Historic drug lord and key leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was tricked into flying to the United States, where he was arrested in Texas along with a son of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman after eluding authorities for decades, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.
Zambada was told he was going somewhere else before he was arrested Thursday in El Paso, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
He did not provide further details about who or how Zambada was persuaded to board the plane or where he thought he was going. He also did not clarify how Joaquín Guzmán López, son of the powerful drug lord “El Chapo” who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2019, got on board.
Upon arriving in the El Paso area, Zambada and Guzmán López were immediately taken into custody by U.S. authorities.
“El Mayo,” one of the world’s most notorious drug lords and for whom the United States was offering a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture, has for years been a key target of the U.S. government in its attempt to take down the leaders of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, an organization responsible for trafficking huge quantities of drugs across the border.
The Mexican government said Friday that it is still waiting for more information from the United States to determine whether the drug traffickers turned themselves in — as a federal official said yesterday — or were arrested.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Mexico had not participated in the arrests but considered Zambada’s arrest to be “progress,” whether it was “due to an agreement or because they arrested him because (the U.S. authorities) had information that he was going to travel.”
Mexican Public Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said a small plane took off from Hermosillo airport in the border state of Sonora, with an American pilot who entered the country as a visitor, not an official, and who had no immigration alert.
Flight tracking service Flight Aware showed the plane stopped transmitting its altitude and speed for about 30 minutes Thursday while over the mountains of northern Mexico before resuming its course toward the U.S. border.
“It is a fact that one came from here and three arrived there,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez.
In his statement on the arrest, U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said that both drug trafficking leaders face multiple charges “for directing the cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
According to the Mexican secretary, Garland and the Mexican attorney general had a conversation on Thursday.
“El Mayo” Zambada was charged in February in the Eastern District of New York with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors described him as the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”
In recent years, Guzmán’s sons have led a faction of the cartel. Known as “Los Chapitos,” they are considered one of the main exporters of fentanyl to the United States and are seen as more violent and flamboyant than Zambada. Their head of security was arrested by Mexican authorities in November.
Joaquín Guzmán López is considered one of the brothers with the lowest profile.
Another of “El Chapo’s” sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, was arrested and extradited to the United States last year. In September, he pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges against him in Chicago.
Mexico’s security secretary said the U.S. embassy informed Mexico on Thursday that Ovidio Guzmán López had a different status. “He is not released, there is a change in his precautionary measure,” Rodriguez said. The fact that he was released from the prison where he was being held may indicate, according to the official, that he is acting as a cooperating witness. “There is evidence that this may have been the case.”
Zambada was one of Mexico’s oldest and most astute bosses, having never served time in jail, surviving decades of turf wars and rising to the top of the underworld through his shrewd business acumen. He was known for running the cartel’s smuggling operations while keeping a low profile, and for his international ties and connections.
He has been involved in drug trafficking since the 1970s and his main source of income was selling drugs in the United States, according to a Justice Department report.
His strong ties to Colombian cocaine suppliers and his cells throughout the United States made “El Mayo” one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
He was known for focusing on the business side of drug trafficking and avoiding widespread violence as much as possible because he believed that this would attract attention from authorities and complicate cartel operations – a very different style from younger bosses known for their extravagant lifestyles and brutal tactics such as decapitating or dismembering their rivals.
His capture came after the arrests of other leading figures in the Sinaloa cartel.
One of them was that of a son of “El Mayo,” Ismael Zambada Imperial, who pleaded guilty before a US federal court in San Diego in 2021. After an agreement, he admitted to having participated in the importation and distribution of tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology, said the arrest could be a “major tactical success” but questioned whether it would help the fight against drug trafficking. As a long-standing and respected leader in the criminal world, he was known for his skill as a negotiator and his departure from the cartel could be covered by someone much more violent, Felbab-Brown said. “The elimination of El Mayo is especially problematic in my opinion,” she said.
Ismael Zambada, in an interview given in April 2010 to the Mexican magazine Processwhen his son was facing trial in Chicago, admitted that he lived in constant fear of going to jail and that he contemplated suicide rather than be captured. “I am terrified of being locked up,” he said. “They catch me if I stay still or am careless, like El Chapo.”
He also said that even if he were arrested, nothing would change within the organization. As soon as the bosses are “locked up, killed or extradited, their replacements are already out there.”
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