FRANKLIN, N.H. — President Trump’s escalating war against Latin American drug cartels crashed into this leafy old mill town with surprising force one morning in late August, when heavily armed federal agents and local police kicked off a series of raids by tossing a flash-bang grenade and bashing in a door.
The show of force was followed by an announcement from federal authorities that, in coordinated raids across New England, they had seized more than 500 pounds of drugs and captured nearly 200 members of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel, the violent syndicate that supplies illegal drugs to the US.
The special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s New England division, Jarod Forget, said the crackdown “led to 171 cartel member arrests” across the region, including 27 in Franklin. The DEA didn’t name any of the suspects, but Forget described them as “high-level arrests” that were part of a national sweep that netted more than 600 operatives of the feared organization over five days.
“We’re the DEA,” Forget told an interviewer at the time. “We’re not going after low-level retail drug traffickers.”
Except that isn’t true.
A Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that many of the DEA’s targets in New England were precisely the people Forget said they were not: addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment.
Reporters contacted more than 75 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies; sifted through more than 1,650 pages of court records; filed more than four dozen public-records requests; knocked on dozens of doors; and conducted scores of interviews.
The evidence made clear that the government misrepresented the stature of its targets in New England at a time when the Trump administration was seeking to justify deadly strikes on alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea.
“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in state court in Franklin with a felony-level drug sale and immediately released without having to post bail. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”
Most of the arrestees the Spotlight Team identified are casualties of the fentanyl crisis, not kingpins making a living off it. They included a man accused of shoplifting chocolate Swiss rolls and Jolly Ranchers from a Hannaford supermarket and a woman who allegedly crashed a car into a column at a local bank and left the scene.
Some of the 171 arrestees had significant quantities of drugs, but neither court documents nor agency spokespersons provided evidence that they were high-ranking members of the notorious syndicate. Many suspects’ only link to Sinaloa was that they were consumers of drugs the cartel may have helped bring into the country.
DEA officials last week said they were unable to comment on the Spotlight findings because of the government shutdown. Instead, they flagged eight federal investigations they said were part of the Sinaloa crackdown.
When contacted by the Globe, attorneys for several of those defendants were shocked to learn the DEA was accusing their clients of being members of the Mexican-based cartel, since such allegations have not been raised in court.
“You are the first person to mention this to me,” said lawyer John Benzan, who represents a man accused in early August of helping transport about 140 pounds of cocaine to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico — more than a quarter of the total drugs seized in the Sinaloa raids in New England, according to the DEA.
The majority of the other arrestees the Globe identified either involved minor drug charges or had nothing to do with narcotics at all, leading a former top DEA official to label the Sinaloa operation “political theater.”
“If there had been even a mid-level cartel member arrested, they would have named him. But they didn’t name anybody,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations, who worked at the agency for more than three decades. “They just said 600-something arrests, as if it were going to decimate the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel likely doesn’t even know who these people are.”
Three law enforcement officials with knowledge of the New England operation — dubbed “#SinaloaCrackdown2025″ by the DEA on social media — told the Globe that federal drug officials had misrepresented the nature of the sweep. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
“They are doing anything they can to tie it to a cartel,” said one federal law enforcement official, adding that the arrests were “definitely not cartel.”
A Massachusetts law enforcement official briefed by the DEA confirmed that those arrested were nearly all low-level offenders, not major dealers.
“They always talk it up a little,” the official said of the DEA. “They talked this up too much.”
Law enforcement leaders in several communities told the Globe they were perplexed by some of the government’s claims. For instance, the DEA described Lawrence, Mass., as the regional hub of cartel activity, with Sinaloa members there “communicating directly with high-ranking members of the cartel in other states and in Mexico.”
“We’re trying to figure out what they’re talking about,” said Lawrence Police Chief Maurice Aguiler, who said he is not aware of any arrests of cartel members. “We just don’t have any information substantiating the inference that Lawrence is an epicenter of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
All of it comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to effectively merge the global war on terror with the decades-old war on drugs.
In February, the State Department designated Sinaloa and seven other syndicates as foreign terrorist organizations, a move the Trump administration has cited to justify its use of deadly force without warning or due process against alleged agents of the organizations.
The Pentagon has carried out at least 13 airstrikes on boats in recent weeks, killing dozens of people and blurring the legal line between military operations and law enforcement.
Last week, Trump attributed more than 3,000 arrests, including suspects from several notorious drug-smuggling gangs, to a new federal task force that encourages cooperation between federal and local law enforcement to combat drug cartels. He said his administration would continue to act without congressional approval in its strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats.
“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” Trump said. “OK? We’re just going to kill them.”
A Sinaloa stronghold?
The DEA’s claims about its Sinaloa sweep have been parroted by television stations and news outlets. And they’ve been further amplified by pro-Trump YouTube personalities like Tyson DeLaCruz.
DeLaCruz’s 10-minute video on the Franklin sweep, headlined “Homeless Camp Used as Cartel HQ—27 Busted in New Hampshire,” has racked up nearly 150,000 views.
“This case shows that the cartel problem isn’t just a border problem,” said DeLaCruz, who is based in Las Vegas, in the video. “It’s a national security issue affecting communities from Mexico to Main Street America. When a small New Hampshire town can have a major Sinaloa Cartel operation, nowhere is safe.”
In most complex federal criminal cases, meticulous indictments identify suspects by full name and nation of origin, often including colorful street nicknames. That was true in a recent DEA bust, when a sweeping indictment unsealed in September targeting the Sinaloa Cartel identified 26 suspects by name, including two alleged ringleaders, both Mexican nationals, who are accused of narcoterrorism.
None of that happened in the Sinaloa crackdown in New England in August. The DEA released little more than a state-by-state tally: 64 arrests in Connecticut, 49 in Massachusetts, 33 in New Hampshire — most of them in Franklin — 11 in Maine, 10 in Rhode Island, and three in Vermont.
With so few details from federal authorities, the roundup in Franklin has offered the clearest window into whom they targeted. Local police, who worked with the DEA, publicized the raids on Facebook, posting mugshots of 25 people.
The social media post garnered more than a thousand comments, some mean-spirited, about the worn faces of the defendants, whom many recognized from high school or the aisles of the grocery store.
“I understand the stigma of addicts out there and how easy it is to hate on them, but they are still humans,” one commenter wrote in protest. “They need help, they need support, and they need community.”
The Globe found that only three people arrested in Franklin were accused of dealing sufficient quantities of drugs for them to be held in jail. None face federal charges. Most were immediately released.
Fourteen of those defendants shuffled into Franklin’s small courthouse to be arraigned on Oct. 20. They had been free since the raids, and there were no extra security precautions in the courtroom to suggest they were part of a violent drug syndicate.
“We’re drug users, but that’s all,” defendant Salvatore Vespa, who was awoken in the raids by a flash-bang grenade, told the Globe in an interview. “What’s the name of the cartel again?” he asked a reporter.
Nearly all of the defendants who appeared in person last week told reporters that they struggled with drug addiction and were angry that they were labeled Sinaloa affiliates.
“They put us in danger,” said Hannah Gonthier, who was arrested in the woods where she lives in a tent. “They wanted to accomplish something huge. They didn’t care how. They lied.”
Addiction has taken a toll on Franklin. The small city, perched where the Winnipesaukee and Pemigewasset rivers converge to form the Merrimack, has been ravaged by an opioid crisis that has intensified over the last couple of years, residents said. Homelessness has surged. Addicts cluster in encampments along the rivers, sleeping in tents and tumbledown shacks near the cemetery and behind a shuttered Rite Aid.
“I hate to say this because I’m proud of where I live, but Franklin’s got a drug problem,” said Mike Barney, 34.
Barney and other neighbors watched as a local couple who lived in an apartment across the way — Vespa, 50, and Sonya Spooner, 47 — sank into addiction. By Aug. 26, Spooner and Vespa were sleeping in a motorhome in their driveway.
At 8 a.m. that day, dozens of heavily armed federal agents and local police swarmed the house. A flash grenade tossed into the motorhome sounded as if a dumpster had dropped from the sky, producing a bang so loud one neighbor said people “could have heard it in Concord.”
On the same morning, federal agents and local cops busted through the door of a blue Victorian apartment house a mile away on Aiken Avenue. Authorities pulled a man and woman outside, zip-tied their hands behind their backs, and sat them on the driveway.
The DEA tweeted a photograph of agents standing over the pair that was published on news websites from Mexico to Israel to Spain under headlines touting the arrest of “hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel members.”
The woman, Jessica Gaudette, 42, was charged with six felonies, the most serious accusations faced by anyone rounded up in Franklin. The man, Tyler Alati, 35, was a Franklin High School graduate who grew up racing cars. He told the Globe that police immediately released him and did not ask him any questions about a cartel.
“He’s just a local kid that’s got a problem,” said his father, Scott Alati.
The DEA expressed pride about the agency’s effort to clean up Franklin.
“What made that operation special was that it had a positive impact on a community,” Forget, the DEA supervisor, told the Globe in an interview days after the raids. “We’re not talking about Boston, right? We’re talking about a smaller community.”
A DEA news release in late August acknowledged that some of those arrested in Franklin were “unrelated” to drug trafficking. But in interviews, Forget stressed that those arrested in New Hampshire’s least populous city were big players in the drug trade.
“Everybody that we arrested had a role in the cartel,” said Forget. “At DEA, we don’t go after retail distributors, we don’t go after users. We go after organizations.”
Franklin Police Chief Daniel Poirier took issue with the DEA’s characterization of the raids in a recent interview with the Globe, saying the claims about a Sinaloa takedown have made “a mockery” of what were legitimate arrests.
Poirier added it was also “not accurate” to suggest the encampment where 10 suspects were rounded up was a cartel stronghold.
“None of these folks are going to Mexico,” he said.
‘We weren’t involved’
The DEA touted that it arrested 49 people in Massachusetts as part of the sweep. But the Globe was only able to identify two cases in state and federal court in which the word “Sinaloa” appeared in documents.
One was that of Camryn Guillaume, 34, of Stoughton, who was arrested by Randolph police in a cemetery and found with $88,300 in cash and 28 baggies stamped with the phrase “Cartel de Sinaloa,” suggesting the drugs originated with the cartel. Another Massachusetts case was that of a man accused of selling fentanyl to an undercover cop in the Home Depot bathroom in Tewksbury.
In other New England states, the Globe’s findings were much the same as those in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
In Maine, joint patrols by Scarborough police and DEA agents led to three arrests. Two were of alleged shoplifters, and the third involved a man spotted inside a red Corvette that was doing donuts at a church parking lot. He was allegedly in possession of 2 ounces of cocaine.
Reporters were met with similar confusion from officials in Vermont, where the Globe checked with 12 law enforcement agencies, and Rhode Island, where the Globe contacted 15 agencies, including the offices of the state attorney general and the US Attorney.
In Connecticut, the DEA said it logged 64 arrests and seized more than 15 pounds of fentanyl.
After the Globe presented its findings to the DEA, several New England police officials called reporters proactively. Hartford Police Chief James C. Rovella said he reached out to “defend the DEA” because his narcotics unit “relies on these folks quite a bit.” In this sweep, Rovella said federal agents spearheaded significant busts, but the chief stopped short of backing the DEA’s claim that high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel members were operating in his city.
“No, I couldn’t say that,” Rovella said. “I can say that there were members associated with the Sinaloa Cartel that were arrested here.”
‘Fear-mongering for the worst reasons’
The Sinaloa Cartel has for decades been a key supplier of illegal narcotics in the US. Based in the eponymous Mexican state, the cartel’s dominance has attracted the persistent attention of US law enforcement amid the war on drugs.
A decade ago, a cousin of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious Sinaloa leader, was prosecuted in US District Court in New Hampshire. Jesus Manuel Gutierrez Guzman, who hailed from Culiacan, Sinaloa’s capital, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Guzman and his associates had unwittingly partnered with a team of undercover FBI agents and set up fake fruit distribution companies — including one in New Hampshire. The goal had been to ship hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine to Spain, where Sinaloa wanted to expand.
Five cartel experts told the Globe the group operates a large, complex web of networks that creates several layers of separation between Mexico and street corners in New England.
They said cartels typically don’t dispatch large numbers of high-ranking operatives to establish local franchises in far-flung places like New Hampshire.
“It’s not like there’s just kingpins and retailers,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “The average drug imported from Mexico can easily be transacted four or five, possibly even six times inside the United States before it gets into the hands of the person who is going to use it.”
If powerful cartel members are present in the US, they would more than likely be focused on money laundering, rather than street-level distribution, according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University.
The overblown rhetoric about the Sinaloa crackdown is a hallmark of the Trump administration, which often stirs public alarm to justify emergency action, said Victor M. Hansen, a professor at New England Law in Boston who was a lawyer in the US Army’s legal branch for two decades.
“Everything is a terrorist threat, everybody is a really bad dude, everybody is an enemy,” Hansen said. “And when you kind of whip up the public imagination and dialogue to that level … you’re going to respond to everything as if everything is a serious crisis.”
“It’s fear-mongering for the worst reasons,” he added.
Nick Stoico and Jeremiah Manion of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Paul Heintz contributed to this report.
Andrew Ryan can be reached at andrew.ryan@globe.com or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at @andewryan.61 Hanna Krueger can be reached at hanna.krueger@globe.com or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at hsk.13. Joey Flechas can be reached at joey.flechas@globe.com. Follow him on X @joeflech. Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.