British Columbia Mounties say they have arrested three men in Surrey believed to be linked to a transnational organized crime group linked to Mexican drug cartels.

Federal investigators said police searched a Surrey home on Sept. 23, surrounded by fences, steel gates and barbed wire, and arrested men allegedly involved in importing cocaine into Canada.

Cpl. Arash Seyed told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that one of the suspects is a Mexican national who arrived in Canada legally, and that two of the suspects are Canadian citizens with “ties to virtually every criminal gang in the country.” British Columbia.”

Investigators also seized 23 firearms, several thousand rounds of ammunition and kilograms of illegal drugs.

The suspects have since been released and Seyed said police are recommending gun and drug charges.

He added that the group was still under investigation and that he could not share more details about the identities of the suspects or identify a specific cartel association or criminal group.

Seyed said the arrests come after a years-long investigation into the group that began when RCMP learned in 2021 that they were importing drugs into British Columbia.

Seyed said the members are linked to “one of the major Mexican drug cartels” and that U.S. authorities arrested one of the group’s leaders in July.

He did not name the cartel but said journalists could “connect the dots.”

American officials recently announced the July arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, 76, in New Mexico, claiming he was a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, described as “one of the most violent and powerful in the world.

Cartels strive to gain a foothold in B.C.

The announcement of the seizures follows the RCMP’s claim that it had dismantled “the largest and most sophisticated drug superlaboratory” ever seen in Canada in British Columbia’s interior.

At that time, the RCMP said they had evidence the site was being used to make methamphetamine from P2P (phenyl-2-propanone), an activity never before seen in Western Canada but common among Mexican cartels.

Police have not linked the September 23 arrests to other investigations.

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But overall, Seyed said it’s a priority for police to “disrupt” international groups that create and distribute drugs in B.C., particularly early in those groups’ establishment.

“We … protect our borders and prevent these criminal organizations from operating in Canada,” he said.

Seyed said that as soon as Canadian police became aware of the cartel attempting to establish itself in British Columbia, they began working to prevent the group from “gaining a foothold” in Canada.

“Their headquarters has been dismantled and we continue to work there,” he said.

“We stopped the fence and now we’re filing charges. This might be a timely process, but the main goal was to stop the spread of potentially deadly drugs in Canadian communities.”

Arrests in Burnaby

Meanwhile, as part of a separate investigation, police arrested four more people on suspicion of trafficking large quantities of drugs, including diverted prescription pills, in Burnaby.

The arrests follow a four-month investigation into interprovincial drug trafficking that included the execution of search warrants in the neighboring cities of Coquitlam and Surrey, police said.

They said officers seized more than 9,500 hydromorphone pills believed to be diverted prescription pills, as well as other substances, including more than a kilogram of suspected cocaine.

The group is believed to have shipped the drugs as far as Manitoba and the Yukon, as well as locally, police said.