{"id":448120,"date":"2026-09-26T04:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T04:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448120\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T04:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T04:22:09","slug":"guatemalas-the-iceman-three-others-plead-not-guilty-to-drug-trafficking-charges-in-texas-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448120\/","title":{"rendered":"Guatemala&#8217;s &#8220;The Iceman,&#8221; three others plead not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Texas, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four Guatemalan men accused of trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in Plano, less than a day after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/texas\/news\/guatemala-the-iceman-alleged-drug-kingpin-extradited-texas\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">they were extradited to North Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The men arrived on Thursday at McKinney National Airport on a Drug Enforcement Administration plane after leaving Guatemala in handcuffs.<\/p>\n<p>Among them was Juan Carlos Cruz Ovalle, known in Guatemala as &#8220;The Iceman.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Cruz Ovalle had been wanted in the United States for eight years and is accused of trafficking &#8220;multi-ton quantities of cocaine from Guatemala for distribution to the United States.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/iceman.png#.png\" alt=\"iceman.png \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  Juan Carlos Cruz Ovalle, known in Guatemala as &#8220;The Iceman&#8221; \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                CBS News Texas<\/p>\n<p>Cruz Ovalle and the three other defendants were ordered held without bond. Each was appointed a public defender. Their attorneys left the courthouse without commenting.<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors in North and East Texas have been targeting suspected drug traffickers and others in Guatemala as part of efforts to disrupt cocaine trafficking into the United States.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are going to put a stranglehold on it,&#8221; the U.S. attorney said while discussing the effort.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Nathan Jones, a professor at Sam Houston State University, said increased U.S.-Mexico enforcement efforts have pushed some cartel operations farther south into Central America.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many of these drug cartels started staging their operations in Central America,&#8221; Jones said. &#8220;The governments were weaker first, and that builds out more of these drug networks that might involve Guatemalan nationals like the ones involved here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>U.S. authorities say continued cooperation with the Guatemalan government is intended to make it more difficult for drug trafficking organizations to establish safe places to operate.<\/p>\n<p>CBS News Texas will provide updates as more information becomes available.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Guatemalan men accused of trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States pleaded not guilty Friday in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[430,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-448120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-north-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}