The special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration's New England division, Jarod Forget, said the crackdown "led to 171 cartel member arrests" across the region, including 27 in Franklin. The DEA didn't name any of the suspects, but Forget described them as "high-level arrests" that were part of a national sweep that netted more than 600 operatives of the feared organization over five days. "We're the DEA," Forget told an interviewer at the time. "We're not going after low-level retail drug traffickers." Except that isn't true. A Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that many of the DEA's targets in New England were precisely the people Forget said they were not: addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment.