The Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned five key leaders of the Mexican crime syndicate Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which is responsible for trafficking fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the United States.

The new sanctions freeze any assets owned by the cartel and prohibit U.S. citizens from doing business with the group.

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“CJNG’s reign of terror across Mexico and its trafficking of fentanyl into the United States has destroyed countless innocent lives,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “The United States remains strongly committed to leveraging all available tools to degrade the capacity of CJNG and other cartels to flood our streets with dangerous drugs and perpetrate heinous acts of violence against civilians.”

CJNG was one of eight criminal enterprises that the State Department designated as “foreign terrorist organizations” and “specially designated global terrorists” in February.

This particular cartel often uses the targeted killings of women to intimidate its competitors, according to the Treasury Department.

Among the five sanctioned leaders is Ricardo Ruiz Velasco, a senior cartel commander who was identified as the prime suspect in the murder of his alleged girlfriend, 23-year-old Mexican social media influencer Valeria Marquez. She was fatally shot while filming a TikTok livestream last month.

“The vicious attack highlights the brutal prevalence of femicide, or the killing of women on account of their gender, in Mexico,” the Treasury Department wrote in a press release about the sanctions. “Femicide often goes unpunished and affects a significant portion of Mexico’s women.”

The criminal group’s founder and leader, Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, and three other CJNG operatives were also sanctioned.

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One of the targets, Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytan, allegedly led a recruitment camp in Teuchitlan, where he directed lieutenants to kill new recruits if they failed to follow orders. The recruitment camp designed to grow the cartel’s numbers, known as Izaguirre ranch, contained numerous pieces of clothing, shoes, bags, and skeletal remains.

As part of its broader crackdown on drug trafficking, the Trump administration previously targeted the Mexican cartel’s fuel theft operations with economic sanctions.