Written by Drazen Georgic
(Reuters) – As a helicopter flew toward the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday to cross illegally, U.S. agents rushed to meet it at a small municipal airport near El Paso, Texas, and arrested two men who were part of a Mexican drug lord’s family.
The son of imprisoned former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman planned to turn himself in as soon as the plane landed. The other passenger — the legendary 70-year-old drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — did not, and was tricked by the younger man, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the situation.
The sources said Zambada’s arrest came after lengthy talks between U.S. authorities and El Chapo’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. But many U.S. officials had given up hope that Joaquin would turn himself in, and were unaware of this when he sent a last-minute message that he would be arriving with a cartel leader who had been pursued by U.S. authorities for four decades.
“El Mayo was the cherry on the cake,” said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the arrests. “It was completely unexpected.”
Guzman convinced Lopez Zambada to board the plane after telling him they were traveling to see properties in northern Mexico, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Reuters was the first news organization to report the arrests, before the Justice Department issued a statement Thursday evening confirming the two men had been arrested in El Paso. The news agency spoke to current and former officials to piece together the details of the operation.
A fifth source, a U.S. official who declined to provide further details about the arrests, said the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the agencies that carried out the operation, sent agents from their local offices in El Paso and were barely at the airport when the private plane landed.
An employee at the Dona Ana County International Airport, near El Paso, told Reuters he saw a Beechcraft King Air land on the runway Thursday afternoon, where federal agents were already waiting.
“Two people got off the plane… and were calmly detained,” said the man, who declined to be named for fear of his safety.
The unexpected arrest of El Mayo, who is in his late 70s, and the way he appears to have been betrayed by Guzman Lopez, who is about 38, has shaken Mexico’s drug-trafficking world, raising fears of a bloody split in the Sinaloa cartel between the two families that control the group’s biggest power bases.
Zambada is accused of being one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in Mexican history, having co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with “El Chapo” Guzman, who was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
Reuters was unable to determine why Guzman Lopez betrayed his father’s longtime partner, although the four current and former sources said it was likely because he wanted a more favorable plea deal from U.S. 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 prime targets, often striking plea deals with them in exchange for information leading to the arrest of other high-ranking cartel figures.
The first official said the secret communications between U.S. officials and Guzman Lopez were conducted through lawyers. Jeffrey Lichtman, who represents the Guzman brothers, declined to comment.
Zambada, who was in a wheelchair, pleaded not guilty Friday in a Texas court to drug charges, including continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to import drugs and money laundering.
His lawyer, Frank Perez, said Friday that Zambada did not come to the United States voluntarily. On Saturday evening, Perez said that Guzman Lopez “forcibly abducted” him in Mexico and brought him to the United States against his will.
Guzman Lopez is scheduled to appear in court next week in Chicago, where he was first charged with drug crimes about six years ago.
Guzmán López is one of El Chapo’s four sons, known as Los Chapitos, or the Little Chapos, who inherited their father’s faction in the cartel. Joaquín and Ovidio share the same mother, while the other two brothers – Ivan and Jesús Alfredo – are from El Chapo’s first marriage.
In recent years, the brothers have come under intense pressure from U.S. authorities, who have made them prime targets of the drug war and portrayed them and the Sinaloa Cartel as the largest traffickers of fentanyl into the United States. Fentanyl overdoses have risen to become the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45.
Ray Donovan, a former senior official in the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said the defeats suffered by the Sinaloa Cartel’s main leaders in the recent past were primarily due to their embrace of fentanyl, which has risen on the political agenda in Washington as deaths on US streets have increased.
“The number of Americans dying has increased the pressure dramatically, and fentanyl has been the reason for the decline,” Donovan said.
US President Joe Biden on Friday praised the arrests and vowed to continue fighting the “fentanyl scourge.”
New generation of drugs
El Chapo’s sons were known to be more violent and impulsive than Zambada, who was known as a cunning man who liked to stay in the shadows. Guzmán López was also seen as less important than his other three brothers.
U.S. authorities had offered a $15 million reward for information leading to the capture of Zambada, who co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel in the late 1980s with El Chapo. They also offered a $5 million reward for Guzman Lopez. Both men face multiple charges in the United States.
The first U.S. official cautioned that there are still many unanswered questions about how or why Zambada, a very cautious and experienced cartel leader, found himself on that plane.
Mexican Security Minister Rosa Rodriguez said Mexico was informed of the arrests by the U.S. government, but Mexican authorities were not involved in the operation.
Outgoing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has taken a cautious approach to dealing with powerful drug gangs, limiting security cooperation with U.S. authorities amid concerns that the previous U.S.-Mexico strategy of targeting powerful gang leaders was leading to more violence nationwide.
In October 2019, Mexican military forces captured Ovidio but were forced to release him after hundreds of Sinaloa cartel infantrymen blocked roads and engaged in gun battles with soldiers as they surrounded the Sinaloa capital, Culiacan. Ovidio was recaptured by military forces in January 2023 and extradited in September of last year.
Matthew Allen, a former special agent in charge of the Arizona division of Homeland Security who prepared the indictments against Guzman Lopez and other Sinaloa cartel figures, said Zambada and Guzman Lopez had periodic conversations with U.S. officials about surrendering over the years.
Allen, who maintains regular contact with former HSI colleagues, said many traffickers, especially those of the younger generation, realize that turning themselves in, spending time in prison and then spending their fortunes is a better option than risking death at the hands of rivals in Mexico or being caught by authorities, which could result in life sentences. Some informants are allowed into witness protection programs.
“They see that this way you can spend your time without having to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life,” he said.
