me today and we'll continue to move forward in this region um to put bad people in jail and make our city our region safer. So, thanks for what everybody's done uh in this uh operation in this big investigation. So thank you. Thank you, Chief. We're happy to take some questions as it relates to this operation uh operation known as Operation Rain Maker. Any questions? Yes, sir. Do we know the immigration status of uh any of these fugitives that have been captured? So the fugitives who have not, well, the fugitives who have not been captured. Yes, we do know the immigration status. Um Each one is different. Some of them are citizens, some of them are citizens of Mexico. Uh But yeah, that'll be part of kind of the package we put together when we uh do uh uh when we go out, we, we try to apprehend fits other than drugs. Do we know if they're involved in uh in any immigrant smuggling at the border? So this indictment is about drug smuggling and, and, and as well as uh money laundering and that's what I want to focus on. We will, of course, our investigations always continue and we look at all different aspects of every crime that's out there. Any reason to believe that any of the fugitives are in Southeast Texas right now. Some of them are from Houston. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, at this point, um, you know, we're actively looking for these fugitives, which is why I've got them up here. But if you look at the actual slides you'll see in there. Um, some of them actually in Houston or Houston or Mexico, one of the things about the CJ NG you'll see in this because you've got the CJ NG is, uh, they're all, they all work for the CJ NG. They're all under the control of the CJ NG. You'll see some folks going back and forth to Mexico and into Houston. Do you have more information on how exactly they were uh trafficking these drugs? What their operation looked like right now? I wanna what, what I can tell you is what's in the indictment, which is they smuggle the drugs across the border into the southern district of Texas and they go to Houston that would be a hub and then they send it to other places around the country. Of course, using a variety of individuals, many of them minerals. What else can we learn about this cartel specifically about their operations and the fact that they're here in Houston and operating here in the States? That's a great question. What it tells you right now is the CJ NG is not just confined to Michoacan or to Jalisco. It's in Houston. It's folks are in Houston, its folks are in other parts of the country and that is the big message we want to send. Is that the hell let's go. New generation cartel isn't just some far off entity. They're in the streets of Houston, they're in our communities. Um And these folks were all under the control of the car, didn't make it. What you say that uh uh Yes, the people taken into custody. I mean, is there any indication were they in one like cell, one group of these multiple groups that are under the control of this cartel? That's a great question. So uh the car, first of all, the, they're all, they're all under the control of the cartel. Uh the very first individual uh that uh individual number one. And I'll tell you his name real quick before I forget um as audio Mendoza, um He is the main source of supply when it comes to these drugs coming across the border into the southern district of Texas. Uh But all of them were under the control of the uh CJ NG. But to the, to the question of was this one we have, we have 41 people here were charged 23 taken into custody. Were they all in one group working together? Are these like different factions under the control of the cartel? Count one of the indictment is a conspiracy that involves all, all 40. Are you guys adding and mention this indictment? Say it again. Are you guys adding mention in this indictment? How can our investigation always continues? And so I can't talk about what we've got and what, what that investigation looks like. But I can tell you we are vigilant, we are constantly looking at uh additional charges or additional charges. Why announce today, why announce today it's been, it's been five years, you're still working this. So, first of all, I think it is incredibly important to educate the community here in Houston and elsewhere of the CJ NG and the cartel itself and what it does. But secondly, uh the indictment was just recently unsealed last week and last week is when we started arresting individuals. And so last week, um I think we is when we arrested about 20 individuals, we thought now is a good time to sit down and talk. Of course, what we can't do is talk about a case while it's still under the sea. Once it got unsealed, uh we made the move and to stop talking about it and to educate the community. When were they arrested? When were they arrested last week? Um O over the coming days. So they've been, they've been coming in waves. Some of them turned themselves in. Some of them were captured and they've had hearings throughout the last week. Uh uh main prosecutor on the case has been busy dealing with detention hearings for the past week and a half. Oh, where? Oh, Houston. Um I think I'll tell you exactly. Um I believe we had some come from Denver, from Colorado. Uh but most of them have been here in Houston. Um and, and, and a lot of the border, we, we've captured most of them. You mentioned that two of these defendants have passed away, I guess since they were charged. Do you have any other details on that? No other details? All right. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Mr.
