U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton Delivers Remarks at 2025 Police Athletic League New York Luncheon

INTRODUCTION^[1]

It’s a privilege to be in the company of so many distinguished members of our New York Community.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize a few members of our law enforcement community. While we certainly can improve – and New Yorkers want us to improve – our New York streets are safer and feel safer than any other large city. The main driver of that result is the NYPD. On duty and off duty, in uniform and out of uniform, the NYPD sets the tone.

Speaking of great contributors to New York, let’s all recognize John Catsimatidis. I am proud to call John a friend. His leadership as Chairman of the Police Athletic League (PAL) ensures children across New York City have access to safe spaces and opportunity. And John’s leadership extends to media, retail, energy and politics, all with grace and care. John makes all of our lives better.

I’d also like to acknowledge:

• Bart M. Schwartz, President of PAL;
• Mark Simone, Board Member and today’s event moderator;
• Carlos Velazquez, Executive Director of PAL;
• And all PAL board members and supporters who are with us here today.

Another New York great I must recognize is Bob Morgenthau. Mr. Morgenthau served as President and later Chairman of PAL. He embodied the values of PAL – a commitment to children and the future – through his leadership of the US Attorney’s Office and the New York DA’s Office. He’s a role model for me and every New York prosecutor. 

Mr. Morgenthau’s service across the federal and state systems is a good transition to our colleagues in federal law enforcement. There is no city or region in the country where federal and state officials work better together and get along better. The FBI, HSI, DEA, IRS, Postal Service, our Office, Southern District of New York, and our partners in the Eastern District (EDNY), all are committed to working together for this city and its people.

PAL HISTORY AND MISSION

As I prepared or this event, I investigated PAL’s mission and history.

It is both inspiring and deeply affirming.

Its roots go back to 1914, when Police Commissioner Arthur Woods began converting vacant lots into safe play spaces. That early vision laid the foundation for what PAL would become: The largest independent youth nonprofit in New York City.

Today, PAL operates in all five boroughs, managing 27 youth centers and serving more than 20,000 young people, ages 3 to 21.

Beyond the numbers and the history, there is PAL’s mission: “To work hand in hand with the NYPD and broader law enforcement community to support, motivate, and inspire New York City’s youth” — “to help them realize their full individual potential as productive members of society.”

Could there be a more laudable and important mission?

This organization understands an important truth. Every child has great promise as a sister, a brother, a friend and, in the blink of an eye, a parent and mentor. And PAL acts on that truth every. PAL makes a difference. 

Long may that continue.

US ATTORNEY’S OFFICE

I’ve been U.S. Attorney for close to six months. The question I have received most is: What are your priorities? I think some folks ask, hoping I’ll say anything but their industry or office. Kidding aside, this is an important question because our resources are limited.

Our office has 203 lawyers, 154 in the Criminal Division and 43 in our Civil Division. Both Divisions punch way, way above those numbers. But, with a staff much smaller than many law firms in the City, you have to focus on the areas of greatest impact.

And, going a bit deeper, how do you measure impact? For us, and I mean all of us in the SDNY, the North Star is what is best for New York families.  

We are doing justice if we pursue our mission the way New York families would want. With that North Star, I’ll discuss two areas we are going to run as fast and as hard as possible in tandem with our great law enforcement partners.

And I’ll note that these two areas are two of several, including a relentless focus on financial crime and preserving market integrity, that our Office continues to prioritize.

Let me be very clear:  There is no place for bad actors in our markets.  When I Chaired the SEC our enforcement attorneys, fairly and firmly, pursued the most effective, investor-oriented program in history, returning record funds to harmed investors.  The women and men of the SDNY will endeavor to do the same – using the same lens – what would investors – New York families investing for retirement, for education, for a better life for the children – want us to do?

Let’s turn to the two priorities I will discuss in more detail.

CARTELS

First, we need to bankrupt the cartels – put them out of business and seize the assets of community destruction. Over the past five years ending in 2024, drug deaths averaged over:

• 99,000 per year in the U.S.,
• 5,500 per year in New York State, and
• 2,600 per year in New York City.

While this is an international scourge and a national crisis, New York City is the global crossroads. That makes it a target for narcotics traffickers, providing them with end users AND an infrastructure that supports the distribution of their deadly product. It also provides a means of collecting breathtaking profits.

Those profits, and the scale and scope of the cartel’s operations, are why I use the term “bankrupt.”   

With their sophistication, extensive distribution networks, and the speed and efficiency of their operations, it’s hardly a stretch to say the cartels resemble large international corporations. They are vertically integrated from production and packaging to transportation, to wholesale and retail distribution. What’s worse, take the immense power of vast corporations and add three things, three awful things no corporation has:

First, their amoral mission – to profit from the death and dependency of human beings – our families, our friends, and our fellow New Yorkers.

Second, their ruthless and blood-thirsty methods – a blatant disregard for the rule of law. Murder, sexual exploitation, theft, intimidation, and public corruption are their standard operating procedures, their stock and trade.

Third, their corrupt partnership with Venezuela and other Nation states – when you combine their immoral, destructive mission and ruthless methods with the power and protection of foreign governments, you create a grave threat to every American.

Our Office is leveraging every resource to bring them down – in New York and beyond.  

We are focused on both:

1. Protecting the New Yorkers most harmed by the flood of fentanyl, opioids, cocaine and other drugs and
2. Taking down the leaders of the cartels.

We are not alone in this fight. We should all be heartened by the stance and actions of the Trump Administration AND the teamwork among New York’s state and federal authorities.

I will first share a few examples of recent NY-focused efforts (more examples in my posted remarks):

• Five defendants were convicted for operating a fentanyl distribution operation out of a Bronx daycare, resulting in the tragic death of a one-year-old and poisoning of three other children. Federal investigators found fentanyl presses and kilograms of drugs at the site, where the defendants packaged wholesale quantities of fentanyl for retail sale. In October 2024, the conspiracy leader was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
• Leaders and members of a Bronx drug ring were convicted after their fentanyl was tied to at least eight fatal poisonings in 2021. In January 2025, the organization’s leader received a 30-year sentence.
• A group of conspirators sold fentanyl-laced cocaine to unsuspecting customers, killing three people in one day across Manhattan. They disguised their operation as a safe delivery service. After trial, the leader was convicted and sentenced to 30 years.
• Another drug ring offered the bespoke delivery of heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl analogues to “referral-only” clients. One victim, a young tech entrepreneur, died after using their service. The leader, who also used weapons and threats to eliminate competition, was sentenced to 22 years.
• 18 defendants in the U.S., Dominican Republic, and India were indicted for selling millions of deadly counterfeit pills as real pharmaceuticals through fake online pharmacies. Tens of thousands of victims located across all 50 U.S. states and countries around the world bought these pills. At least nine of those victims later died. Our Office seized nine website domains used by the defendants and their co-conspirators, and we’re far from done.
• Just last week, six defendants were charged for running a Bronx fentanyl mill, caught processing over eight kilograms of the drug into thousands upon thousands of bags for retail sale. Ledgers showed millions of dollars’ worth of sales in the last year alone. These “Pill Mills” are the heartbeat of the deadly fentanyl trade. Dismantling them remains a top priority.

These are on the ground examples. But the core components of the drug production and distribution business extend far beyond our borders.

We and our partners have been steadfast in our fight against the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking entities.

Thankfully, many are now designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations — “FTOs.” Taking down and disrupting the activities of the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua, MS-13, Cartel del Golfo, CJNG – is a daily priority. And, in this vein, we are targeting corrupt foreign officials, cartel leaders, and chemical manufacturers.

Some examples of our most recent efforts include:

• Ongoing prosecutions with sweeping charges that target Sinaloa Cartel leaders and affiliated for trafficking staggering amounts of fentanyl into the U.S., using Chinese-sourced chemicals.
• Our ongoing pursuit of Narco-terrorism charges against NICOLAS MADURO, the former president of Venezuela and convictions of high-ranking Venezuelan officials for their participation in decades of state-sponsored narco-trafficking to the United States. This initiative resulted in the recent guilty plea of former Venezuelan general Hugo Carvajal to conspiracy to important cocaine into the U.S.
• The successful prosecution of the former President of Honduras and other high-level Honduran officials for narcotics trafficking and firearms charges for partnering with some of the largest and most violent cartels in the world to distribute tons of cocaine to the United States.
• Cocaine importation and related weapons charges against the Chief Superintendent of the Royal Bahamas Police Force and other officials. They operated a massive cocaine importation conspiracy, smuggling tons of cocaine through The Bahamas into the United States.
• Two executives from Chinese chemical firms were convicted this year for fentanyl precursor trafficking and money laundering, and authorities seized multiple websites and cryptocurrency accounts which enabled the scheme.

More to come.

We also continue to aggressively pursue large-scale money laundering networks that facilitate the fentanyl, cocaine, and illicit drug trade.

GUN-ENABLED CRIME

I will now turn to the second priority, gun violence. Criminals who use guns pose a danger to us all. We do not want someone who shoots another person, another New Yorker, to be out on our streets again.

The scourge of gun-enabled criminal activity is top of mind for every New York family. And it is at the very top of the Administration’s law enforcement priorities.

I’m proud to say that our Office is part of New York’s Gun Violence Strategies Partnership (GVSP) led by Chauncey Parker. The GVSP is a multi-agency initiative here in New York committed to attacking gun violence head on by promoting collaboration and information sharing. Together, with partners in EDNY and the DAs’ offices, our prosecutors analyze and strategize on recent violent felony arrests of repeat offenders.

As an example, and building on what you heard me say about the cartels, we know the cartels have gun-toting soldiers right here in New York — principally, the gangs.

Just today, our violence prosecutors unsealed a superseding indictment, charging 10 members of Tren de Aragua with racketeering, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and multiple acts of violence, including murder.  

These gang members – who pursue violence as a way of life – should know that when a criminal carries a gun in connection with his drug trafficking, it is a federal crime. These are crimes that carry serious mandatory minimum sentences. 

Let me say it directly: If you carry a gun in connection with a drug crime, the federal prosecutors in our Office are waiting for you.  

To make this concrete, just last month, a 69-year-old woman, standing with her walker in East Harlem, was killed by machine gun fire. That shooting stemmed from the robbery of a marihuana dealer. Working with the NYPD and our federal partners, we identified and arrested the alleged shooter within eight days, and he is now charged and will face justice in federal court.

In the last year, our violence prosecutors have tried and convicted multiple members of the Trinitarios in multiple trials for multiple shootings and killings committed in this city, and we have secured and will continue to secure convictions against gang members, however they brand themselves — Trinitarios, Bloods, or Crips — who take life so regularly here.

CLOSING

In closing, let’s pivot.

I have spoken about two of our prosecutorial priorities. They are driven by horrible threats to New York families that are all too prevalent. We must combat these threats because New York families are so important and, collectively, their efforts are our future.

Every day, walking to work, riding the subway, and when I used to have the great pleasure of taking my kids to school, I saw and continue to see the fruits of opportunity that New York provides.

The opportunity that PAL works so hard to preserve. Kids with smiles, kids playing with their friends, kids doing their homework on the subway. Kids knowing that effort is important, effort will serve them well, because tomorrow holds great promise.  New York is a city where a kid can thrive. Thrive in so many ways. Is there a better city to be a kid? I don’t think so.

PAL has been an enormous part of that great success for over a century. We support PAL; we want to work with you, AND we want to:

Thank PAL for being the best friend a kid can have.