US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo looks on as Attorney General Merric Garland takes questions during a press conference to announce disruptions of the fentanyl precursor chemical supply chain at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, on October 3, 2023. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images
U.S. indicts, sanctions Chinese companies linked to fentanyl trade
“Nearly all fentanyl precursors come from China,” one official said.
The United States issued eight indictments and imposed more than two dozen sanctions against China-based companies and people involved in making and shipping the chemicals used to make fentanyl, officials announced Tuesday.
The announcement comes as some Republicans are highlighting fentanyl transit across the U.S. southern border as a key national security issue. Former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and others have even called for U.S. military action against drug cartels. The United States seized 18,500 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border in 2022, up from just 14 Ibs in 2014, according to data from Customs and Border Patrol.
For the Tuesday indictments, Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security agents infiltrated the Chinese companies and posed as buyers for the chemicals inside the United States. The amount of the chemical in just one of the shipments from China to a fake U.S.-based buyer “would have been enough to manufacture more than 72 kilograms of fentanyl. That amount could be used to make more than 15 million fentanyl pills,” U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland told reporters.
“Nearly all fentanyl precursors come from China,” DEA administrator Anne Milgram said.
The people and companies involved “comprise, or are otherwise affiliated with, a Chinese illicit drugs syndicate, according to the Treasury Department.
In addition to so-called fentanyl “precursors,” some of the companies targeted also produce chemicals like xylazine, or “tranq,” a sedative that veterinarians use that can be combined with fentanyl to enhance its effectiveness—though it also can cause flesh to rot, earning it the nickname “the zombie drug”.
According to the indictment, the Chinese syndicate has established ties with two cartels operating out of Mexico and other parts of Central and South America.
But officials stressed that the Chinese syndicate is also eager to send drugs directly into the United States and has used the U.S. mail system—which suggests that stopping chemicals on the southern border is only a partial solution. In fact, officials said, chemicals often arrive in the United States only to be shipped to Mexico to be turned into fentanyl and then sent back.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Tuesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the DEA “used advanced targeting data … to interdict more than half a ton of precursor chemicals in warehouses in Los Angeles in Brownsville [Texas] before the chemicals could be transported to the drug manufacturers in Mexico and Arizona, California and Texas.”
DHS agents, he said, “learned that one company had shipped more than 500 kilograms of fentanyl precursors to Tucson, Arizona, and Brownsville, Texas, by monitoring telephone numbers associated with the shipments and other investigative techniques. Agents were able to identify the Bitcoin wallets associated with the Chinese companies.”