Alleged Sinaloa Cartel leaders Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, were arrested in the United States on Thursday, U.S. authorities said.
The two men were detained after flying into an airport near El Paso, Texas, on a private plane.
La verdadera foto de “El Mayo” Zambada tras ser detenido en Texas. pic.twitter.com/XxexUn4oM7
— Jesús García 🐦 (@JesusGar) July 26, 2024
A photo of Zambada following his arrest.
Zambada, a co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and one of the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexican history, didn’t expect to end up in the United States as Guzmán López told him they were going to inspect clandestine airfields in Mexico, according to a Homeland Security Investigations official quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
Several reports said that Guzmán López “tricked” or “lured” El Mayo into going to the United States, where authorities were offering a reward of up to US $15 million for information leading to his arrest.
However, The New York Times initially reported that Zambada had surrendered to U.S. authorities, and Luis Chaparro, a journalist with extensive experience reporting on Mexican cartels, said that El Mayo reached an agreement with U.S. authorities and consequently turned himself in.
“Before one DEA and one FBI agent opened the stairwell of the plane, El Mayo had one last request: he didn’t want to go looking weak,” Chaparro wrote on his Substack site Saga.
“He asked everyone there not to say he turned himself in, but rather that he was either captured, kidnapped or tricked. The agents agreed and helped him and Joaquín down,” wrote Chaparro, who said his reporting was based on information provided by U.S. sources including government officials.
Chaparro also said he was told by a grandson of El Mayo that his grandfather was “very sick” and wanted to see two of his sons — one of whom is detained in the United States — “at least once again.”
Guzmán López was also wanted in the U.S., with a reward of up to $5 million on offer for information leading to his capture.
A worker at Santa Teresa airport, located near El Paso in New Mexico, told Reuters that he saw a Beechcraft King Air plane land on the runway, where law enforcement officials were waiting.
“Two individuals got off the plane … and were calmly taken into custody,” the worker said. “It seemed like a pretty calm, arranged thing,” he added.
United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced the arrests, saying that the Justice Department had taken into custody “two additional alleged leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”
The Justice Department said in a statement that both men are facing “multiple charges in the United States for leading the Cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
“El Mayo and Guzmán López join a growing list of Sinaloa Cartel leaders and associates who the Justice Department is holding accountable in the United States. That includes the Cartel’s other cofounder, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, or ´El Chapo’; another of El Chapo’s sons and an alleged Cartel leader, Ovidio Guzmán López; and the Cartel’s alleged lead sicario, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, or ‘El Nini,'” Garland said.
In a statement issued on Friday, United States President Joe Biden called Zambada and Guzmán López “two of the most notorious leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
“They are being charged for leading the Cartel’s deadly drug manufacturing and trafficking networks. I commend the work of our law enforcement officials who made this arrest,” Biden said.
Garland said that Zambada faces charges of “fentanyl trafficking, money laundering, firearms offenses, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder.”
Guzmán López — reportedly a Sinaloa Cartel financial operator — faces charges of “trafficking in large quantities of cocaine, heroin and meth, among other drugs,” the attorney general said.
“Both defendants will have their initial appearances in federal court in the coming days. … Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced. The Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.
Zambada appeared in court in El Paso on Friday and reportedly entered a not guilty plea.
A lawyer for El Mayo, Frank Perez, said he had “no comment except to state that … [his client] did not surrender voluntarily; he was brought against his will.”
Mexico and the United States collaborate closely on the fight against fentanyl, but the Mexican government wasn’t involved in the arrests of Zambada and Guzmán López, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Friday.
El Mayo captured for the first time in a long criminal career
Zambada, 76, and El Chapo founded the Sinaloa Cartel in the late 1980s and built in into one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world.
El Mayo, a former poppy field worker, maintained a lower profile than his co-founder, and had avoided arrest throughout a decades-long criminal career.
In February, the United States government filed a new indictment against Zambada, charging him with “conspiring to manufacture and distribute” fentanyl, knowing that it “would be unlawfully imported into the United States.”
He leads a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that is regarded as the top smuggler of fentanyl into the United States. His faction has clashed with Los Chapitos, a faction led by the sons of El Chapo.
Reuters reported that if Zambada was betrayed by Guzmán López “it could have major ramifications for the Sinaloa cartel.”
Guzman’s López’s brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, was captured in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in early 2023 and extradited to the United States last September. Publicly available records of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons show that Ovidio Guzmán was released on Tuesday of this week, but Mexican Security Minister Rodríguez said Friday that was “definitely” not the case.
United States Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said in a statement that he could confirm that Ovidio Guzmán remains in custody in the United States.
With reports from Reuters, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Milenio
