Drug Traffickers Sentenced for Importing Fentanyl and Methamphetamine from Mexico to Metro-Atlanta

ATLANTA – Alba Ordoñez-Ordoñez has been sentenced to federal prison for conspiring to transport and distribute fentanyl disguised as oxycodone pills and methamphetamine, in Metro-Atlanta. Jose Guadalupe Canizales-Rivera was also sentenced for his role in assisting Ordoñez-Ordoñez with her methamphetamine operation.                                                                                                                                        

“These sentences reflect the grave risks to public safety created by drug traffickers who disguise dangerous narcotics as legitimate medication,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “We are grateful to our federal and local law enforcement partners for their collaboration in helping to keep our communities safer from deadly drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine.”

“Together, we were able to prevent very dangerous drugs from reaching the streets. I’m proud to stand alongside our partner agencies as we work to stop these criminal enterprises that pollute our neighborhoods with their poison,” said Acting Special Agent in charge Anthony J. Patrone who oversees Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operations in Georgia and Alabama. “HSI will continue to work with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to disrupt and dismantle these drug trafficking organizations and prevent them from flooding our communities with illicit drugs.”

According to U.S. Attorney Buchanan, the charges and other information presented in court: on February 17, 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Erlanger, Kentucky conducted a border search of a shipment bound for Georgia. The shipment, which contained an air conditioning unit, entered the United States from Mexico. The search revealed more than two kilograms of a white powder hidden inside the compressor of the air conditioner, which tested positive for methamphetamine.

Homeland Security Investigations special agents and task force officers in Atlanta made a controlled delivery of the drugs to the shipment’s intended destination, a residence in Norcross, Georgia. Alba Ordoñez-Ordoñez, who was accompanied by Jose Guadalupe Canizales-Rivera, arrived at the location and signed for the package. Ordoñez-Ordoñez and Canizales-Rivera were disassembling the air conditioner at the same time agents executed a search warrant at the residence. Inside the residence, agents discovered over 700 grams of crystal methamphetamine, a mailed package containing more than 4,000 pills with markings like oxycodone that actually contained lethal amounts of fentanyl, and drug trafficking paraphernalia.

Further investigation revealed that Ordoñez-Ordoñez had previously traveled to Texas to obtain and transport to her residence approximately 16 kilograms of methamphetamine. She then manufactured and crystalized this methamphetamine in her kitchen. During this process, she exposed her six-year-old daughter to the drug fumes, causing the child to become ill.

Alba Ordoñez-Ordoñez, 43, of Honduras, was sentenced on March 12, 2024, by U.S. District Judge Steven C. Jones, to 138 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release.

Jose Guadalupe Canizales-Rivera, 33, of Mexico, was previously sentenced on August 9, 2022, to five years, three months in prison to be followed by five years of supervised release.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, with invaluable assistance provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Calvin A. Leipold, III and Rebeca M. Ojeda prosecuted the case.

This prosecution is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Strike Force Initiative, which provides for the establishment of permanent multi-agency task force teams that work side-by-side in the same location. This co-located model enables agents from different agencies to collaborate on intelligence-driven, multi-jurisdictional operations to disrupt and dismantle the most significant drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations. The specific mission of the Atlanta Strike Force is to disrupt, dismantle, and prosecute the highest-level members of international drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations that have operations in metro Atlanta and throughout the United States.

For further information please contact the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office at USAGAN.PressEmails@usdoj.gov or (404) 581-6016.  The Internet address for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia is http://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga.