New federal strike force to focus on gangs, terrorism and drug trade on Long Island and in Brooklyn, officials say

The top federal prosecutor for Long Island and Brooklyn said he created a strike force to focus on dismantling the MS-13 gang, Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations, officials announced on Wednesday.

The Transnational Criminal Organizations Strike Force will take down the organizations that are responsible for murders and drug overdoses in Nassau and Suffolk by filing terrorism, racketeering and operating a criminal enterprise charges against the gangs and their leaders, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District John J. Durham said in a statement.

"Because of my office’s significant experience in this area, we have a responsibility to our community and our country to dismantle these ruthless organizations from the top down in order to stop the violence, flow of drugs, and dangers they unleash in our district and across the nation," Durham said.

The Eastern District, Durham said, has a long history of successfully prosecuting high-ranking leaders of MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel and other transnational criminal organizations.

MS-13 became notorious on Long Island because of the dozens of high-profile killings ordered or sanctioned by leaders from 2013 to 2017. Many of those murders resulted from up-close-and-personal violence committed with machetes, baseball bats and axes. MS-13 members killed Brentwood High School students Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas in 2016, shocking murders that focused national attention on Long Island’s gang violence and on Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, who became an anti-gang activist after her daughter's death.

Rodriguez was the guest of President Donald Trump during his 2018 State of the Union, also met with Trump again later that year, when he visited Brentwood to discuss gang violence with Long Island leaders, Rodriguez was killed in September 2018 — two years to the day her daughter’s remains were discovered — during a confrontation with a motorist.

Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican drug cartels are responsible for the vast majority of fentanyl brought into the United States, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Fentanyl, a cheap synthetic opioid primarily made from ingredients imported from China, is responsible for most of the fatal drug overdoses on Long Island and across the nation.

The creation of the strike force follows an executive order from Trump that designated cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations and directed federal agencies to work toward their "total elimination."

Attorney General Pam Bondi directed agencies in a Feb. 5 memo to focus on investigating and prosecuting the organizations’ leadership. The memo also ordered the agencies to identify the groups’ sources of illicit funds, and to seize bank accounts and assets that have been obtained through criminal activity.

The strike force will be led by Francisco J. Navarro, the chief of the EDNY International Narcotics and Money Laundering Section, Durham said in the statement. Navarro is part of the team prosecuting Rafael Caro Quintero, the founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara Cartel who is allegedly among those responsible for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and others. Quintero, who was extradited from Mexico to the United States last week, pleaded not guilty to charges related to the killing and drug-related charges on Friday in Brooklyn federal court.

Navarro is also leading the team prosecuting the founder and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world. He led the team that secured a 45-year prison sentence against the leader of another cartel, the Clan del Golfo, and obtained the first indictments in the nation against Chinese companies that supply cartels with fentanyl precursors, the statement said.