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Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The United States has targeted the Malas Mañas Mexican criminal organization and its members with sanctions and an indictment on accusations of human smuggling and narcotics trafficking. The sanctions and indictment were announced separately by the U.S. Treasury and Department of Justice on Thursday, as the Biden administration seeks to stem the flow of illegal drugs and humans being smuggled across the southern border.
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The actions were also taken in coordination with the government of Mexico and they follow Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's recent trip to the United States' southern neighbor earlier this month and a Department of Homeland Security investigation.
"As part of the Biden-Harris Administration's effort to target the human smugglers and drug traffickers operating on the U.S. southwestern border, we are imposing sanctions today to target Malas Mañas or likeminded organizations that take advantage of migrants and abuse the U.S. financial system," Yellen said in a statement.
The sanctions target the entire Malas Mañas criminal organization, which was established by Jorge Damian Roman Figueroa in 2016 with a base of operations in Sonora, Mexico. It is also known to work closely with the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. Figueroa was designated by the United States in September of 2021, and was arrested in Mexico the following month.
U.S. officials said the gang smuggles undocumented immigrants through Sonora and across the U.S. southwestern border into Arizona and has hundreds of members in both countries. It is also involved in narcotics and weapons trafficking.
Malas Mañas members Luis Eduardo Roman Flores, 41, and Joel Alexandro Salazar Ballesteros, 31, were also blacklisted Thursday. The Treasury accused Roman Flores of working for his brother, Roman Figueroa, to facilitate the crossing of undocumented immigrants into the United States via social media.
Salazar Ballesteros was hit for managing the gang's finances and communications with human smuggling stash house caretakers, the Treasury said.
The pair and Roman Figueroa were also named Thursday in an 11-count indictment charging them as well as Manuel Jose Bernal and Jesus Armando Gonzalez-Villela with drug and human smuggling offenses.
"These actions are the latest in a long line of the Justice Department's efforts to dismantle, piece-by-piece, violent cartels like Malas Mañas and Sinaloa," said Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
"We will continue to target and prosecute the leaders and associates of the criminal groups responsible for poisoning the American people with fentanyl and endangering vulnerable migrants for profit."
In the charging document, U.S. prosecutors accuse Roman Figueroa, Roman Flores, Bernal and Salazar Ballesteros of conspiring to transport non-citizens into the United States from at least December 2020 through Nov. 12, 2021.
Roman Figueroa, Roman Flores and Salazar Ballesteros are then accused of attempting to launder their human and drug trafficking profits from January 2019 to at least August.
The document then charges Roman Figueroa, Bernal, Salazar Ballesteros, and Gonzalez-Villela with conspiring to distribute fentanyl, marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine from 2019 until this year.
If convicted, the most serious of the charges they face carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a fine of up to $10 million.
U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino for the District of Arizona explained that the case isn't simply about guns, drugs or human smuggling, and the facts show "the breadth and diversity of the harmful actions by transnational criminal organizations."
"In our continuing efforts to safeguard and bolster border communities, we look forward to establishing the interconnectedness of these three related crimes," he said.
