Combating Mexican cartels that traffic in fentanyl is the top priority of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the agency’s chief said in a video message last week.
“Every day I walk into DEA headquarters, I’m reminded of DEA’s mission. I see the faces of fentanyl. I see Americans that have lost their lives at the hands of the cartels. DEA is poised to lead this fight against the cartels,” Terry Cole, a former DEA agent and now the agency’s administrator, says at the start of the video that was posted to social media and to the DEA’s website.
𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 #𝐃𝐄𝐀 𝐀𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐞#FentanylFreeAmerica
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/8qBEJyWBfG
— DEA HQ (@DEAHQ) June 24, 2026
“Let me be clear,” Cole continues.
“DEA has never been more focused, more aligned, or more dedicated to attacking the fentanyl crisis than we are right now. Across the globe DEA is bringing the full weight of our global enterprise to this fight.”
Cole says that the DEA is “hunting the foreign terrorists responsible” for the fentanyl crisis in the United States, where the powerful synthetic opioid has caused hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years. Among the organizations on the United States’ foreign terrorist list are six Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
In his video, Cole names the Sinaloa Cartel — which was founded by convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo Guzmán” and incarcerated trafficker Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — and the CJNG, formerly led by the now-deceased capo Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, as criminal groups that the DEA is going after.
“Fentanyl is the threat like we’ve never seen before. The Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and CJNG, are priority number one of the DEA,” he says in a part of the video that was shared on social media by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.
Fentanyl — which is manufactured by cartels in Mexico using precursor chemicals illegally imported from China — has “shattered families, … devastated communities” and “challenged law enforcement at every level,” Cole says.
“The American people expect and deserve the DEA to eliminate this threat, and that is exactly what we are doing,” he says.
After highlighting that the DEA has seized “over 14,000 kilograms of fentanyl and more than 62 million fentanyl pills” since the second Trump administration took office in January 2025, Cole declares that the DEA is pursuing “a fentanyl-free America.”
“That isn’t a catch phrase. That isn’t a slogan. This is our promise to the American people that we are responding with urgency, with resolve, and with the same unbreakable determination that has defined this agency for more than five decades,” the DEA administrator says.
“We are all gas, no brakes,” adds Cole.
The DEA chief’s remarks came the same week that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that “there is not one inch of Mexico’s northern border that isn’t covered by a [cartel] plaza.”
Responding to the comment at her morning press conference last Friday, Sheinbaum highlighted that U.S. President Donald Trump recently posted a statement to social media that says that the United States border with Mexico is the “most secure.”
Mullin himself said earlier this month that “under President Donald Trump’s leadership, we are delivering the most secure border in American history.”
For her part, Sheinbaum said, “There couldn’t be a secure border if work is not done on both sides.”
The Sheinbaum administration has adopted a much more proactive approach to combating drug cartels than the 2018-24 government led by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Security Minister Omar García Harfuch reported earlier this month that between October 2024 and May 2026, authorities dismantled 2,407 clandestine drug laboratories, detained 56,134 people who allegedly committed high-impact crimes, seized 419.3 tonnes of drugs and confiscated 29,572 firearms.
In addition, the Sheinbaum administration has sent more than 90 organized crime figures to the United States to face justice.
Mexico News Daily
