The cartels as the core national security threat that they really are.

The cartels are waging war on America.

And just as 11:42 p.m.

Interstate 40, somewhere between Oklahoma City and Little Rock, the highway was a river of darkness, illuminated only by the passing headlights of long haul freight moving east.

An Arkansas State Trooper parked in the median flipped on his lights and pulled out behind a massive 18-wheeler.

It was a routine Department of Transportation safety stop.

The truck belonged to Transnational Freight Services, America’s third largest trucking carrier.

 

 

It was a brand seen on every highway in the country.

Trusted by major corporations to move everything from automotive parts to consumer electronics.

The driver, a six-year veteran with a clean record, pulled over onto the gravel shoulder.

He was polite.

His log book was perfect.

The paperwork checked out.

To the naked eye, this was just another load of industrial machinery heading to Atlanta.

But when the inspectors ran a portable density scanner along the side of the trailer, the machine flagged an anomaly.

The cargo listed on the manifest didn’t match the density readings.

The steel parts should have been heavier.

The scanner showed a discrepancy of 400 lb.

The inspectors drilled a small, precise hole into the interior wall of the trailer.

They didn’t hit insulation or fiberglass.

The drill bit punched through a false panel and hit a hydraulic void.

 

 

They peeled back the wall.

Inside the hidden compartment, stacked with industrial precision, were 340 kg of pure cocaine, drugs, and arresting three men alleged to be controlled by a Southeast Asian crime syndicate that’s made its way to a It was wrapped in plastic stamped with a cartel scorpion logo and worth $12 million on the street.

At that moment, the officers thought they had caught a rogue smuggler.

They were wrong.

As they detained the driver, he didn’t ask for a lawyer.

He looked at the investigators with the exhausted expression of a man who had been waiting to get caught.

He told them the truth.

He wasn’t a rogue operator.

 

 

He was an employee following orders.

And the orders weren’t coming from a dispatcher.

They were coming from a cartel.

What he revealed in that interrogation room would terrify the FBI.

Transnational Freight Services hadn’t just been infiltrated.

It had been bought.

The investigation revealed that in 2022, the company was sold for $850 million to an investment group called American Logistics Partners.

The business news reported it as a standard corporate acquisition.

Operations continued.

The trucks kept rolling.

The 8,000 employees kept their jobs, but American logistics partners was a ghost.

It was a shell company controlled directly by the Sinaloa cartel.

The Sinaloa cartel.

Written in Spanish, the warnings say, quote, “You will be the ones to blame.

We’ll show you how.

” The $850 million used to buy the company wasn’t venture capital.

 

 

It was laundered drug money.

For 2 years, the cartel didn’t just run a trucking company.

They weaponized it.

Drugs crossed the Mexican border and arrived at Transnationals Hub in El Paso, a facility fully under cartel control.

There, 32 cartel operatives working as warehouse staff, loaded the narcotics into specially modified trailers alongside legitimate freight.

These trucks were assigned to 89 specific drivers who had been corrupted by the network.

They drove standard routes to distribution hubs in Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas.

To the police and the public, it looked like business as usual, but behind the corporate logo, they were moving industrial quantities of poison.

Over 5 years, this network moved 180 tons of cocaine and 45 tons of methamphetamine.

The FBI realized that arresting one driver wouldn’t stop them.

They were facing a $3 billion empire.

 

 

If they tipped their hand too early, the cartel would shred the records and disappear.

The drug cartels in Mexico Fox’s Kennedy Hayes is live in Denver tonight with more on the takeown.

They needed a plan to take down the entire structure at once.

If you support the FBI agents fighting these cartels, hit the like button and comment hold the line below.

The operation was cenamed Rolling Thunder.

For three weeks, the FBI worked in total secrecy.

They subpoenaed shipping records, tracing patterns where trucks made suspicious deviations.

They installed GPS trackers on the vehicles of the suspected 89 drivers.

Surveillance teams watched as transnational trucks pulled into warehouses where no legitimate cargo was unloaded.

By July 2025, the trap was set.

The FBI had identified 23 warehouses across 14 states acting as distribution hubs, but the logistical challenge was a nightmare.

How do you arrest 89 drivers who are constantly moving across the highway system? How do you raid 23 facilities simultaneously? On July 15th at 5:00 a.m.

Eastern time, the answer came.

Across 18 states, FBI SWAT teams, DEA agents, and state police units moved into position.

They were tracking the real-time GPS signals of every target.

Some drivers were asleep in their cabs, others were driving, some were loading cargo.

 

 

The order was given to execute the largest corporate takedown in American history.

The clock hit 5:30 a.m.

Across the country, surveillance teams went from observe to engage.

In Texas, on Interstate 10, three transnational semi-truckss were moving in a convoy toward Houston.

To the drivers, the sudden appearance of flashing lights behind them looked like a standard enforcement stop.

But as they pulled onto the shoulder, they didn’t see a lone state trooper.

They saw a failance of FBI tactical vehicles boxing them in.

Agents moved fast, weapons drawn, pulling the drivers from their cabs before they could reach for encrypted phones.

When K9 units signaled on the trailers, agents used density scanners to locate the void spaces.

They peeled back the interior panels.

Behind the fiberglass walls, they found 600 kg of cocaine.

Cocaine from reaching Sydney streets, 128 kilos imported over the weekend.

a detective stacked like bricks.

At the same moment in Georgia, a truck stop turned into a raid zone.

Four transnational drivers were sitting in a booth drinking coffee.

FBI teams swept the diner, arresting them mid-con conversation.

Outside, their trucks were surrounded, effectively seizing millions of dollars in narcotics parked next to families on road trips.

But the most intense action was in Illinois.

A transnational warehouse on the outskirts of Chicago, officially listed as an automotive parts hub, was breached by FBI SWAT teams.

This wasn’t a storage facility.

 

 

It was a processing plant.

When agents stormed the floor, they found 12 employees cartel operatives placed on the payroll in the middle of unpacking a shipment.

They were extracting two tons of methamphetamine from hollowedout industrial machinery.

The air in the facility was thick with chemical dust.

Legitimate freight sat ignored in the corner while the cartel’s product took priority.

We are tracking the court cases for every driver involved.

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Meanwhile, the heart of the operation was being cut out in Memphis, Tennessee.

Federal agents descended on the corporate headquarters of Transnational Freight Services.

The legitimate employees stood in shock as FBI agents secured the building.

They had spent years working for a company they thought was an American success story, unaware their paychecks were funded by the Senoloa Cartel.

Sinaloa cartel kingpin Margarito J. Flores Jr. who joins us here on set.

Jay, it’s great to see you again.

We’ve been together.

Agents moved directly to the executive suites.

They arrested 12 high-ranking managers, the insiders who knew the truth.

These were the men who had facilitated the buyout and cooked the books.

As agents seized the servers, they secured the real ledgers.

Records documenting over $2.4 billion in drug proceeds laundered through the company.

By 200 p.m., the scorecard was staggering.

All 89 targeted drivers were in federal custody.

23 warehouses were secured.

The seizures included 18 tons of cocaine, 4 tons of methamphetamine, 680 kg of fentanyl, and $67 million in cash.

The engineering analysis of the seized trucks revealed why this network survived.

The hidden compartments were works of art.

Some were built into the fuel tanks, others used hydraulic pistons to lift the floorboards, accessible only with a magnetic key code.

Standard roadside inspections never stood a chance.

The cartel hadn’t just used the trucks.

They had re-engineered them.

As the dust settled, the magnitude of the fallout began to hit.

Transnational freight services wasn’t a ghost company.

It was a real logistics giant moving real goods.

With its fleet grounded and accounts frozen, supply chains across America began to buckle.

Automotive assembly lines in Detroit stopped because parts were sitting in impounded trucks.

Grocery stores in the South missed deliveries.

The takedown was a law enforcement triumph, but it was an economic earthquake.

On the morning of July 16th, the attorney general stepped up to a podium in Washington DC.

The statement was blunt.

The Sinaloa cartel didn’t just infiltrate a trucking company.

Sinaloa cartel operations.

The banners, according to several social media posts and trade sites were taken down quickly.

They purchased one.

For 5 years, American highways became cartel corridors.

But yesterday, we shut it down.

The details released in the federal indictment were overwhelming.

All 89 arrested drivers were charged with federal conspiracy to distribute narcotics.

Because of the sheer volume of narcotics moved, these charges carried mandatory minimum sentences ranging from 15 to 40 years.

But for the 12 company insiders, the executives who knowingly facilitated the takeover, the Department of Justice brought down the hammer.

They were charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise.

If convicted, they face life in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

Faced with this proof, the blue wall of silence crumbled.

Within two months, 76 of the drivers accepted plea agreements to testify against the leadership.

The 13 drivers who chose to go to trial were all convicted.

But while justice was served in the courts, a tragedy unfolded in the economy.

Transnational freight services filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The federal government seized the company’s assets.

The $850 million the cartel paid to buy the business was forfeited.

The legitimate assets were auctioned off, but the human cost was devastating.

Over 7,000 innocent employees, mechanics, admin staff, legitimate drivers woke up to find their jobs gone.

They were the collateral damage of the cartel’s greed.

Their pensions and healthcare were vaporized because a criminal organization viewed them as nothing more than camouflage.

In the wake of the collapse, Congress acted.

The case exposed a terrifying blind spot.

There was almost no vetting for private equity groups buying critical infrastructure.

New legislation was drafted to require transparency for corporate acquisitions in the transportation sector.

The corporate infiltration task force was established to identify other hollowedout businesses.

The impact on the drug trade was profound.

Intelligence reports indicated that interstate drug trafficking via commercial trucks dropped by 41% in the months following the raid.

The Sinaloa cartel had lost its superighway.

They invested nearly a billion dollars only to see it dismantled in 24 hours.

In Memphis, the massive headquarters building sits empty today.

The signage has been removed.

It stands as a silent monument to ambition, corrupted by greed.

The thousands of white trucks that once bore the Transnational logo have been repainted.

They are now driving for other carriers, moving legitimate freight.

The poison they once carried has been incinerated.

And the 89 drivers, they are currently serving time in federal penitentiies.

They were men with steady jobs who traded their freedom for cartel cash.

Cartels in Venezuela.

The president says he’d also be proud to bomb sites in Mexico.

Our investigative reporter Chuck.

They thought the sheer size of the company would protect them.

They were wrong.

This investigation proved that no corporation is too big to fail.

It demonstrated that when federal agencies share intelligence, the shield of corporate anonymity shatters.

American commerce is the lifeblood of the nation.

Operation Rolling Thunder sent a message to every cartel boss looking north.

American highways are not for sale.

If you believe securing our supply chain is critical, comment justice below.

Stay vigilant.