FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ODNI News Release No. 21-25
August 6, 2025
NCTC Supports Multi-Agency Effort to Arrest Top Sinaloa Cartel Narcotics Trafficker
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) provided crucial intelligence to support the successful detention and arrest of a dangerous Sinaloa Cartel leader, Jaime Rene Huereca Casavantes, alias Carlos Miramontes, at the Port of Entry in El Paso, Texas, on August 1, 2025. The arrest operation was carried out by NCTC’s partners at the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
“I am proud of NCTC and the Intelligence Community’s work to provide critical intelligence to our law enforcement partners so we could rid our country of this threat. We also thank the brave Mexican law enforcement and military partners for their assistance on this operation,” said Joe Kent, NCTC Director. “Thanks to President Trump’s Executive Order designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations , we can now utilize a whole-of-government approach to disrupt the Sinaloa Cartel’s deadly fentanyl and illicit drug operations and protecting the homeland from foreign terrorist gangs and cartels.”
“Locating and arresting escaped federal prisoners is a core mission of the U.S. Marshals Service. We are relentless. No guilty person shall escape justice, and the United States Marshals Service will not rest until we find you and return you to prison to serve out your lawful federal sentence,” said USMS Director Gadyaces S. Serralta.
Huereca escaped from a U.S. prison in 1997 and fled to Mexico, where he spent more than two decades orchestrating large-scale drug trafficking and laundering money for the Sinaloa Cartel and other transnational criminal organizations. His arrest deals a significant blow to cartel operations and underscores the continued threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).
After President Trump’s designation of cartels and transnational gangs as FTOs, DNI Gabbard directed NCTC to focus intelligence and vetting resources against terrorists who traffic deadly narcotics into the country. As a result of these efforts, NCTC is applying two decades of counterterrorism expertise to lead the Intelligence Community in assisting law enforcement partners, like the USMS, in targeting FTO-designated cartels and gangs responsible for flooding the U.S. with deadly fentanyl and other illicit drugs.
###