US officials announced economic sanctions Thursday against eight targets affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, accused of fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling.
The measures from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) are aimed at stifling a network known for sending illicit drugs from Mexico across the southern US border to Dallas and Houston, as well as to other cities including Chicago and Atlanta, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
“The leaders we’re targeting have carried out heinous acts, from controlling drug routes, to arms trafficking, to money laundering, to murder,” Yellen said during an event in Atlanta.
“Our sanctions will cut off the cartel leaders from their ill-gotten money and make it harder for them to bring deadly fentanyl to our streets,” she added.
The sanctions target leaders of the organization, as well as key lieutenants whom Treasury said had meaningfully engaged in and promoted the illicit drug trade.
The group is also known for human smuggling, with La Nueva Familia Michoacana staging videos in which participants falsely claim to be under interrogation in order to win US asylum. The participants then pay money to the cartel, the Treasury said in a statement.
In addition to the OFAC actions, the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network released an advisory of red flags and trends intended to help US financial institutions detect signs of the illicit fentanyl supply chain.
The advisory will give them the information they need to “go after the criminals perpetrating and profiting off of the opioid epidemic,” Yellen said.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has caused an addiction epidemic in the United States, and is responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year.
