March 13: The Cartels of Canada

DOJ investigating migrant hotels; Tom Homan visits Albany; ICE detention centers at capacity

Mar 13, 2025

The Big Story

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the government of British Columbia in Canada alleged that a drug-trafficking cell from the city of Surrey, British Columbia—a suburb of Vancouver 20 minutes from the U.S. border—attempted to smuggle vast quantities of cocaine and fentanyl from Mexico to Canada in conspiracy with the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, according to the Vancouver Sun. The lawsuit sheds light on Canada’s role in the illegal drug trade, which, under President Donald Trump, has become a major source of contention between the U.S. and Canadian governments.

The cell, according to reporting by journalist Sam Cooper at the Substack “The Bureau,” comprises three men: Canadian nationals James Sclater and John Whalen Jr., and Hector Chavez-Anchondo, a Mexican who immigrated to Canada illegally. The three were living together in a $2.2 million Surrey mansion that was raided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last September. The raid produced 400 grams of counterfeit Xanax, 3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine and ketamine, 810 oxycodone pills, 5.5 grams of fentanyl, plus nearly a kilogram of MDMA. Also located were 23 weapons, including handguns and sawed-off shotguns. Here’s an image of the bust from the Sun:

According to Cooper, the group had sufficient “clout” to negotiate significant cocaine deals with none other than Sinaloa boss Ismael Garcia, infamously known as “El Mayo, who was arrested by U.S. law enforcement in June of last year alongside Joaquín Guzmán López, son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka “El Chapo.” El Mayo had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list since 2007.

In an X post linking the article, Cooper wrote that the bust appeared to be a “DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] led op” and that “info this level [likely] makes it to [White House] situation room.”

The United States and Canada designated Sinaloa as a terrorist organization in February, along with several other cartels. Sinaloa is one of the longest-operating Mexican cartels, having splintered off of the operation run by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (whose rise to power is depicted in the first season of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico) after his arrest in 1989, along with the Tijuana cartel. According to the Mexican journalist Luis Nájera, Sinaloa has operated in Canada since at least 2013. The Vancouver area, in particular, became attractive to the cartels because of its massive port and its location near the U.S. border. As Nájera told InSight Crime in a 2021 interview, “Canada offers—ironically—more safety than the United States in terms of rival groups fighting for territory and even for the families of the leadership, while moving across the border is easier than between the United States and Mexico.”

The Trump administration has chastised Canada for not doing enough to curb the flow of fentanyl and other drugs from its country to the United States. Just yesterday, President Trump intensified his tariffs policy on our neighbor to the north, imposing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the United States, a policy aimed at leveling the playing field for U.S. manufacturing, according to CNN, but one that will also likely be used to pressure the Canadian government to take its border and drug problems more seriously. Trump then said on Truth Social that the only thing Canada could do to make the tariffs go away was to agree to be annexed by the United States as its 51st state:

“‘O Canada,’ will continue to play, but now representing a GREAT and POWERFUL STATE within the greatest Nation that the World has ever seen!” wrote the president.

While most world leaders regard Trump’s threats of annexation as a joke, says The New York Times, Canadian leaders are taking them seriously.

The Rest

→The Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into the financing and management of New York City hotels operating shelters as migrants for migrants, according to The New York Times. At least three New York City hotels housing migrants and/or homeless—The Roosevelt Hotel, Row NYC, and Hotel Chandler—were issued subpoenas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York Wednesday as part of an ongoing immigration investigation, according to ABC7. While the Roosevelt and Row are sheltering undocumented migrants, Hotel Chandler is a homeless shelter. New York law officials have connected both the Roosevelt and Row NYC to gang activity. The city converted about 100 hotels into migrant shelters in 2022 and 2023, offering buyouts to the hotels that were otherwise suffering from bad business in the post-pandemic era. The Row, one of the first New York hotels to become solely a migrant shelter, according to the Times, was offered a $40 million contract by the city to use all of its 1,300 rooms in October 2022.

According to the Times, the subpoena for Hotel Chandler requested a “full list of names of aliens currently residing” there as well as their nationalities, dates of birth, and identification numbers. It’s unknown why the homeless shelter, which officially is not housing migrants, would be sent a subpoena for this information, but we can likely assume that’s because migrants are staying there.

→Border czar Tom Homan visited Albany yesterday to pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul into freeing New York City of its sanctuary city status and assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement with its deportation efforts and was met with intense opposition from New York officials, The Hill reports. While details about the meeting are scant, we assume it didn’t go very well. After the incident, Homan held a press conference where he said that if Hochul continues to refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration policies, he’d be willing to “flood” the state with ICE agents, and he praised NYC Mayor Eric Adams for his willingness to help deal with the city’s migrant crisis. The New York Times reported on March 5 that President Trump was disappointed with a slower-than-expected rate of deportation, as the administration runs up against the lack of cooperation of local law enforcement authorities and government officials. During his press conference, Homan demanded that New York “let ICE into the prisons” to better expedite the deportation process. Mayor Adams issued an executive order to allow ICE to operate at Rikers Island, but a month later, that executive order has yet to be made official, according to Politico.

→Video of the Day

That was New York State assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani accosting Homan in Albany. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America with a stridently anti-Israel position, has seen an unexpected bump in some of the polls. One, commissioned by Tusk Strategies, which is aligned with former governor and fellow mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, found Mamdani in second place, according to Politico. Most major polls, like Quinnipiac and Emerson, see the far-left candidate trailing well behind both Cuomo and Mayor Adams—and thank God for that.

→Tablet Magazine is seeking Evangelical Christians to take part in a roundtable discussion about Israel, antisemitism, and Judaism. If you or someone you know fits the description, please complete this short form at the link below:

https://tabletminyan.typeform.com/April

→In other immigration-related news, U.S. immigration detention centers are maxed out, according to an ICE official who spoke with reporters anonymously yesterday. The administration is looking to expand the number of beds available to go beyond detention centers’ current maximum capacity of 47,600 with the support of the Defense Department, Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons, according to Reuters. ICE is only funded to house 41,500 detainees, and the agency is working with lawmakers to acquire more funding. Border czar Homan said last December that the agency would need at least 100,000 more beds to fulfill Trump’s mass deportation campaign pledge. In the first 50 days of the administration, 32,000 illegal migrants have been arrested, according to ABC News. Of those arrested, 14,000 are convicted criminals, 9,800 are migrants who have pending criminal charges, 1,155 are suspected gang members, and 44 are fugitives of foreign countries. The remaining 8,718 are, according to the ICE official, merely “immigration violators.” In late February, the Trump administration was still lagging behind the Biden administration in its last year in terms of deportations, but it should be noted that Biden’s numbers could be inflated by the number of individuals caught crossing the border, according to Reuters. Axios reported on March 5 that the number of migrants crossing the border plummeted in February to the lowest level seen in decades; 8,326 crossed the border in February 2025, compared to more than 130,000 in the same month in both 2024 and 2023.

→Europe can no longer purchase Russian oil and gas after President Trump refused to extend Biden’s exemption allowing sanctioned Russian banks to process European payments for energy, according to Fox Business correspondent Edward Lawrence. Biden’s exemption expired on Wednesday. This news follows Trump’s Tuesday statement that the European Union paid more to Russia for energy than it did to Ukraine for military aid, which was affirmed by a Newsweek article today reporting that the European Union allocated $21.9 billion to Russian gas and $18.7 billion to Ukrainian aid.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military command responsible for ousting Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region of Russia to finish the job and “completely defeat” Ukraine’s forces occupying the territory, according to The Wall Street Journal. Russian officials believe that getting Ukraine troops out of Kursk is essential to their leverage for upcoming peace talks. Yuri Ushakov, a former ambassador to Washington who speaks for Putin on major foreign policy issues, told state television that he had spoken to U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on Wednesday to outline Russia’s position on the cease-fire; he said that a 30-day cease-fire deal would merely offer Ukraine a “temporary respite” from the war. The Kremlin, he said, wants a longer-lasting peace. President Trump said Wednesday, however, that Russia agreed to the 30-day peace deal.

→Tweet of the Day

Foxtrot is a Swedish gang that not only is involved with the trafficking of arms and drugs but also is directly responsible for the January 2024 attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm when it left explosive devices in its vicinity. The Swedish bomb squad successfully averted the attack, according to The Jerusalem Post. The group’s leader, Rawa Majid, aka the “Kurdish Fox,” is a fugitive with ties to Iran’s global terror network.

→Shelton Snow, a New York-based air traffic operations officer at the Federal Aviation Administration and a powerful figure in the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation, has allegedly been caught offering minority candidates the answers in the make-or-break FAA exam, according to the Daily Mail. In a leaked audio file, Snow is heard saying, “There are some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screenshot of, and I am going to send that to you via email,” before suggesting that he is “99.9%” sure that these would be the correct answers to the test’s questions. Snow offered the answers to Black and female candidates but denied them to white ones, though it’s unknown how many candidates benefited.

→The director of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Center for Excellence and Expertise over Automotive and Aerospace Engineering, Serina Baker-Hill, has been charged for allegedly defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency and lying to federal agents. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the charges yesterday on X and said they are part of the FBI’s ongoing effort to crack down on public corruption and restore accountability to the public. FEMA approved Michigan’s request for a federal disaster declaration after a series of floods mangled Detroit in August 2023, according to Fox News. Baker-Hill applied for assistance after her home was damaged by the flood. While her home was being inspected by federal agents, she told them that she could not continue to live there safely. FEMA then gave her benefits to pay for the repairs and offered her money to rent a home while the repairs were made. Investigators then found that none of that money went toward “rental, hotel, or utility” expenses. Surveillance footage also revealed that Baker-Hill and her husband never vacated their property. Baker-Hill denied the allegations in interviews with the CBP and FBI.

→Stat of the Day: 57%

That’s the percentage of Americans who believe President Trump is being “too erratic” in his efforts to shake up the economy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from March 10 to 12. That polling includes 1 in 3 Republicans concerned about the “unsteadiness” of Trump’s tariffs policies. Overall, the poll found Trump’s approval at 44%, unchanged from the previous poll conducted from March 3 to 4. Trump’s approval was weak on the issue of cost of living, with just 32% of the respondents saying he’s doing a good job making prices affordable.

SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.