U.S. troops joined cops in Ecuador for a string of raids before dawn on Thursday, Sept. 24. The target was a drug ring that Ecuador says worked for Mexico's Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, known as CJNG.

A day later, 36 people sat in jail. Prosecutors in Ecuador charged all 36 with organized crime. They say the goal was to move drugs. A judge ordered every one of them held in jail while the case moves ahead.

Why should South Texas care? U.S. prosecutors have charged CJNG bosses with running drugs into this country. The U.S. government lists CJNG as a terror group. It put the cartel on that list in February 2025. The DEA said this case went after big-time dealers it says moved large loads of cocaine toward the United States.

Ecuador's Interior Minister, John Reimberg, first said more than 30 people were arrested. Prosecutors later put the count at 36.

More than 320 Ecuador police officers took part, Reimberg said. So did 50 members of U.S. Southern Command. It is the arm of the U.S. military that works in Latin America. The DEA helped too.

The raids hit eight cities. Two of them were Guayaquil and Machala, both port cities.

Reimberg said the case took about eight months. He said drones and other gear from the U.S. helped cops find the suspects.

Here is how the ring worked, according to Reimberg. The drugs came from Colombia. The group stored them in Ecuador. Then it tried to ship them out by sea from ports in Guayaquil and Machala. The loads were headed to Central America, the United States and Europe, he said.

Prosecutors tell much the same story. They say the group stored large loads of drugs in buildings in two provinces. Then it moved them by road. The plan was to slip the drugs into shipping containers bound for other countries. Prosecutors say the group used ports and airports.

Prosecutors say cops seized about 6,190 packages of cocaine tied to this case. That was from February to July of this year.

Reimberg gave a bigger number. He said drug loads seized this year on the way to cracking this ring cost the traffickers $322 million.

How close is the tie to CJNG? The two agencies put it in different ways.

Reimberg said the ring had no ties to local gangs. He said it had a "direct relationship" with CJNG. Prosecutors used softer words. They said the group's leaders are believed to have ties to a faction of CJNG.

Reimberg said the alleged leader and the alleged money man were both caught. He said they lived in gated neighborhoods in Samborondon. He said both had their own guards.

The judge froze money the suspects had in Ecuador's banks. The judge also barred them from selling their things. That mostly means the cars cops took.

Prosecutors say the crime can bring up to 30 years in prison in Ecuador. They now have 90 days to build the case. That time lets them look closer at what each person did.

At the hearing, defense lawyers pushed back. They argued prosecutors did not spell out what each of the 36 people did.

Could any of them end up in a U.S. court? Reimberg did not rule it out. He said the United States could ask for them to be sent here to face charges. He said that is because much of the drugs were headed to the U.S.

Ecuador's President, Daniel Noboa, praised the raids on X. The day before, he had asked world leaders at the United Nations for help against crime groups. He wrote that no country can fight alone "an enemy that crosses borders."

The DEA said the case also hit parts of Los Choneros, one of Ecuador's strongest gangs. U.S. Southern Command said on X that it stands with Ecuador in the fight against cartels.

Ecuador and the United States are both part of the Shield of the Americas. That is a pact to fight crime in this part of the world. President Donald Trump backs it.

Ecuador's prosecutors have not released the full names of the 36 people charged. None of them has been convicted.

In August, the U.S. charged eight top CJNG bosses. It put up as much as $102 million in rewards. Read that story here: https://www.eltejanorgv.com/feds-charge-8-top-cartel-bosses-offer-102-million-in-rewards/

Everyone is presumed innocent until proved otherwise.