Mexican police bring in major cartel boss in ICE-assisted raid: 'Major milestone'

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Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel 'woven' into US communities: former DEA agent says

Brian Townsend, a retired supervisory special agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), shared how the Sinaloa Cartel operates in the U.S.

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) partnered with a special law enforcement unit of the government of Mexico to arrest a criminal boss affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel known simply as "440."

This comes after the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said last year that the U.S. is facing the "most dangerous and deadly drug crisis" in its history, with fentanyl and methamphetamine flowing across the border — and that the "Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels are at the heart of this crisis." 

The Sinaloa Cartel, which operates a drug trafficking empire out of western Mexico, was recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump State Department. 

The administration has also designated several other Mexican cartels, the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations as well.

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According to a statement posted on social media by ICE, Leyva was arrested by a specially vetted team with the Mexican Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection and Secretariat of the Navy in collaboration with HSI on April 19.

The man arrested by Mexican authorities, Ivan Fernando Zepeda Leyva, is an associate of the Sinaloa Cartel, a member of the "Los Demonios" criminal group and the leader of the drug plazas in Nogales and Imuris in the Mexican state of Sonora, which spans the entire U.S.-Mexico border with Arizona.

According to a statement posted on social media by ICE, Zepeda Leyva was arrested by a specially vetted team with the Mexican Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection and Secretariat of the Navy in collaboration with HSI on April 19.

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ICE said Zepeda Leyva’s arrest marked a "major milestone in combating illegal drug trafficking and racketeering through U.S.-Mexican law enforcement cooperation."

The Trump administration has promised to be "ruthlessly aggressive" in responding to cartel threats to American citizens.

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U.S. President Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 7, 2025.  (REUTERS/Leah Millis)

In late March, the Trump administration announced a barrage of sanctions against the Sinaloa Cartel. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated six individuals and seven entities involved in a money-laundering network supporting the Sinaloa Cartel for sanctions.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the time that his department "proudly leveled new sanctions against financiers of the criminal Sinaloa drug cartel," which he said has "flooded our borders with fentanyl and senselessly murdered innocent American citizens."

"This ends under President Trump’s leadership," said Bessent. 

Fox News Digital's Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.