The Minnesota Cartel

The U.S. Justice Department announced this week that it dismantled one of the most sophisticated cartels in the criminal fentanyl business. And the methamphetamines don’t belong to the Sinaloa Cartel or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. But to an organization run and operated by U.S. citizens on both sides of the border. 

On January 4, 2019 Clinton James Ward was arrested in a motel parking lot in Bandai Heights Minnesota for selling methamphetamine from his room. Weeks later he managed to escape to Mexico where he quickly established a criminal network of allies linked to both the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. 

For the past 5 years Clinton James Ward ran from his residence in Jalisco a business of his own exporting methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cocaine to the United States. Federal prosecutors in the District of Minnesota accuse him of distributing at least 1600 pounds of synthetic opiods in the Minneapolis Saint Paul metropolitan area.

On March 11, 2024 Ward was arrested by Mexican authorities and extradited to the United States judicial system. This Tuesday, August 6, the Department of Justice announced the opening of a maxi-trial against Ward’s organization.

Charges of drug trafficking and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl were filed against 15 individuals. All of the defendants are U.S. citizens. U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger stated that the indictment has dismantled one of the most sophisticated and significant drug trafficking organizations that I have prosecuted in my tenure as a prosecutor in the Department of Justice. 

The case was developed in coordination with the DEA, the FBI, and the assistance of Mexican authorities. The Justice Department investigation and intelligence gathered by the DEA found that Ward used the infrastructure and contacts of the two major criminal organizations in Mexico to traffic and distribute synthetic opioids. 

From Jalisco to Minnesota Ward aligned himself with two Mexican cartels. His organization left a trail of destruction, said U.S. Attorney Luger Alvin M. Winston, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the case. He called the prosecution of the Minnesota Cartel the disruption of a significant drug trafficking network. 

Ward’s operation crossed synthetic opioids across the U.S.-Mexico border using semi-trailer loads. The drugs were then broken down into smaller quantities to be transported to Minnesota via private vehicles. 

Ward’s arrest and the Minnesota Cartel operation shatter the common stereotypes and prefabricated narratives surrounding the war on drugs. First, they make it clear that the heads of criminal organizations don’t carry the surnames of Oseguera, Zambado, or Guzman. 

Clinton James Ward is a 45-year-old white male of U.S. nationality. Second, the fact that Ward has worked simultaneously with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel makes it clear that the boundaries and hierarchies of criminal organizations are informal, unstable, and dynamic. 

Cartels are not vertical structures but franchises that sometimes share service providers, hitmen distributors, paramilitary arms, financial operators and above all political contacts. 

Third, the Minnesota Cartel is a testament to the fact that the Republican Party’s drug control policy starts from the wrong premise: the immigration crisis and the chaos of the asylum system. They explain only a small part of the exports of synthetic opioids to the United States. 

According to U.S. government data, most of the methamphetamines and fentanyl consumed in the United States are introduced by U.S. citizens through Customs and Border Protection border checkpoints of the Department of Homeland Security. 

Fourth, organizations like Ward’s are ideal for adapting to a context of cartel atomization. In fact, they are a reflection of the policy of decapitation of criminal organizations known as the kingpin strategy implemented since the government of Felipe Calderon. 

The use of U.S. military special forces in Mexico and the designation of traditional cartels as terrorist organizations will hardly affect operations like Ward’s discrete 15-person structures run by U.S. citizens. 

For nearly two decades, the Mexican government’s strategy to confront the cartels has oscillated between aggressive military interventions to atomize criminal groups and non-aggression pacts to achieve a sort of pax narco. Both approaches have been an absolute failure for the Mexican state.

Both approaches have been an absolute failure for the Mexican state. It has refused, by omission or complicity, to dismantle the money laundering networks of the cartels and the structures of political protection. 

‘If they catch me or kill me, nothing changes’, said Ismael El Mayo Zambada to Julio Sherer in the cover interview for the magazine Proceso.

It’s no coincidence that his arrest in the United States was preceded by the preparation of a succession of the criminal empire divided between Ismael Sicairos aka El Mayito Flaco and Ismael Zambada Imperial aka El Mayito Gordo. 

The same could be said of the criminal structures of the Chapitos, the Gulf Cartel, and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The Minnesota Cartel is a new iteration of the drug war. It is also an opportunity to rethink how a business that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Mexico and the United States works.

Sources: Código Magenta, El Parece