As a propeller plane headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border to cross the border illegally on Thursday, U.S. agents raced to meet it at a small municipal airport near El Paso, Texas, and arrested two men who were part of a Mexican drug smuggling ring.
The son of jailed former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had planned to surrender as soon as the plane landed. The other passenger — reputed 70-year-old smuggler Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — did not do so and was tricked into boarding the plane by the younger man, said two current and two former U.S. officials familiar with the situation.
Zambada’s arrest came after lengthy surrender talks between US authorities and El Chapo’s son Joaquin Guzman Lopez, sources said. But many US officials had given up hope that Joaquin would surrender, and were taken aback when he sent a last-minute message saying he would come along with a kingpin whom US authorities had been chasing for four decades.
“El Mayo was the biggest event,” said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about arrests. “It was not expected at all.”
According to two current and one former U.S. official, Guzmán López persuaded Zambada to board the plane by telling him they were flying to look at real estate in northern Mexico.
Reuters was the first news organization to report these arrests, ahead of a Justice Department statement on Thursday evening confirming that the two men had been detained in El Paso. The news agency spoke to current and former officials to gather a detailed account of the operation.
According to a fifth source, who is a US official, the two agencies carrying out the operation, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), called in agents from their local El Paso offices and had barely arrived at the airport by the time the private plane was landing, although he declined to provide further details about the arrests.
An employee at the Dona Ana County International Jetport near El Paso told Reuters he saw the Beechcraft King Air plane land on the runway on Thursday afternoon, where federal agents were already waiting.
“Two men got off the plane … and were taken into custody peacefully,” the man said, but declined to give his name out of concern for his safety.
The unexpected arrest of El Mayo, who is more than 70 years old, and his betrayal by the nearly 38-year-old Guzmán López has rocked Mexico’s drug trafficking world, and raised fears of a bloody rift in the Sinaloa cartel between the two families that control the group’s biggest power bases.
Zambada, accused of being one of the most notorious smugglers in Mexican history, having founded the Sinaloa Cartel alongside “El Chapo” Guzmán, was extradited to the US in 2017 and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
Reuters could not ascertain why Guzmán López betrayed his father’s long-term partner, though four current and former sources said it was likely due to his desire to obtain a more favourable plea deal from US authorities and to help his brother Ovidio, who was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2023.
U.S. authorities have made drug lords a primary target, and have often struck deals with them in exchange for information that leads to the capture of other high-level gang members.
The first official said back-channel communications between U.S. authorities and Guzmán López were conducted through lawyers. Jeffrey Lichtman, who represents both Guzmán brothers, declined to comment.
Zambada, who is in a wheelchair, pleaded not guilty in a Texas court on Friday to drug charges that include continuing a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to import narcotics and money laundering. His lawyer, Frank Perez, said Zambada had not come to the US voluntarily.
Guzman Lopez is scheduled to appear in court next week in Chicago, where he was first indicted on drug charges nearly six years ago.
Guzmán López is one of El Chapo’s four sons – known as Los Chapitos, or Little Chapos – who inherited their father’s faction of the cartel. Joaquin and Ovidio share the same mother, while the other two siblings – Iván and Jesús Alfredo – are from El Chapo’s first marriage.
In recent years the brothers have come under fierce pressure from U.S. authorities, who have made them their main anti-drug targets, portraying them and the Sinaloa cartel as the biggest traffickers of fentanyl into the United States. Fentanyl overdoses have become the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.
Ray Donovan, a former top US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official, said the recent defeat of key Sinaloa cartel bosses is due in part to the use of fentanyl, which has risen up the political agenda in Washington as deaths on America’s roads have surged.
“The number of Americans dying has put a lot of pressure on us. Fentanyl brought them down,” Donovan said.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden announced the arrests and vowed to fight the “plague of fentanyl.”
The new generation of Narcos
El Chapo’s sons were considered more violent and angrier than Zambada, who had a reputation as a shrewd operator who preferred to stay in the shadows. Guzmán López was also considered less prominent than his other three brothers.
US authorities had placed a $15 million bounty for the capture of Zambada, who founded the Sinaloa Cartel with El Chapo in the late 1980s. Guzmán López had a $5 million bounty on his head. Both men are facing multiple indictments in the United States.
The first U.S. official warned that many questions remained unanswered about how or why Zambada, a highly cautious and experienced cartel chieftain, got on that plane.
Mexican Security Minister Rosa Rodriguez said Mexico had been informed about the detainees by the U.S. government, but that Mexican authorities had not participated in the operation.
Outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken a cautious approach to tackling powerful cartels, and has halted security cooperation with U.S. authorities over fears a previous U.S.-Mexico strategy of targeting powerful kingpins could fuel more violence across the country.
In October 2019, the Mexican army arrested Ovidio but was forced to release him after hundreds of Sinaloa cartel infantrymen blocked roads and exchanged gunfire with troops as they were about to lay siege to the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa’s capital. The army arrested Ovidio again in January 2023 and he was extradited in September last year.
Matthew Allen, a former special agent with HSI’s Arizona division who prepared the indictments against Guzmán López and other Sinaloa cartel figures, said both Zambada and Guzmán López had periodically talked with U.S. authorities about surrendering over the years.
Allen, who maintains regular contact with former colleagues at HSI, said many smugglers, especially the younger generation of smugglers, feel that handing themselves in, spending some time in prison and then spending their wealth is a better option than risking death from rivals in Mexico or being captured by authorities, which could lead to a life sentence. Some informants are allowed to enter witness protection programs.
“They are seeing that this is how you can spend your time and you won’t have to look back for the rest of your life,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
