(PatriotWise.com) — Homeland Security is ramping up efforts to stop the trafficking of fentanyl and the chemicals made to use it by tracking cryptocurrency used by Mexican drug cartels, NBC News reported.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NBC News last Thursday that Homeland Security will hold drug traffickers accountable by seizing property and “interdicting and interrupting their financial flow.”
The chemicals used to produce fentanyl are produced largely in China. The chemicals are shipped to Mexico where drug cartels manufacture fentanyl and smuggle it into the United States to sell.
Mayorkas told NBC News that the Biden administration is working to get the cooperation of Beijing in stopping the production of the chemicals.
In April, DHS announced that it was putting pressure on Mexico to stop the production and distribution of fentanyl.
In the first two months after increasing its effort to stop fentanyl at the southern border, DHS and Customs and Border Protection seized over 10,000 pounds of the drug and arrested 284 people.
The next phase in the campaign will target high-ranking cartel members by using forensic accounting to track the cryptocurrency used to purchase the chemicals from China.
During a hearing of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, Steven Cagan, Homeland Security Investigations countering transnational organized crime assistant director, the drug cartels’ ability to traffic fentanyl into the US is “greatly enhanced by Chinese money laundering,” The Epoch Times reported.
Cagan told the subcommittee last Wednesday that Chinese money launderers “have a vast global infrastructure” that enables them to “clean illicit proceeds” from a variety of criminal organizations, including Mexican drug cartels.
Kemp Chester from the Office of National Drug Control Policy told the subcommittee that Beijing refuses to do anything to stop the production of the chemicals used to make fentanyl, saying “at best,” Beijing is “standing by” and “at worst,” it is enabling the “manufacture and distribution” of fentanyl.
Chester added that Chinese money launderers are making drug cartels “richer at a pace that’s faster than ever.” He explained that what used to take weeks or even months now takes money launderers “just a few hours.”
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