CBP Announces Next Phase in Fight Targeting Criminals Funneling Fentanyl into American Communities

Operation Plaza Spike is designed to disrupt operations in the “plazas,” cartel territories located directly south of the United States that are natural logistical chokepoints within the cartels’ operations. This is the next phase in CBP’s Strategy to Combat Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Drugs, a whole-of-government and international effort to anticipate, identify, mitigate, and disrupt illicit synthetic drug producers, suppliers, and traffickers.

Operation Plaza Spike will employ multiple tactics, including seizing illicit proceeds and scrutinizing related cross-border business entities and cross-border trade. Operation Plaza Spike includes releasing the name of the plazas’ senior ranking cartel officials, the “plaza bosses,” to increase public and law enforcement pressure on them. Plaza bosses control and profit from all illicit activity through the plaza – extortion, kidnapping, as well as the smuggling of humans, dangerous drugs, and firearms. CBP will leverage partnerships, authorities, and resources of other government agencies in our efforts to gather intelligence, disrupt and degrade illicit operations, and deliver legal consequences.

CBP’s first target is the Nogales Plaza, located directly south of the border crossing at Nogales, Arizona. Sergio Valenzuela Valenzuela, aka Gio, the Nogales Plaza boss, was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2018 for his role as a Sinaloa Cartel Plaza Boss.

Valenzuela Valenzuela and his organization allegedly are responsible for moving thousands of pounds of fentanyl to the U.S. border. Nearly every day, CBP officers intercept fentanyl headed from Valenzuela Valenzuela’s plaza northbound through CBP ports of entry onward to cities across the United States.

Operation Plaza Spike is just the latest effort by CBP, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as part of this Administration’s efforts to stem the flow illicit opioids, including fentanyl, and cracking down on the Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) that traffic them. Through a whole-of-government effort, the Department has stopped more illicit fentanyl and arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two fiscal years than in the previous five years combined.

CBP is also in the midst of Operation Apollo, and announced on April 10 that it will expand into Arizona to continue gathering and utilizing intelligence, and focusing on state and local partnerships to interdict fentanyl. Operation Apollo was launched by CBP in Southern California in October 2023 as a counter-fentanyl joint operation. CBP has evaluated the successes and lessons learned from Operation Apollo, and Operation Apollo – Arizona is now replicating it within the Arizona corridor, integrating all local law enforcement resources in Arizona to interdict finished fentanyl products, illicit precursor chemicals, adulterants, pill press equipment, illicit proceeds, and weapons.

In addition to CBP’s efforts to target operations that move fentanyl north, as well as guns south, CBP will be leveraging partnerships, authorities, and resources of other government agencies.

In 2023, DEA seized a record 79.5 million fentanyl pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. Throughout Arizona the DEA Phoenix Field Division seized more than 42 million fentanyl pills last year.

As a collaborative partner, HSI will leverage its abilities, ample customs authorities, and investigative capabilities to continue to look at the TCOs supply and distribution chains, while taking dangerous, destructive, and deadly drugs off our streets together with the violence that comes with the illicit activities of these criminal enterprises. HSI Arizona has dedicated groups of special agents assigned to combat drug and human smuggling as well as southbound weapons and bulk cash smuggling.

With the launch of its updated Fentanyl Strategy CBP Strategy to Combat Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Drugs Report in fall 2023, CBP has continued to look at innovative ways to stop fentanyl trafficking. The agency continues to utilize its unique authorities and resources as the nation’s border security agency to lead the whole-of-government approach to dismantling the means and methods of the production and distribution of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, in addition to its historic target of interdicting narcotics at the border of the United States.

CBP officials have previously targeted fentanyl interdictions along the southwest border of the United States during Operation Blue Lotus, Four Horsemen, and Rolling Wave as well as precursors and production materials used to make fentanyl during Operation Artemis. With this latest operation, CBP is utilizing another avenue to disrupt the networks that create and distribute these drugs.

CBP and DEA are also calling on the public to provide any relevant information they may have about Sergio Valenzuela Valenzuela, his movements, his associates, and his operation.