The United States Department of Justice has indicted 81 people on drug and weapons charges in connection with a violent criminal organisation in Puerto Rico, in one of the most significant gang takedowns of the Trump administration's ongoing campaign against organised crime. Attorney General Todd Blanche made the announcement Thursday during a visit to the island, where the FBI and Puerto Rico Police Department had already arrested 70 of the defendants the previous day.
The group at the centre of the indictment, known as Los Baja Deo — or LBD — is accused of operating a large-scale drug-trafficking network centred on Mayagüez, a city on Puerto Rico's western coast. According to federal prosecutors, the organisation distributed at least 340 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics and at least 2,200 kilograms of cocaine over the past five years, generating more than $49 million in proceeds. Members allegedly used violence — including murders and kidnappings — to protect their operations, and exploited the US Postal Service to ship drugs from the island, a US territory, to the mainland. The Justice Department said it is seeking to seize $49.7 million in assets as part of the case. Defendants face a minimum of 10 years on drug charges and at least 15 years if firearms charges are added; the maximum penalty upon conviction is life imprisonment.
FBI Director Kash Patel described the arrests as disrupting "one of western Puerto Rico's most violent drug-trafficking organisations" and cutting off "a key pipeline" of drugs flowing to the US mainland. Héctor Ramírez-Carbó, the acting US Attorney for Puerto Rico, said the operation meant that "the families of Mayagüez can peacefully enjoy what their communities have to offer without fear of harm."
The operation was carried out under Trump's Homeland Security Task Force, established by executive order in 2025, which coordinates more than 9,000 federal agents, officers and analysts to target cartels and transnational criminal organisations. Blanche's in-person appearance in San Juan was a deliberate signal of the administration's political emphasis on combating violent crime and drug trafficking, priorities that have driven a sweeping reorganisation of the Justice Department since Trump's return to office.
The crackdown forms part of a broader hemispheric strategy that has included designating Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organisations, enabling prosecutors to pursue them under counterterrorism laws. However, those policies have attracted significant criticism. Since September 2025, US forces have conducted repeated strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific suspected of carrying drugs, killing some 227 people — operations in which no evidence has been publicly presented and the identities of most victims remain unknown, raising serious concerns among critics about due process and the potential for abuse.