The United States Department of Justice has indicted 81 people over alleged drug and weapons violations, as part of a crackdown on a Puerto Rican criminal group called Los Baja Deo or LBD. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges on Thursday during a visit to Puerto Rico. A day earlier, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Puerto Rico Police Department arrested 70 of the defendants.
His administration has called the hemisphere “America’s neighborhood“. It has pledged to take hardline, and sometimes lethal, action in the region against those it considers to be “narco-terrorists”, a word it frequently applies to suspected drug-traffickers. Thursday’s indictment alleges that, starting in 2021, members of LBD began distributing drugs in and around public housing projects and neighbourhoods in Mayaguez, a city in western Puerto Rico.
They are also accused of using the US Postal Service to send drugs from the island, which is a US territory. Among the substances allegedly trafficked were heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana. According to the Justice Department, LBD distributed at least 340kg of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics and at least 2,200kg of cocaine in the last five years.
The operation generated more than $49m in proceeds. The indictment also accuses members of using violence, like murders and kidnappings, to protect their drug-trafficking conspiracy. The defendants facing drug-related charges alone face the possibility of at least 10 years in prison.
Those accused of both drug and firearms charges could face a minimum of 15 years. The maximum penalty in both cases is life imprisonment, if the defendants are convicted. The Justice Department also said it is seeking to seize $49.7m in assets as part of the criminal case.
In Thursday’s announcement, FBI Director Kash Patel praised law enforcement work in the case as “outstanding” and touted the large-scale arrests as a blow to drug trafficking into the US mainland. The arrests were conducted as part of Trump’s Homeland Security Task Force, which was established by executive order in 2025 to target cartels, foreign gangs and transnational criminal organisations. The task force network has over 9,000 federal agents, task force officers and analysts.
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