Leader of Prolific Guatemalan Drug Trafficking Organization and Guatemalan Politician Who Supplied Tons of Cocaine to the Sinaloa Cartel Presented in U.S. District Court

Today, Freddy Arnoldo Salazar Flores of Guatemala, a representative of the Central American Parliament, made his initial appearance in federal court in the District of Columbia. Salazar Flores voluntarily returned from abroad to the United States on May 14. On May 12, Salazar Flores’s alleged co-conspirator and father-in-law, Aler Baldomero Samayoa-Recinos, also known as “Chicharra,” of Guatemala, made his initial appearance. Samayoa-Recinos was arrested in Mexico in March 2025 and extradited from Guatemala to the District of Columbia on May 9.

In May 2017, Salazar Flores, 41, was indicted on one count of conspiring with others between 2010 and 2017 to import more than five kilograms of cocaine into the United States from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. Samayoa-Recinos, 58, was charged separately in August 2018. The indictments charging Salazar Flores and Samayoa-Recinos were unsealed in March 2022.

According to court documents, Salazar Flores, Samayoa-Recinos, and their drug trafficking organization, known as Los Huistas, acted as a critical link in the illicit supply chain of cocaine from South America to Mexican cartels, and ultimately into the United States. Salazar Flores and Samayoa-Recinos allegedly controlled and operated a sophisticated transportation network within Guatemala—including warehouses, trucking routes, and properties on the Guatemala-Mexico border—to transport cocaine from Guatemala to the Sinaloa Cartel, recently designated a foreign terrorist organization, and other Mexican cartels. As alleged, Salazar Flores received tonnage quantities of cocaine at his warehouses in Guatemala City, and his workers transported the cocaine through farms belonging to Samayoa-Recinos to Mexico for importation into the United States. Between 2010 and 2014, the defendants allegedly received and transported approximately 50 metric tons of cocaine into Mexico for further distribution into the United States. In April 2014, Honduran authorities seized 743 kilograms of cocaine that were allegedly to be sent to the defendants for further transportation.

In March 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed financial sanctions on Salazar Flores, Samayoa-Recinos, and other members of Los Huistas.

Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and Acting Administrator Robert J. Murphy of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made the announcement.

The DEA Bilateral Investigation Unit and DEA Guatemala Country Office investigated the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the U.S. Marshals Service, and INTERPOL Washington provided critical assistance in securing the arrest and extradition of Samayoa-Recinos to the United States. The Department of Justice thanks Guatemalan law enforcement for their invaluable support of this case.

Trial Attorneys Doug Meisel and Ligia Markman of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section are prosecuting the case.

This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and other transnational criminal organizations, and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime. Operation Take Back America streamlines efforts and resources from the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces and Project Safe Neighborhood.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.