Drug dealer, criminal illegal alien sentenced to 5 years following Homeland Security Task Force operation

SEATTLE - An HSI Seattle investigation has led to a five-and-a-half-year federal prison sentence for a 30-year-old Honduran man convicted for his role in a significant drug deal and for returning to the United States after being removed.

Jorge Aguilar-Martinez, 30, received the 54-month prison sentence April 21 in Seattle's U.S. District Court. He is expected to be returned to Honduras upon completion of his sentence.

The sentencing is the result of Operation Sledgehammer, an HSI-led Homeland Security Task Force investigation of a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Mexican drug cartels are responsible for most fentanyl smuggled into the United States. The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel operate global criminal enterprises and rely on a global supply chain.

Aguilar-Martinez was arrested in October 2025 after working to connect a drug customer - who was actually working with law enforcement - to others who claimed they could provide large amounts of fentanyl pills and meth.

After the drug deal was struck, Aguilar-Martinez and two co-conspirators were arrested with about 28 pounds of meth and 10,000 fentanyl pills. Some of the meth had been packaged in cereal boxes.

Aguilar-Martinez has a lengthy criminal record. While in the U.S. illegally, he has been arrested multiple times in California and Washington for assault and possession and selling of controlled substances, and he has convictions for domestic violence, assault and harassing communications.

His two co-conspirators, both in the U.S. illegally, were also charged in the case. ICE has since removed them to their home countries.

"HSI tracks, intercepts, investigates and stops illegal narcotics from flowing into our country," said acting HSI Seattle Special Agent in Charge April Miller. "We safeguard the public, keeping drugs off our streets and away from our families and friends."

HSI does this by targeting criminal networks, strengthening global partnerships, enhancing domestic collaboration with other federal, tribal, state and local partners, and embracing financial disruptions of the drug smuggling organizations themselves.

To date, more than 100 individual HSI investigations have been initiated throughout the country as part of Operation Sledgehammer. These have resulted in the seizure of hundreds of pounds of narcotics, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of federal and state arrests and convictions.

HSI partnered in this operation with the Drug Enforcement Administration's Seattle Field Division and the Valley Narcotics Enforcement Team, which focuses its efforts on a suburban area south of Seattle. The task force includes the DEA and officers from the communities in the Green River valley area.

HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad.

This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the U.S. government to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and protect our communities from perpetrators of violent crime.

Learn more about this case on Justice.gov.