SAN DIEGO, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- The new U.S. attorney in San Diego says Mexico's infamous Arellano Felix drug cartel has been largely broken up and prosecutors are going after the remnants.
Laura Duffy told the Los Angeles Times the Arellano Felix gang "as we knew it no longer exists."
Duffy was nominated for the U.S. attorney position by President Barack Obama in February, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May and officially began the job in early September.
"I am committed to cleaning up the remains of the Arellano Felix cartel and turning our attention to those who seek to take over where it left off," she said in a written response to the newspaper.
The Arellano Felix cartel once held a nearly absolute grip on high-volume drug trafficking out of Tijuana, but the previously untouchable leaders have steadily been arrested and sent to prison in the United States.
The Times said the U.S. attorney's office this summer issued a sweeping indictment against what was called the Fernando Sanchez Organization, which omitted the Arellano name of alleged ringleader Fernando Sanchez Arellano.
The success against the old Arellano Felix organization certainly did not end drug violence in Tijuana, and some analysts fear that cracking rising new cartels could be tougher.
"The (Arellano Felix cartel) was not just a target of U.S. law enforcement, but also a target of its enemies," said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "It is quite likely that U.S. and Mexican law enforcement benefited from the animosity that other cartels felt."
