EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The Treasury Department has frozen the assets of a border-based criminal organization, and in the process exposed its ties to one of the largest illicit fentanyl exporters to the United States.
The sanctions target two companies and five individuals with alleged major leadership roles in the transnational criminal organization known as La Linea, the Treasury announced on Thursday. They include R y H El Remate, S.A.C.V., Soluciones Tecnológicas y Paqueteria, S.A.C.V., Josefa Yadira Carrasco Leyva, Jorge Adrian Ortega Gallegos, Heber Nieto Fierro, Adrian Aguayo and Jesus Salas Aguayo.
The companies and individuals are accused of engaging on activities contributing to the production and international proliferation of illicit narcotics. The sanctions mean not only that their assets in the U.S. are blocked, but also that any other company of which they are found to control 50% or more will also be blocked, the Treasury said.
“If La Linea continues to directly contribute to the proliferation of deadly fentanyl throughout our communities, Treasury will continue to use every tool in its arsenal to go after their criminal activity,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement on Thursday.
The Treasury Department said La Linea operates out of Juarez, Mexico, and is involved in drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal logging, car theft and collects “taxes” from other criminal groups using its smuggling routes, primarily in the border state of Chihuahua.
Also, a score of La Linea gunmen remain jailed in Mexico for the November 2019 murder of nine Americans whose vehicles they mistook for those of Sinaloa cartel members near the Chihuahua-Sonora border. A federal judge in North Dakota in 2022 issued a $4.6 billion judgement against the cartel in a civil lawsuit seeking reparations for the families of the victims.
Inside La Linea operations, command structure
La Linea in September 2023 formalized a partnership with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which the Drug Enforcement Administration has identified as one of the two main exporters of fentanyl to the United States – with the other being the Sinaloa cartel.
CJNG now supplies cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to La Linea, the Treasury Department said.
Individually, the agency identified Carrasco as a senior associate of La Linea allegedly involved in drug trafficking, migrant smuggling and the illicit importation of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico. Nieto is accused of laundering money for the organization while Salas allegedly controls the “plaza” (the region).
Adrian Aguayo allegedly is a plaza boss in the interior of Chihuahua, while Ortega is under federal indictment on drug conspiracy charges in New Mexico, the Treasury said.
According to Mexican news reports, Carrasco, aka La Wera de Palenque, was arrested in Mexico a year ago on drugs and weapons charges. She was last known to be incarcerated in a correctional institution for women in Morelos, Mexico.
According to a redacted third superseding indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, Ortega served as communications manager of "La Oficina," a command center for the old Juarez cartel under Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The center relayed information to cartel operatives on Mexican troop and police movements.
Salas, aka "Chuyin," allegedly was in charge of the cartel's day-to-day operations and was in charge of 12 plaza bosses throughout Chihuahua for Carrillo Fuentes, who has since been arrested by the Mexican government. He was handed a 28-year prison sentence in 2021, according to international news reports.
La Linea originated in the early 2000s as a group of enforcers – many of them former Mexican police officers or corrupt active officers – serving the Juarez cartel then led by “The Viceroy,” Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The group was significantly diminished when the Sinaloa cartel took over the region 2006-2010, but La Linea in the past five years has retaken control of much of the region.
The Treasury says it designated La Linea as an organized crime “kingpin” in December 2021 and says it’s now an alias for the Juarez cartel.
In an April 2022 report, the Center for the United States and Mexico of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy was already listing La Linea as an ally of the Jalisco cartel.
The research in association with Mexico’s Lantia Consultores says La Linea operates through street gangs including Los Nuevos Aztecas, Fuerzas Especiales Mexicles in the Juarez area, and Los Bournes and Los H in southern and western Chihuahua. La Linea has also been linked to the Barrio Azteca gang in the El Paso area, according to the research.
The cartel's ties to Mexican law enforcement remain strong, as evidenced by the May 2023 firing of the entire police force of Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico, after someone turned off security cameras and blocked a major highway so that La Linea could hang the mutilated body of an alleged rapist from the town's entrance arches.
The Treasury Department says Thursday’s sanctions are the result of an investigation in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit.