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Crime

Struggle for control of the Sinaloa Carel has ramifications for Canada

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17 mins ago

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Washington Moves Against El Mayo’s Cartel Network, Accusing It of Bribery, Political Capture, and Cross-Border Fentanyl Trade

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced sweeping sanctions on the Los Mayos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, a move that highlights the group’s violent war with El Chapo Guzmán’s heirs for control of a multibillion-dollar fentanyl empire entrenched in more than 40 nations including Canada. The sanctions also pointed to deep corruption of political and security offices on Mexico’s northwest border.

“The Sinaloa Cartel is a foreign terrorist organization that continues to traffic narcotics, launder its proceeds, and corrupt local officials,” said John K. Hurley, Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “Today’s actions cut at the heart of the political and commercial infrastructure that Los Mayos relies upon to poison Americans with fentanyl and maintain control of territory in Baja California.”

Once a monolithic enterprise spanning cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and now fentanyl routes across the Americas, the Sinaloa Cartel has fractured since the imprisonment of co-founders Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García. Their successors — Guzmán’s sons, collectively called Los Chapitos, and the Zambada loyalists known as Los Mayos — have plunged northwest Mexico into open war.

A sign of the Mayo faction’s foreign reach emerged in British Columbia months ago, when court filings revealed that a fortified compound in Surrey, south of Vancouver, housed a trafficking syndicate tied directly to El Mayo’s network. According to the government’s civil-forfeiture suit, the group negotiated cocaine shipments with Zambada’s emissaries and stockpiled a cache of weapons, opioids, and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. When the RCMP raided the mansion, they found Hikvision surveillance systems, encrypted phones, and nearly a kilogram of Ecstasy alongside fentanyl pills and counterfeit Xanax. The property — minutes from the Peace Arch border crossing — is now the subject of a multimillion-dollar forfeiture case.

After years of tense coexistence, hostilities between the Chapo and Mayo factions erupted last year, and the human toll has been staggering. Reuters and the Associated Press reported that homicides in Sinaloa surged to 883 in the first half of 2025, up from 224 a year earlier. Entire towns have been emptied and convoys of gunmen have left highways strewn with burned-out vehicles.

OFAC, in its designation notice, confirmed: “Turf wars between Los Mayos and Los Chapitos have resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.”

At the center of today’s sanctions is Juan José Ponce Félix, better known as El Ruso. OFAC identified him as “the founder and leader of the primary armed wing of Los Mayos,” controlling routes in Baja California and extending the faction’s fentanyl operations north. A 2015 indictment from the Southern District of California described El Ruso as the commander of “a fleet of soldiers” responsible for kidnappings, hostage-taking, torture, and murder in furtherance of Sinaloa Cartel interests. Now, OFAC says, his dominance in Baja has become a key pillar of Los Mayos’ trafficking empire. Earlier this week, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

The designations go beyond gunmen. OFAC spotlighted Rosarito, a coastal town just 15 miles south of San Diego, as a laboratory of cartel political capture. Los Mayos, it said, operated through the Arzate brothers — Alfonso and René — and their financial lieutenant, Jesús González Lomelí, who owned bars, restaurants, and resorts across Mexico, used to launder millions in cartel proceeds.

These commercial fronts were paired with direct political influence. Candelario Arcega Aguirre, a cartel operative with close ties to Rosarito’s then-mayor, Hilda Araceli Brown Figueredo, leveraged his relationship to place allies in the municipal Department of Public Security. According to OFAC, Arcega, González, and Brown “collected extortion payments for the Arzates, assisted in managing the Arzate brothers’ operations, and ensured protection for the Arzates’ criminal activities by the Department of Public Security in Rosarito.”

The network extended to a transportation company, Transporte Urbano y Suburbano del V Municipio S.A. de C.V., which OFAC identified as a laundering vehicle for Arcega. All told, the sanctions designated not just traffickers but a matrix of businessmen and public officials accused of entwining Rosarito’s government with cartel command.

U.S. officials describe the cartel as a global enterprise, with distribution and laundering nodes in more than 40 countries and thousands of operatives and facilitators. Canada has been deeply saturated in that network, a surge that accelerated after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eased immigration requirements for Mexican citizens.

Court filings in the British Columbia case alleged that the Surrey-based network had the clout to negotiate supply terms directly with El Mayo until his arrest by U.S. law enforcement in July 2024. That capture “disrupted the DTO’s efforts to import and distribute cocaine in Canada,” the documents said, forcing the group to seek new contacts in Mexico. The cache discovered at the mansion included 400 grams of counterfeit Xanax, 810 oxycodone pills, 5.5 grams of fentanyl, and sophisticated video surveillance equipment designed to fortify the property against raids.

The Canadian government formally listed the Sinaloa Cartel as a terrorist entity in February 2025, following the State Department’s U.S. designation. By June, OFAC had moved to sanction the Chapitos wing of the cartel. With today’s action, both sides of the cartel’s civil war are now under U.S. financial blockade.

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Crime

Time to call Antifa what it is — a terrorist organization

Published on September 18, 2025

By

MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

President Trump announced Wednesday he will designate Antifa a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” calling it a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and vowing to investigate its funders. The move follows Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a suspect tied to extremist leftist ideology.

Key Details:

  • On Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”
  • Trump added that he would recommend “those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.”
  • Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” has no formal leadership structure but is known for violent clashes with police and for stoking riots at protests. Trump said earlier this week he was “100%” in favor of labeling the group as a terror organization.

Diving Deeper:

President Trump on Wednesday escalated his administration’s push against violent left-wing groups by declaring that Antifa will be designated as a “major terrorist organization.” Posting the announcement on Truth Social, Trump described the group as “a sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and emphasized that investigations into Antifa’s backers should begin immediately. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices,” Trump said.

The decision follows mounting calls for action in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week. Authorities have identified the suspect, Tyler Robinson, as a 22-year-old who was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” The tragedy has intensified pressure on the administration to act against groups viewed as fueling extremist violence.

Antifa, which stands for “anti-fascist,” is less a formal organization than a loose movement. Its members, often dressed in black and masked, are notorious for showing up at protests to provoke violent clashes with law enforcement and political opponents. While its supporters describe the group as anti-authoritarian, critics point out its consistent record of property destruction, rioting, and violent confrontations.

Trump had previewed the move earlier in the week, telling reporters he was “100%” supportive of officially designating the group as a terrorist organization. The announcement also aligns with Trump’s longstanding campaign promise to crack down on lawlessness and protect communities from radical ideologies.

By targeting Antifa not just in name but by directing legal scrutiny toward its funding networks, Trump is signaling a more aggressive federal posture toward violent left-wing movements. The designation would allow federal authorities to treat Antifa’s activities with the same severity reserved for foreign terrorist groups, widening the scope of investigations and penalties against those linked to its operations.

(AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

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Crime

FBI says ‘a lot more’ than 20 people ‘may have known’ Charlie Kirk was going to be shot

Published on September 17, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The FBI is investigating the possibility that dozens of Discord users may have had knowledge about the planned murder of Charlie Kirk before it happened.

The FBI is currently investigating the possibility that dozens of other individuals may have known about the planned murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk through their participation in an online chatroom.

Kirk, the head of campus outreach group Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on September 10 while speaking at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University. Two days later, authorities apprehended and accused 22-year-old Robinson of the shooting and detailed how he was motivated by his view of Kirk as “hateful.” Robinson was in a romantic relationship with his male roommate, who is in the process of “transitioning” to female.

On Monday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt that investigators are looking at a chat room on the platform Discord in which Robinson participated and a “potential broader network of people who may have known” what he was planning. He cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages, and were not yet certain of who knew what when.

“The only question is the timeline that other people knew about the incident. Did they know before? Did they know afterward?” Bongino said. “When you read some of the traffic, it’s unclear if that message was received before or after.”

The next day, FBI Director Kash Patel testified before Congress on a wide range of topics, during which the state of the investigation came up.

“I see the public reports that the Discord thread had as many as 20 additional users,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, to which Patel said it was a “lot more than that,” and “we’re running them all down.”

Patel would not go so far as to say definitively that more individuals than Robinson were involved in the assassination, but said it remains a possibility. “There are a number of individuals that are currently being investigated and interrogated — and a number yet to be investigated and interrogated related to that chatroom,” he said.

Discord has issued a statement insisting there is “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence” on the platform. Robinson announced to his chat room that he had done it roughly two hours after the shooting.

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all,” Robinson told the 30-some members of the chat. “It was me at [Utah Valley University] yesterday. i’m sorry for all of this […] Im surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments. thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amazing, thank you all for everything.”

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