A 29-year-old St. Paul man has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for a methamphetamine trafficking operation that prosecutors say continued even after police caught him holding roughly nine pounds of the drug during a 2023 apartment search. Rodolfo Rebollar-Gonzalez, who was not legally in the United States when he committed the crimes, will face mandatory deportation once he completes his sentence.
The case traces back to November 21, 2023, when officers executed a search warrant at Rebollar-Gonzalez's apartment in St. Paul, according to FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul. Inside, police found him holding roughly nine pounds of methamphetamine, along with cocaine, weapons, roughly two pounds of marijuana, and two magazines loaded with 9-millimeter ammunition. The following day, police seized a 9-millimeter pistol and a loaded magazine from his car.
Rather than stop after that arrest, Rebollar-Gonzalez continued distributing methamphetamine, the station reports. In February 2025, he sold roughly one pound of methamphetamine to a confidential informant, and the following month he sold another pound to an undercover DEA agent. Later that March, police arrested him after finding roughly one pound of cocaine and a digital scale in his backpack.
A Pattern Investigators Called a Life of Trafficking
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office West Metro Drug Task Force and the DEA first identified Rebollar-Gonzalez during a 2023 drug trafficking investigation, per the station's report. Dustin Gillespie described him as a repeat offender who continued a life of drug trafficking, moving large quantities of methamphetamine around the Twin Cities even after law enforcement had already caught him once.
Rebollar-Gonzalez pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking charges on April 24, 2026, and U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen announced both the plea and the eventual sentencing. His 120-month sentence reflects the mandatory minimum under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A), which requires at least 10 years in prison for anyone convicted of possessing or distributing 500 grams or more of a methamphetamine mixture — a threshold Rebollar-Gonzalez's nine-pound haul far exceeded, according to the DEA.
Because Rebollar-Gonzalez was residing in the country without legal status when he committed the offenses, he now faces mandatory deportation proceedings under federal immigration law once he finishes serving his sentence, per 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i).
Part of a Broader Federal Push on Twin Cities Trafficking Networks
Rebollar-Gonzalez's case unfolded alongside a much larger federal effort targeting Minneapolis drug networks. On June 30, federal prosecutors unsealed indictments against 25 alleged members of two Minneapolis gangs — Family Mob, operating along Lake Street and Park Avenue South, and G Block, operating near East 19th Street and Nicollet Avenue — according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Both gangs allegedly ran open-air drug markets distributing fentanyl, meth, and cocaine across South Minneapolis, fueling violent crime in the process.
During that broader multi-agency investigation, law enforcement seized six kilograms of fentanyl — roughly 330,000 potentially lethal doses — along with ten firearms and nearly $100,000 in cash, as CBS News reported. Family Mob, which originated in Minneapolis in the late 1990s, faced a superseding indictment that included federal murder charges against two members accused of killing a rival drug dealer on East Lake Street in September 2025.
Federal court records reviewed by CaseMine show that DEA agents in September 2025 linked a phone number associated with Rebollar-Gonzalez, nicknamed Rodo, to a confidential informant in St. Louis tied to Mexico's Jalisco New Generation Cartel — illustrating how even street-level Twin Cities trafficking cases can intersect with international cartel networks.
How This Case Fits a Larger Pattern
Federal law enforcement agencies have repeatedly pointed to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel as the primary suppliers funneling bulk methamphetamine and fentanyl into the Twin Cities region, according to FOX 9. In December 2025, Minnesota drug kingpin Clinton James Ward was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for operating a Mexico-based cartel pipeline that trafficked over 1,600 pounds of methamphetamine and tens of thousands of fentanyl pills into the Twin Cities between 2019 and 2025, per Bring Me the News.
Prior federal actions in Minneapolis have systematically targeted violent street gangs as well, including RICO conspiracy convictions against five members of the Highs gang in June 2025 and fraud guilty pleas from members of the Lows gang that September. Federal prosecutors have increasingly leaned on conspiracy and RICO charges to dismantle local gang infrastructure, a pattern this case now joins.
Federal officials have emphasized the volume of lethal fentanyl doses removed from Minneapolis streets through these prosecutions, but law enforcement leaders have also publicly acknowledged that dismantling any single network will not eliminate Minnesota's broader fentanyl and meth crisis. It remains an open question how quickly replacement networks might move to occupy the drug corridors these prosecutions have emptied out.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
