Mexican authorities announced the capture of a prominent figure associated with a notorious cartel operating near the U.S. boundary. The arrest took place in Nuevo León, where officials recovered a significant cache of weapons, drugs, cash, and even seven tigers.
José Antonio Cortes Huerta, 39, who leads a faction tied to the Northeast Cartel, was apprehended as part of an ongoing investigation that was ignited by the confiscation of a boat in Tamaulipas, according to security minister Omar Garcia Harfuch in a social media update. Alongside him, a woman named Rosario Flores Alemán, aged 41, was also taken into custody.
During the operation, authorities reported the seizure of various illicit substances, cash, ten firearms, eleven vehicles, six motorcycles, and the seven tigers.
It is not uncommon for Mexican drug cartels to keep exotic animals as status symbols, and at times, they utilize them as a means of eliminating adversaries. A U.S. indictment from 2023 highlighted that members of a faction within the Sinaloa cartel were known to have “fed dead or alive to tigers” their victims.
The items confiscated are reportedly linked to Roberto Blanco Cantu, nicknamed “El Señor de los Buques” or “The Lord of the Ships.” Cantu, who is the primary shareholder of Mefra Fletes, faces accusations of fuel smuggling and has ties to the Northeast Cartel.
The Northeast Cartel, a remnant of the infamous Zetas organization, was classified as a foreign terrorist group by the Trump administration in 2025. Recently, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on three individuals and two casinos for their alleged connections to the cartel.
As stated by the U.S. Treasury Department, the cartel is heavily involved in the illegal drug trade along the border, trafficking substances such as fentanyl, crystal meth, heroin, and cocaine, while also orchestrating a “campaign of terror” in the region.
“CDN engages in violent criminal activities on both sides of the border, including the kidnapping and murder of those who pose a threat to their operations on the southern border,” the department noted. “They leverage their terror-driven influence to dominate drug trafficking and human smuggling routes, as well as to bribe officials and journalists, and extort local businesses and shipments at one of the busiest trade entry points in the United States.”
This recent arrest is part of Mexico’s ongoing efforts to combat cartel activities, especially under the pressure from the Trump administration.
In a related development last month, Mexican military forces captured a high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in the country’s northwest, occurring just two months after the death of the cartel’s leader, “El Mencho.”
Additionally, shortly before that, Mexican troops captured three close associates of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s brother during an operation that received support from U.S. intelligence.
