The ripple effect of an American Special Forces raid on Venezuela won’t reach metro Chicago, because Venezuelan drug traffickers don’t supply fentanyl, and that’s the primary street drug of choice these days here in Chicago.
Fentanyl is the major cause of overdose deaths in the area, totaling tens of thousands in the city and suburbs the past decade.
According to data, Mexico is the leading source of Chicago’s illicit drugs, and so if Mexican cartels are targeted next by The White House, that could cause a ripple effect here hitting fentanyl drug sales and interrupting deadly supply lines.
The question over whether the U.S. will target those cartels came after dozens of airstrikes have been conducted against alleged drug-running boats from Venezuela, killing at least 115 people according to U.S. military officials.
Then came last weekend’s raid on the presidential palace in Caracas, where American forces arrested the nation’s leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife, both accused on narcoterrorism charges and now held in New York City.
“This guy definitely was a bad guy. You know, his predecessor kicked DEA out of Venezuela in 2005 because we were getting close to him and his inner cabinet,” says former Drug Enforcement Administration official Jack Riley.
Back then Riley was a hard-hitting Drug Enforcement Administration agent and in charge of the Chicago DEA office from 2010 to 2014.
He led the charge against notorious Mexican druglord Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman, whose Sinaloa cartel was and remains one of two Mexican cartels supplying Chicago with drugs, primarily fentanyl.
“What we do know is virtually no fentanyl was produced tracked from Venezuela,” says Riley. “The primary drug they trafficked in was cocaine, and very little of that makes it to the U.S. shores… Most of it is destined for Europe.”
Riley says there won’t be a “dip in the market” in Chicago because of the Venezuela operation.
“However, this does send one heck of a message to everybody that’s involved in narcotic trafficking, terrorism, weapons trafficking and human smuggling that we can reach out, we can get you,” he said.
Chicago cartel expert Jake Braun says he hopes the Trump administration will now focus on America’s actual drug problem: fentanyl from Mexico, as he has laid out in his recent book by that very name: “Fentanyl: Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It.”
“You know, one of the things I’m glad about is that the President came out and said that this was about oil, although the indictment says that it’s about drugs,” Braun says. “If you want to stop fentanyl, you would go after the Sinaloa Cartel in northwestern Mexico…”
Braun says the U.S. should carry out the incessant War on Drugs as it did the War on Terror: having dismantled al Qaeda piece by piece, not just arresting the kingpins.
“Now is not the time for us to take the foot off the gas when it comes to the fentanyl trade and the main cartel behind it, Sinaloa or others,” says Braun, who worked for both the Obama and Biden administrations. “We really should be leveraging this for one more way after another, after another, to go after these cartels, particularly Sinaloa and Mexico, that are supplying fentanyl to our communities and killing our families.”
Retired DEA official Jack Riley agrees.
“They’ve been ravaging America’s citizens, Chicago citizens, for many, many years, and it’s time they paid the piper,” Riley contends. “I think the way it sets up politically, both in Mexico, and certainly in the United States, we’ve never seen an opportune time like it is now to go ahead and kick their butt, and that’s what I’m hoping happens.”
Recently, Trump has said that Mexico, Colombia and Cuba are all on his possible target list, while each of them has warned the U.S. not to consider unilateral action within their borders. But strictly from a narco-terror standpoint, experts consider Mexico the prime target, and that would certainly be the case when it comes to Chicago’s illicit drug problem.
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