1. a) Who is El Mayo Zambada?
b) What deal did he make with the U.S. government?

2. a) Who is Robert Almonte?
b) For what reasons does he believe El Mayo ratted out Venezuela's Cartel de los Soles as well as some fellow Sinaloa Cartel members?

3. In addition to the Venezuelan drug trafficking vessels, what arrests did the DEA make against Sinaloa narcoterrorists in New England earlier this month?

4. a) Unlike "El Chapo" Guzman — who was twice jailed in Mexico but escaped both times, before being caught and extradited to the US in 2017 — Zambada had evaded capture until last year. How many years did it take American authorities to capture him?
b) How was he finally caught?

5. Scare quotes are quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to express skepticism (doubt as to the truth of something).
Scare quotes signal the writer’s disapproval or skepticism towards the enclosed term, which is an opinion not appropriate for a news report aiming to inform objectively.
Read the "Background" and watch the videos under "Resources" below. Then re-read paragraph 1.
Why do you think the reporter uses scare quotes around the term drug traffickers?

6. President Trump has made the total elimination of drug traffickers and cartels a central policy goal of his second administration, fulfilling a vow he made during his 2024 presidential campaign. His administration has designated various cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and authorized the use of military force against them.
In his address to the nation a month after being inaugurated for his second term, the president said,
“The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture, and exercise total control -- they have total control over a whole nation [Mexico] -- posing a grave threat to our national security. The cartels are waging war in America, and it's time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.”

Do you agree with President Trump's determination to totally eliminate drug traffickers and cartels? Explain your answer.