Feds tout ‘taking back America’ in crackdown on guns and drugs in South Florida
In a page out of the Trump administration’s crime-fighting playbook, federal authorities announced on Monday that they have arrested more than 30 South Florida suspects on weapons and drug-trafficking charges over the past two months.
U.S. Attorney Hayden O’Byrne said the suspects were arrested in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, and almost of all have prior criminal convictions.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office held a news conference in Miami to tout the results of Operation Showdown as part of the Justice Department’s “Take Back America” initiative, which has zeroed in on illegal immigration, international trafficking and violent crime.
“As we’ve been directed by the president, we’re taking back America,” O’Byrne said. “Whether it’s one street corner at a time, we’re going to get the criminals that are flooding our communities with lethal fentanyl and other drugs and using firearms to further these criminal activities.”
He said agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that 10 of the 80 weapons seized in the undercover operation were stolen and 7 of them were linked to shootings, including a homicide. The firearms ranged from automatic to semiautomatic rifles, handguns and machine-gun conversion devices. Also, 900 rounds of ammunition were seized in the take-down.
Among those arrested for illegal weapons possession or narcotics trafficking were Juan Carlos Rodriguez, who has three prior criminal convictions in South Florida, according to an indictment.
Federal agents, working with local and county police departments, said they confiscated about 10 kilos of fentanyl, meth and other street drugs pressed to look like pharmaceutical pills.
“This stuff is infecting our communities and it’s becoming ever more dangerous both in potency and the way it’s packaged to look like actual pharmaceuticals,” O’Byrne said.
Gordon Mallory, ATF’s acting special agent in charge, said “intercepting this amount of deadly fentanyl before it reaches our streets and trickles into our neighborhoods is critical to saving lives.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 4:23 PM.
