WASHINGTON — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates with commuted death sentences to the nation’s highest security federal prison, warning that officials cannot employ a “sham” process for deciding where to incarcerate the prisoners for the rest of their lives.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum” — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.
In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.
Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.
“BOP’s designation decisions are within its exclusive purview and are intended to preserve the safety of inmates, employees, and surrounding communities,” they wrote.
The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.
“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,” Kelly wrote.
The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The prison is “unmatched in its draconian conditions,” the inmates’ attorneys argued.
“The categorical redesignations challenged here deprived Plaintiffs of an opportunity to show why they should not be condemned to a life bereft of human contact, in a cell the size of a parking spot, where they will see nothing out the window but a strip of sky,” they wrote.
Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.
“Plaintiffs fail to show that conditions at ADX are atypical for them,” they wrote.
MEXICO CITY — The imprisonment of a cartel member in the U.S. has dashed hopes in Mexico for justice in one of the country’s most notorious slayings — the death of acclaimed journalist Javier Valdez, who was gunned down in broad daylight two blocks from his newspaper office in the cartel-embattled city of Culiacán.
The brazen assassination in 2017 of Valdez — a tireless chronicler of cartel violence and politicians’ links to organized crime — sparked international condemnation. The slaying dramatized the perils faced by journalists in Mexico, where scores have been slain in recent years.
Valdez’s assassination remains the most notorious killing of a Mexican journalist in decades.
While two gunmen are serving prison terms in Mexico, authorities here have long sought the extradition from the United Stares of the alleged mastermind: Dámaso López Serrano, a former Sinaloa cartel capo and the son of a close associate of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the imprisoned co-founder of the Sinaloa syndicate.
Mexican authorities and fellow journalists say López Serrano likely ordered the hit because the journalist had mocked the young narco mercilessly in Ríodoce, the weekly co-founded by Valdez.
On May 8, 2017, Valdez wrote a scathing column dismissing López Serrano as a “junior” party-boy and fake “weekend” pistolero who moved around ostentatiously with 20 bodyguards, “excelled at chit-chat but not business,” and failed to fill the shoes of his father.
One week later, on May 15, assassins forced Valdez, 50, from his car at midday and shot him at least a dozen times in downtown Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state. His body was left on the street amid shell casings; his signature Panama hat was streaked with blood.
López Serrano, a godson of El Chapo, fled inter-mob bloodletting a few months later and surrendered to U.S. authorities along the border in Calexico, California. He later pleaded guilty to trafficking tons of cocaine and other narcotics into the United States. He was never charged in U.S. courts with the murder of Valdez.
He is the son of Dámaso López Núñez, the El Chapo confidante known as El Licenciado, or The Lawyer. The son’s mob handle is Mini Lic. His father and El Chapo are both serving life terms in U.S. prisons.
López Serrano served only five years in U.S. custody on the trafficking conviction. According to media accounts and Mexican officials, he agreed to become a cooperating witness for U.S. prosecutors pursuing other traffickers.
López Serrano was released from federal custody after serving his term and allowed to remain in the United States. However, the FBI re-arrested him in 2024 in connection with a scheme to distribute fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced López Serrano to five years in prison on the fentanyl rap, to be followed by five years of supervised release.
The new sentence dismayed those who hoped López Serrano would soon be brought back to Mexico to stand trial.
“It’s painful and outrageous to know that the person who ordered Javier’s murder will continue avoiding his deserved punishment in Mexico,” Griselda Tirana, the journalist’s widow, wrote on Facebook.
She has long been at the forefront of efforts to pressure Washington to hand over López Serrano.
But there is a serious hurdle: U.S. prosecutors have viewed López Serrano as too valuable a source on the Mexican underworld to ship him back south, according to Mexico’s former Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero, who said he pressed the extradition demand with counterparts in Washington.
“They said he was a protected witness of the government of the United States and he was giving them a lot of information,” Gertz Manero told reporters in December 2024, after López Serrano was arrested in the fentanyl scheme. “And, because of that, they couldn’t help us.”
In May, journalists, human rights activists and others gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on the anniversary of Valdez’s killing, demanding that López Serrano be sent to Mexico to face justice.
That same month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican authorities would “insist” on the extradition of López Serrano.
The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the case.
Advocates say they plan to continue pressing the U.S. government, even though many lack optimism that Washington will ever relent.
“We are going to keep demanding — as we have since the assassination of Javier — that everyone, including the mastermind of this crime, be punished,” said Roxana Vivanco, news editor at Ríodoce, Valdez’s former publication. “We hope that, this time around, once he finishes his sentence in the United States he will be returned to Mexico to be judged for the killing of Javier.”
As casualties mount among Mexican media personnel — and their assailants go free — many in Mexico view the case as a litmus test. The central question: Will there ever come a time when justice will prevail — and impunity will recede — in cases of Mexican journalists targeted by organized crime, corrupt politicians and others?
To date, the Valdez investigation has followed a distressing pattern: Hired trigger-men are sent to prison, their arrests lauded by Mexican authorities, while the “intellectual authors,” or masterminds, remain free.
“If this, the most high-profile case isn’t solved, then we cannot hold our breaths for resolutions in less high-profile cases,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexican representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press advocacy group.
“So this is a really, really important case,” Hootsen added. “We really need for this man to be extradited to Mexico eventually and stand trial.”
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
Ryan “El Jefe” Wedding, the former Olympic snowboarder who is now an internationally hunted narco terrorist with a $15 million bounty on his head, was hit with new charges that allege that he conspired with ten others, among them a Canadian defense attorney, an Orlando hooker, and an Israeli professional poker player, to assassinate a witness set to testify against him.
The Department of Justice announced the new charges against Wedding and members of his sprawling narcotics enterprise on Wednesday during a press conference held in Washington, D.C.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said total of eleven people are now orchestrated the cold-blooded assassination of an FBI informant who was cooperating with the Los Angeles-based prosecution of Wedding’s empire.
The new indictment outlines the complex steps that were taken to pull off the brazen Jan. 31, 2025, execution of the federal witness at a crowded restaurant inside a Medellin shopping mall – an idea that was initially hatched, prosecutors say, by an “Indian-Canadian” criminal defense attorney, Deepak Paradkar, 62, who was a key advisor to the Wedding organization.
Paradkhar, prosecutors say, advised Wedding and Clark, who was captured in a dramatic takedown in October 2024, the same month Los Angeles federal prosecutors announced charges against the duo in a case dubbed Operation Giant Slalom, that without the testimony the FBI had from the witness, they could not be extradited from Mexico.
First, prosecutors say, they had to find the witness. So, the indictment states, Wedding paid a “citizen journalist” behind the website “Dirty News,” a now-defunct Colombian blog that covered the underworld, to run photos of Acebedo-Garcia and his wife, along with offers of a reward to anyone who would take him out. There was several takers, among them a man prosecutors call a sicario, identied as 40-year-old reputed Montreal hitman known in the streets as 2-Pac, but whose real name is Atna Ohna.
Onha, prosecutors say, was allegedly $150,000 and given 30 grams of coke to help organize the hit with a variety of bad guys on his payroll. The woman prosecutors describe as a “commercial sex worker,” Katherine Tejada, a Colombian woman living as a U.S. green card holder in Orlando, also provided tips about her ex-client to Wedding so that his “Enterprise could locate and kill” him, according to the indictment.
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On the day of the hit, a trio of motorcyclists followed Acebedo-Garcia to the eatery in a coordinated reconnaissance mission. The suspected hitmen then followed him inside, where a single unknown gunman “shot him approximately five times in the head while he was eating in the restaurant.” Another man took a proof of death photo of the victim before they all fled the murder scene on the motorcycles. Those suspects remain at large and are being sought by the FBI.
Multiple unknown suspects are wanted in connection with their role in the Wedding Criminal Enterprise, led by Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, Ryan James Wedding. To eliminate threats and advance the interests of the Wedding Criminal Enterprise, Wedding allegedly issued orders to… pic.twitter.com/kOY3Gof2yU
The killing of a key FBI witness in a case where the number one target remains at large pulled in the highest levels of U.S. law enforcement, including Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Among those present for the D.C. confab were U.S. Attorney for California’s Central District Bill Essayli and FBI Special Agent in Charge for the L.A. Field Office Akil Davis.
“Ryan Wedding controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world and works closely with the Sinaloa Cartel. We will not rest until his name is taken off the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List, and his narco-trafficking organization lies dismantled,” Attorney General Bondi said.
The highest levels of U.S. law enforcement gathered in Washington D.C. to announce new charges against Ryan Wedding, including FB SAC for LA Akil Davis flanked by Attorney General Pam BondiCredit: FBI
“Ryan Wedding and his associates allegedly imported tons of cocaine each year from Colombia through Mexico and onto the streets of U.S. communities,” added Patel. “His criminal activities and violent actions will not be tolerated, and this is a clear signal that the FBI will use our resources and expertise to find Ryan Wedding and bring him and his associates to justice.”
Despite the rub-out, Clark was in fact extradited to the U.S. in early March, as reported by Los Angeles, and remains held without bail at the federal lockup in DTLA. The new indictment also revealed that Wedding – among the FBI’s top most wanted fugitives – continues to profit from his trafficking network’s drug sales. In August, Los Angeles reported the FBI believes Wedding may have altered his looks with plastic surgery while living under the protective arm of the Sinaloa cartel.
The FBI is focusing its worldwide manhunt for Ryan Wedding – the subject of a $15 million State Department reward – in Mexico and released new Most Wanted posters in Spanish earlier this year Credit: FBI
Wedding and Clark, prosecutors say, sit at the helm of a transnational murderous drug empire that run a still functioning billion-dollar underworld network, one that stores its drugs at secret stash houses in the Los Angeles area. The duo was initially charged in October 2024 with a plethora of racketeering crimes – including the murders of an elderly Indian couple killed in a case of mistaken identity – a case that Los Angeles covered in an in-depth story that ran spring that explored Wedding’s early career as a budding drug lord.
Their codefendants in the 2024 indictment include a motley coterie of fellow accused crooks. Among them: Nahim Jorge Bonilla, a Latin music executive whose preferred nickname was “The One” and whom investigators believe was negotiating drug deals as the owner of the Miami Beach hot spot Mandrake. There was an Indian trucking magnate, a Toronto hitman, Russian mobsters. In the most recent indictment, prosecutors have added an Israeli professional poker player, the sex worker, the attorney, the citizen journalist, and the alleged sicarios alongside the Wedding organization members indicted in Operation Giant Slalom.
Authorities dismantle the $1 billion cocaine empire led by former Olympian Ryan WeddingCredit: Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice
Wedding, who had represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Park City, pleaded guilty just eight years after he competed in that exact race – the giant slalom – in a San Diego federal courtroom. He had been arrested in the process of pulling off drug deal that involved another FBI informant, an ex-KGB agent, when he was busted by investigators with the Drug Enforcement Agency. He then served time with cellmates that included close associates of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, the notorious kingpin who commanded the bloodthirsty Sinaloa cartel for decades, according to prison records.
Andrew Clark, the consiglieri for a sprawling narco outfit, was taken into custody in Mexico in October 2024 Credit: Law Enforcement Source/Los Angeles file photo
Prosecutors now say that when Wedding was released from prison roughly a year after that guilty plea in December 2011, the athlete “founded the Wedding Criminal Enterprise,” which quickly became “the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada.” The enterprise operated in “Mexico, Colombia, Canada, and the United States, among other countries,” prosecutors say, working alongside paramilitary groups and cartels “collaboratively.”
Prosecutors say he moved 60 tons of cocaine a year from the humid climes of South and Central America to the iciest reaches of Canada, and was the “principal administrator, organizer and leader of the criminal enterprise.” And the latest indictment suggests he still is capitalizing on that leadership role.
Los Angeles was Wedding’s hub, the proverbial ground zero for his operation’s sophisticated “transportation network” that stockpiled drugs in warehouses across the city before they were smuggled into Canada by long-haul truckers.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican investigators have found no evidence that sitting Mexican politicians or military commanders are collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday.
“We don’t have at this time any proof against any public servant, or member of the Army [or] Navy,” Sheinbaum responded Wednesday when asked about allegations from Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel.
But she vowed that Mexico would prosecute any officials found to be on cartel payrolls. “We won’t cover up for anyone,” the president said at her regular morning news conference.
Upon entering a guilty plea Monday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Zambada cited a decades-long culture of official graft as essential to the success of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s richest crime syndicates.
“The organization I led promoted corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians,” Zambada, 75, declared, in comments widely publicized in Mexico. “It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out, and it continued for all these years.”
Zambada’s comments — citing cartel payoffs across the rule of all major Mexican political parties — added yet another layer of corroboration to what has long been public knowledge: Organized crime has thrived thanks to collaboration with Mexican lawmakers, police officers and soldiers.
In comments Monday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said that Zambada “operated with impunity at the highest level of the Mexican drug trafficking world, by paying bribes to government officials, by bribing law enforcement officers.”
Zambada’s charges come at an extremely sensitive moment, as the Trump administration weighs the possibility of unilateral U.S. military strikes against cartel targets. Sheinbaum has said repeatedly that her government views any unilateral U.S. action on Mexican territory as an egregious violation of sovereignty.
Zambada’s comments in court have reverberated in Mexico, where Sheinbaum marks her first year in office on Oct. 1.
Commentators have speculated about whether Zambada’s case and those of other alleged high-level traffickers in U.S. custody — including two sons of the imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada’s former partner in founding the Sinaloa gang — may produce fresh corruption allegations against “narco-politicians,” including members of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena political bloc.
Critics here have assailed Sheinbaum’s government for not moving to prosecute Morena bigwigs with purported ties to organized crime.
“Mexico was once again shown to be a country without rule of law,” wrote columnist Pascal Beltrán del Río in the Mexican daily Excélsior, following the announcement of Zambada’s plea. “If Mexico does nothing … it runs the risk that the United States — out of its own interests — will begin to take in hand the arsenal of information that El Mayo and the rest of the captive capos are surely providing.”
Sheinbaum regularly touts what she calls an ongoing cartel crackdown. She has dispatched thousands of troops to Mexico’s northern border with the United States, jailed hundreds of alleged trafficking operatives and turned over dozens of suspects over to U.S. authorities. Her political rivals say it’s mostly show to appease the Trump administration.
While no current lawmakers or military brass had been implicated in corruption, some municipal and state police had been tied to cartel activity, Omar García Harfuch, Sheinbaum’s security chief, told reporters.
“If an investigation shows any politician or public functionary linked to any criminal group, the complaint would be presented and an investigation started,” said García Harfuch, whose official title is secretary of security and civilian protection. “But we don’t have any proof at this time.”
Zambada was arrested by U.S. authorities last year during the final year of the administration of ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and founder of the ruling Morena political party.
Jeffrey Lichtman, the attorney representing El Chapo’s sons in their U.S. cases, has explicitly called out Sheinbaum in recent weeks, alleging that she has been “acting as … the public relations arm of the Zambada drug trafficking organization.” Sheinbaum subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Lichtman in a Mexican court. Lichtman fired back in a post on Instagram, calling the president’s lawsuit “a cheap effort to score political points.”
Sheinbaum has insisted that official corruption has largely ended since López Obrador took office in 2018 — an assertion dismissed as absurd by opposition lawmakers. López Obrador repeatedly rejected allegations that drug-trafficking money helped fund several of his political campaigns, but he charged that graft was rampant in past administrations.
The most notorious case was that of Genaro García Luna, a former federal security chief who is serving a 38-year prison term in the United States after his conviction for receiving millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. García Luna served under former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, political arch-enemy of López Obrador.
As part of his plea agreement, U.S. authorities said, Zambada also agreed to hand over $15 billion in alleged drug-trade proceeds generated since the 1980s. While experts said it’s unlikely that the massive sum will ever be collected, Sheinbaum said Wednesday that Mexico would demand a part of any such haul “for the people of Mexico.”
Many questions still remain about the mysterious operation that culminated in the arrest of Zambada in July 2024.
Sheinbaum has complained that Washington has yet to provide any clarification about the sequence of events that led to Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López — a son of El Chapo Guzmán — being flown from Mexico to the United States. The two were arrested outside El Paso after arriving on a private plane that reportedly took off from outside Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state.
Zambada has said that he was set up and kidnapped by Guzmán López, a former head of the Sinaloa cartel faction known as Los Chapitos.
Ken Salazar, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, told reporters last year that Zambada was brought to the United States against his will — but that no U.S. personnel, resources or aircraft were involved. U.S. authorities were “surprised” when Zambada and Guzmán turned up on the U.S. side of the border, Salazar told reporters.
But Mexican officials are skeptical. They suspect that Washington orchestrated the entire operation, likely enlisting the support of El Chapo’s son to abduct Zambada and transport him to U.S. territory.
The apparent kidnapping of Zambada triggered a bloody civil war within the Sinaloa cartel — pitting Zambada loyalists against supporters of Los Chapitos — that has left hundreds dead. The intra-cartel struggle continues to claim casualties in Sinaloa state.
Staff writer Keegan Hamilton in Brooklyn and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.
“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”
Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.
“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.
He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.
Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.
The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”
Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.
He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.
Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.
Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.
Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.
“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.
Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.
As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.
Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.
U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.
Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.
Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
BROOKLYN — For more than four decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada ruled from the shadows. While other top Mexican drug traffickers were killed or extradited to the United States to face justice, Zambada remained comfortably ensconced atop his empire, exporting tons of cocaine, meth, heroin and fentanyl around the globe from his stronghold in the Pacific state of Sinaloa.
Long after the downfall of his Sinaloa cartel partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada continued to operate with impunity, always a step ahead of the law — until eventually it caught up to him, too.
Now the question is whether he’ll take others down with him.
Zambada, 75, will mark a final chapter Monday afternoon in his legendary criminal career when he is set to appear before a federal judge in Brooklyn and plead guilty to an array of charges for leading a “continuing criminal enterprise” from the late 1980s until his arrest last year. He admitted to money laundering, kidnapping, murder and drug conspiracies.
Zamabada’s stunning downfall began last July when he arrived on a private jet at a small airport near El Paso, Texas. In the immedate aftermath, rumors swirled that Zambada may have orchestrated his surrender in order to undergo medical treatment or reunite with his brother and several sons who are believed to be living under witness protection after pleading guilty and cooperating with U.S. authorities to resolve their own criminal cases.
Zambada, however, has vehemently denied that his arrival in the U.S. was prearranged. A few weeks after he was taken into custody, he alleged he was set up and kidnapped by one of El Chapo’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López, a leader of the cartel faction known as Los Chapitos, or the Little Chapos.
Zambada claimed in a letter released by his lawyer that he was lured to what he thought would be a meeting between Sinaloa’s governor and another prominent politician, only to be ambushed, zip-tied, forced onto the plane by Guzmán López and delivered to U.S. authorities.
Guzmán López, 39, is facing his own federal case in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug and conspiracy charges. His younger brother, Ovidio Guzmán, recently pleaded guilty to similar charges, with court filings revealing that he has agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators.
A mugshot of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, released by U.S. authorities during the trial of his longtime partner in the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
(U.S. Department of Justice)
There is no indication that Zambada has a cooperation agreement. But his family’s history, combined with the fact that he has agreed to plead guilty rather than take his case to trial, is fueling speculation that he could be prepared to spill secrets about high-level corruption.
Paul Craine, the top official in Mexico for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 2012 to 2017, said of Zambada: “He knows more than anybody.”
Craine, who retired from the DEA now runs a private security firm, said it’s unlikely that federal prosecutors would ever agree to a deal that gives the kingpin anything less than life in prison.
Zambada was already spared the death penalty, but the government could dangle other benefits, he said, such as relocating family members to the United States for their safety or allowing him to serve his time somewhere cushier than the Colorado “supermax” prison where El Chapo and others deemed extreme security risks are held in near total isolation.
Zambada, Craine said, has knowledge about “40 years of the top leadership of the military and the government [in Mexico] that he was directly paying and had co-opted.”
“He’s the godfather,” Craine said. “He’s the consistency across everything.”
Zambada’s case is playing out during a delicate moment in U.S.-Mexico relations, with President Trump using tariffs as a cudgel to force action against the Sinaloa cartel and others responsible for shipping fentanyl and other drugs north across the Rio Grande. Trump designated Zambada’s group and others as terrorist organizations earlier this year, and has floated the possibility of the U.S. military taking action on the Mexican side of the border.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to appease Trump by handing over dozens of reputed high-ranking cartel figures for prosecution by U.S. authorities, but Craine said those offerings may not be enough.
“There’s more value now in being able to target a high-level corrupt criminal political figure than there is in the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico,” he said.
Other former federal law enforcement officials echoed that assessment. Adam Braverman, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego who oversaw the indictments of Zambada and several of his sons, called Monday’s guilty plea “a monumental day for the Department of Justice.”
Braverman, who now works in private practice, said if Zambada were to cooperate, merely giving up other cartel figures would not be enough to make it worth the bargain.
“When you’re at the top of the chain, there’s nobody else to cooperate against,” he said. “You’re talking about generals, governors — potentially presidents of Mexico.”
Joaquín Guzmán Lopez (left), a son of the Sinaloa Cartel leader known as “El Chapo,” and longtime cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada (Right) in partially redacted photos released by the Mexican government following their arrests in El Paso, Texas, in 2024.
(Government of Mexico)
Zambada claimed in his letter last year that he was invited to a meeting near Sinaloa’s capital Culiacán, where he expected to help mediate a dispute between the city’s former mayor, Héctor Melesio Cuén, and his political rival, Sinaloa’s current governor, Rubén Rocha Moya.
Melesio Cuén turned up shot to death on the day of Zambada’s arrest. Rocha Moya, a Morena party member, has denied any knowledge of the kidnapping plot, pointing to flight records that show he took a family trip to Los Angeles as the events were playing out.
Mexican federal authorities have cited several suspicious irregularities in the investigation into Melesio Cuén’s killing by Sinaloan state authorities, including the abrupt cremation of his body.
With tensions already running high, Guillermo Valdes Castellanos, a former head of the national intelligence agency that is Mexico’s equivalent of the CIA, said Zambada’s plea means some of Mexico’s political elites must now be sweating bullets.
“[The Americans] are going to concentrate on receiving information about all of the politicians who protected [El Mayo], who helped him from the army, the police, etc.,” he said. “The fact that he may have more solid information to accuse the Mexican politicians and authorities involved is what’s making people very nervous here.”
Federal authorities in the United States revealed Tuesday that they will not seek the death penalty against three reputed Mexican drug cartel leaders, including an alleged former partner of the infamous “El Chapo” and the man accused of orchestrating the killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Court filings showed decisions handed down in the trio of prosecutions, all being held in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The cases involve drug and conspiracy charges against Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 75, charged with running a powerful faction of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel; Rafael Caro Quintero, 72, who allegedly masterminded the DEA agent’s torture and murder in 1985; and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 62, also known as El Viceroy, who is under indictment as the ex-boss of the Juárez cartel.
Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York filed a letter in each case “to inform the Court and the defense that the Attorney General has authorized and directed this Office not to seek the death penalty.”
The decision comes despite calls by President Trump use capital punishment against drug traffickers and the U.S. government ratcheting up pressure against Mexico to dismantle organized crime groups and to stanch the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs across the border.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s rare for the death penalty to be in play against high-level Mexican cartel figures. Mexico long ago abolished capital punishment and typically extradites its citizens on the condition that they are spared death.
In Zambada’s case, the standard restrictions did not apply because he was not extradited. Zambada was brought to the U.S. in July 2024 by a son of his longtime associate, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Zambada alleges he was ambushed and kidnapped in Sinaloa by Joaquín Guzmán López, who forced him onto an airplane bound for a small airport outside El Paso.
Zambada has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and remains jailed in Brooklyn while his case proceeds. A court filing in June said prosecutors and the defense had “discussed the potential for a resolution short of trial,” suggesting plea negotiations are underway.
We’re going to be asking [that] everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts
— President Trump in 2022
Frank Perez, the lawyer representing Zambada, issued a statement Tuesday to The Times that said: “We welcome the government’s decision not to pursue the death penalty against our client. This marks an important step toward achieving a fair and just resolution.”
Federal authorities announced in May that Guzmán López, 39, an accused leader of the Sinaloa cartel faction known as “Los Chapitos,” would also not face the death penalty. He faces an array of drug smuggling and conspiracy charges in a case pending before the federal court in Chicago.
Another son of El Chapo, Ovidio Guzmán López, 35, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms charges last month in Chicago. Court filings show he has agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities in other investigations.
Caro Quintero and Carrillo Fuentes were two of the biggest names among a group of 29 men handed over by Mexico to the U.S. in February. The unusual mass transfer was conducted outside the typical extradition process, which left open the possibility of the death penalty.
Reputed to be a founding member of Mexico’s powerful Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s, Caro Quintero is allegedly responsible for the brutal slaying of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena 40 years ago.
The killing, portrayed on the Netflix show “Narcos: Mexico” and recounted in many books and documentaries, led to a fierce response by U.S. authorities, but Caro Quintero managed to elude justice for decades. Getting him on U.S. soil was portrayed as a major victory by Trump administration officials.
Derek Maltz, the DEA chief in February, said in a statement that Caro Quintero had “unleashed violence, destruction, and death across the United States and Mexico, has spent four decades atop DEA’s most wanted fugitives list.”
Carrillo Fuentes is perhaps best known as the younger brother of another Mexican drug trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the legendary “Lord of the Skies,” who died in 1997. Once close to El Chapo, El Mayo and other Sinaloa cartel leaders, the younger Carrillo Funtes split off to form his own cartel in the city of Juárez, triggering years of bloody cartel warfare.
Kenneth J. Montgomery, the lawyer for Carrillo Fuentes, said Tuesday that his client was “extremely grateful” for the government’s decision to not seek the death penalty. “I thought it was the right decision,” he said. “In a civilized society, I don’t think the death penalty should ever be an option.”
Trump has been an ardent supporter of capital punishment. In January, he signed an order that directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions.
The executive order directed the attorney general to pursue the death penalty in cases that involve the killing of law enforcement officers, among other factors. For years, Trump has loudly called for executing convicted drug traffickers. He reiterated the call for executions again in 2022 when announcing his intent to run again for president.
“We’re going to be asking [for] everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi lifted a moratorium on federal executions in February, reversing a policy that began under the Biden administration. In April, Bondi announced intentions to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man charged with assassinating a UnitedHealthcare executive in New York City.
Bonnie Klapper, a former federal narcotics prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, reacted with surprise upon learning that the Trump administration had decided to not pursue capital cases against the accused kingpins, particularly Caro Quintero.
Klapper, who is now a defense attorney, speculated that Mexico is strongly opposed to executions of its citizens and officials may have exerted diplomatic pressure to spare the lives of the three men, perhaps offering to send more kingpins in the future.
“While my initial reaction is one of shock given this administration’s embrace of the death penalty, perhaps there’s conversations taking place behind the scenes in which Mexico has said, ‘If you want more of these, you can’t ask to kill any of our citizens.’”
WASHINGTON — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a historic leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of another infamous cartel leader, were arrested by U.S. authorities in Texas, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.
A leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel for decades alongside Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada was known for running the cartel’s smuggling operations while keeping a lower profile.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his capture.
“The Justice Department has taken into custody two additional alleged leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. They were arrested Thursday in El Paso.
Zambada’s detention follows some important arrests of other Sinaloa cartel figures, including one of his sons and another one of Guzmán’s. Guzmán López was also a son of “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Garland’s statement said both Zambada and Guzmán López were facing multiple charges “for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.
In recent years, Guzman’s sons have lead a faction of the cartel known as the little Chapos, or “Chapitos” that has been identified as one of the main exporters of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, to the U.S. market. “El Chapo” Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
They were seen as more violent and flamboyant than Zambada. Their security chief was arrested by Mexican authorities in November.
One of them, Ovidio Guzmán López, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. last year. He pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Chicago in September.
In February, Zambada was charged in the Eastern District of New York with conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors described him as continuing to lead the Sinaloa cartel, “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”
A son of Zambada’s pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in San Diego in 2021 to being a leader in the Sinaloa cartel.
Ismael Zambada Imperial admitted in a plea agreement to being a major coordinator in the trafficking operation, including importing and distributing tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana from Mexico into the U.S.
Zambada, one of the longest-surviving capos in Mexico, was considered the strategist of the Sinaloa cartel, more involved in day-to-day operations than his flashier and better-known boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, whois serving a life sentence in the United States.
Strong ties to Colombian cocaine suppliers and his cells across the United States made Zambada one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. He had been among the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel since the 1970s, with their principal livelihood being the sale of narcotics in the United States, according to a U.S. Justice Department.
Zambada was an old-fashioned capo in an era of younger kingpins known for their flamboyant lifestyles of club-hopping and brutal tactics of beheading, dismembering and even skinning their rivals. While Zambada fought those who challenged him, he was known for concentrating on the business side of trafficking and avoiding gruesome cartel violence that would draw attention.
In an April 2010 interview with the Mexican magazine Proceso, he acknowledged that he lived in constant fear of going to prison and would contemplate suicide rather than be captured.
“I’m terrified of being incarcerated,” Zambada said. “I’d like to think that, yes, I would kill myself.”
The interview was surprising for a kingpin known for keeping his head down, but he gave strict instructions on where and when the encounter would take place, and the article gave no hint of his whereabouts.
Zambada reputedly won the loyalty of locals in his home state of Sinaloa and neighboring Durango through his largess, sponsoring local farmers and distributing money and beer in his birthplace of El Alamo.
Although little is known about Zambada’s early life, he is believed to have gotten his start in drug trafficking as an enforcer in the 1970s.
By the early 1990s, he was a major player in the Juarez cartel, transporting tons of cocaine and marijuana.
Zambada started gaining the trust of Colombian traffickers, allegiances that helped him come out on top in the cartel world of ever-shifting alliances. Eventually, he became so powerful that he broke off from the Juarez cartel, but still managed to keep strong ties with the gang and avoided a turf war. He also developed a partnership with “El Chapo” Guzman that would take him to the top of the Sinaloa Cartel.
__ Verza reported from Mexico City. AP writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
CHICAGO — A new superseding indictment filed this week against one of the powerhouse players in the illicit drug trade in Chicago brings the story of a father and son’s differing paths to the forefront.
The fifth superseding indictment was filed against Ismael Zambada Garcia or “El Mayo”, 76, is the current top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel that controls a majority of the illicit drugs sold in Chicago.
El Mayo’s son took a differing path.
Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla, known as “El Vicentillo,” turned on the cartel and is now in witness protection, the ABC 7 I-Team has learned.
The new indictment is underscored by what El Mayo’s son Vicente told authorities over the years from a Chicago jail cell, after pleading guilty to drug trafficking charges in November 2018, and was sentenced the next year to 15 years in prison.
The kingpin El Chapo remains at the center of this narco tale.
Chapo is locked up for life at the Supermax prison in Colorado, while his cartel co-founder, El Mayo, has assumed the Sinaloa throne and acts as overlord of the cartel that has dominated drug sales in Chicago, controlling 80 percent of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl sales, federal authorities contend.
El Mayo has been under indictment in Chicago for fifteen years; A career fugitive with a $15 million U.S. bounty on his head, now facing the new indictment out of New York.
“We haven’t really had a photo of this guy probably for 25 years,” Jack Riley told the I-Team.
Riley is a legendary former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration outpost in Chicago, literally writing the book on El Chapo titled “Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of America’s Opioid Crisis.”
Riley said with the declining state of U.S.-Mexico relations, capturing El Mayo is a long shot because he is protected and likely hiding out in the open.
“If I was a betting man, I’d bet on him getting away,” Riley explained. “I think he’s insulated enough. I think his health is not good, and he’s had the ability and the routine of staying one step ahead.”
El Mayo’s son “El Vicentillo” is thought to be in U.S. witness protection.
On the day Vicente was sentenced in 2019, the courthouse in Chicago was crawling with heavily armed guards.
Law enforcement sources tell the I-Team Vicente was recently released from the MCC in Chicago and a few weeks ago, the Mexican newspaper Zeta Libre Como El Viento published a purported photo of the druglord’s at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in Arlington County, Virginia, allegedly escorted by authorities while being transferred to federal witness protection.
“If I was him, I’d have gone into the witness protection,” Riley explained. “At least initially, until he gets a feeling of what’s going on down south.”
Riley continued, “His father [El Mayo] certainly has influence, but there are a lot of, I think, alliances that have broken down since El Chapo was arrested.”
“[Vicente’s] cooperation led to additional indictments, so he’s got a lot of enemies,” Riley told the I-Team. “It doesn’t matter who his father is.”
Riley is pushing for the Sinaloa cartel to be designated by the United States as a terrorist organization; not just a drug trafficking group.
Considering the thousands of lives they take in Cook County and elsewhere. Riley said a terror group designation would free up additional funds-and allow for more aggressive tactics against cartel leaders here, at the border and in Mexico.
CHICAGO — A new superseding indictment filed this week against one of the powerhouse players in the illicit drug trade in Chicago brings the story of a father and son’s differing paths to the forefront.
The fifth superseding indictment was filed against Ismael Zambada Garcia or “El Mayo”, 76, is the current top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel that controls a majority of the illicit drugs sold in Chicago.
El Mayo’s son took a differing path.
Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla, known as “El Vicentillo,” turned on the cartel and is now in witness protection, the ABC 7 I-Team has learned.
The new indictment is underscored by what El Mayo’s son Vicente told authorities over the years from a Chicago jail cell, after pleading guilty to drug trafficking charges in November 2018, and was sentenced the next year to 15 years in prison.
The kingpin El Chapo remains at the center of this narco tale.
Chapo is locked up for life at the Supermax prison in Colorado, while his cartel co-founder, El Mayo, has assumed the Sinaloa throne and acts as overlord of the cartel that has dominated drug sales in Chicago, controlling 80 percent of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl sales, federal authorities contend.
El Mayo has been under indictment in Chicago for fifteen years; A career fugitive with a $15 million U.S. bounty on his head, now facing the new indictment out of New York.
“We haven’t really had a photo of this guy probably for 25 years,” Jack Riley told the I-Team.
Riley is a legendary former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration outpost in Chicago, literally writing the book on El Chapo titled “Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of America’s Opioid Crisis.”
Riley said with the declining state of U.S.-Mexico relations, capturing El Mayo is a long shot because he is protected and likely hiding out in the open.
“If I was a betting man, I’d bet on him getting away,” Riley explained. “I think he’s insulated enough. I think his health is not good, and he’s had the ability and the routine of staying one step ahead.”
El Mayo’s son “El Vicentillo” is thought to be in U.S. witness protection.
On the day Vicente was sentenced in 2019, the courthouse in Chicago was crawling with heavily armed guards.
Law enforcement sources tell the I-Team Vicente was recently released from the MCC in Chicago and a few weeks ago, the Mexican newspaper Zeta Libre Como El Viento published a purported photo of the druglord’s at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in Arlington County, Virginia, allegedly escorted by authorities while being transferred to federal witness protection.
“If I was him, I’d have gone into the witness protection,” Riley explained. “At least initially, until he gets a feeling of what’s going on down south.”
Riley continued, “His father [El Mayo] certainly has influence, but there are a lot of, I think, alliances that have broken down since El Chapo was arrested.”
“[Vicente’s] cooperation led to additional indictments, so he’s got a lot of enemies,” Riley told the I-Team. “It doesn’t matter who his father is.”
Riley is pushing for the Sinaloa cartel to be designated by the United States as a terrorist organization; not just a drug trafficking group.
Considering the thousands of lives they take in Cook County and elsewhere. Riley said a terror group designation would free up additional funds-and allow for more aggressive tactics against cartel leaders here, at the border and in Mexico.
Mexico extradited Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, to the United States on Friday to face drug trafficking charges, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“This action is the most recent step in the Justice Department’s effort to attack every aspect of the cartel’s operations,” Garland said.
The Mexican government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The extradition comes just two days after Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of “El Chapo,” was released from a federal prison in Texas after serving a three-year sentence for helping to run her husband’s drug operation.
Mexican security forces captured Guzmán López, alias “the Mouse,” in January in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa state.
Three years earlier, the government had tried to capture him, but aborted the operation after his cartel allies set off a wave of violence in the Sinaloan capital.
January’s arrest set off similar violence that killed 30 people in Culiacán, including 10 military personnel.
The army used Black Hawk helicopter gunships against the cartel’s truck-mounted .50-caliber machine guns. Cartel gunmen hit two military aircraft forcing them to land and sent gunmen to the city’s airport where military and civilian aircraft were hit by gunfire.
An image from video provided by the Mexican government shows Ovidio Guzmán López at the moment of his detention, in Culiacán, Mexico, in October 2019. Mexican security forces were forced to release the son of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán that day after his gunmen shot up the city..
CEPROPIE via AP File
The capture came just days before President Biden visited Mexico for bilateral talks followed by the North American Leaders’ Summit.
In April, U.S. prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments against Guzmán and his brothers, known collectively as the “Chapitos.” They laid out in detail how following their father’s extradition and eventual life sentence in the U.S., the brothers steered the cartel increasingly into synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The indictment unsealed in Manhattan said their goal was to produce huge quantities of fentanyl and sell it at the lowest price. Fentanyl is so cheap to make that the cartel reaps immense profits even wholesaling the drug at 50 cents per pill, prosecutors said.
The Chapitos became known for grotesque violence that appeared to surpass any notions of restraint shown by earlier generations of cartel leaders.
Fentanyl has become a top priority in the bilateral security relationship. But Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied assertions by the U.S. government and his own military about fentanyl production in Mexico, instead describing the country as a transit point for precursors coming from China and bound for the U.S.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has been released from a California prison after serving a three-year sentence for helping to run Guzman’s drug empire. “El Chapo” himself is serving a life sentence in the U.S.
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A son of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and three other members of the Sinaloa cartel have been sanctioned by the U.S. government, officials announced Tuesday.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, 36, is one of El Chapo’s 12 children and the fourth member of Los Chapitos, the nickname given to the sons of El Chapo who allegedly run a powerful faction of his drug empire.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez
U.S. Treasury Department
On Tuesday, he was marked as “designated” by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). A person or entity listed as “designated” has their assets blocked, and U.S. persons are “generally prohibited from dealing with them,” OFAC says. People who deal with them may face sanctions themselves.
The other three sanctioned members of the cartel include Raymundo Perez Uribe, Saul Paez Lopez and Mario Esteban Ogazon Sedano. Uribe allegedly leads a supplier network used by the cartel to obtain chemicals used to make drugs; Lopez is allegedly involved in coordinating drug shipments for members of Los Chapitos; and Sedano allegedly purchases chemicals used to make drugs and operates illegal laboratories on the behalf of the cartel.
A Mexican company, Sumilab, S.A. de C.V., was also designated by OFAC, for its “involvement in providing and shipping precursor chemicals for and to” cartel members and associates.
All four individuals and the company were designated for “having engaged in, or attempted to engage in, activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.”
“Today’s action continues to disrupt key nodes of the global illicit fentanyl enterprise, including the producers, suppliers, and transporters,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson in the OFAC news release. “Treasury, in close coordination with the Government of Mexico and U.S. law enforcement, will continue to leverage our authorities to isolate and disrupt Los Chapitos and the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations at every juncture.”
These are not the first charges faced by Lopez, who works closely with Los Chapitos and has responsibilities including “overseeing many aspects of the Los Chapitos drug trafficking empire,” OFAC said.
Lopez was first indicted on federal drug trafficking charges in 2018 and has multiple charges since then. The other three members of Los Chapitos have also been indicted on U.S. federal drug trafficking charges in one or more jurisdictions. Last month, three members of Los Chapitos were hit with multiple charges in the U.S., including fentanyl trafficking, weapons trafficking, money laundering and witness retaliation. They have denied the charges.
The Sinoloa cartel is responsible for a significant portion of illicit fentanyl trafficked into the United States, and has operated since the 1980s. The organization increased its power and influence in the early 2000s, and has since become one of the largest drug trafficking operations in Mexico, OFAC said. The cartel also traffics heroin and methamphetamine in multi-ton quantities, the agency said.
El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel’s founder, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
In January, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, alleging that he has been subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.
Sons of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán have denied accusations made by U.S. prosecutors last month, saying in a letter that they have no involvement in the production and trafficking of the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The letter was provided to The Associated Press by José Refugio Rodríguez, a lawyer for the Guzmán family. Despite not being signed, Rodríguez said he could confirm that the letter was from Guzmán’s sons.
The Mexican government did not explicitly confirm the letter’s authenticity, but President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday it had been analyzed by the country’s security council.
The sons of Guzmán said “we have never produced, manufactured or commercialized fentanyl nor any of its derivatives,” the letter said. “We are victims of persecution and have been made into scapegoats.”
Milenio Television first reported the letter Wednesday.
U.S. prosecutors detailed in court documents last month how the Sinaloa cartel had become the largest exporter of fentanyl to the United States, resulting in tens of thousands of overdose deaths. Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
Guzmán’s sons are known collectively as the “Chapitos”. Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar are the lead defendants among 23 associates charged in a New York indictment. Ovidio Guzmán López, alias “the Mouse,” who allegedly pushed the cartel into fentanyl, is charged in another indictment in the same district. Mexico arrested him in January and the U.S. government has requested extradition. Joaquín Guzmán López is charged in the Northern District of Illinois.
U.S. prosecutors say the “Chapitos” have tried to concentrate power through violence, including torturing Mexican federal agents and feeding rivals to their pet tigers.
The sons deny that too, saying they are not the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel and do not even have tigers. They describe a loose federation of independent drug producers and manufacturers in the state of Sinaloa, many of whom appropriate their name for their own advantage.
But according to a U.S. indictment unsealed last month, the “Chapitos” and their cartel associates have also used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals.
The indictment goes on to allege that El Chapo’s sons used waterboarding to torture members of rival drug cartels as well as associates who refused to pay debts. Federal officials said that the Chapitos also tested the potency of the fentanyl they allegedly produced on their prisoners.
Mexico arrested Ovidio Guzmán in January and has seized some fentanyl laboratories, but López Obrador has repeatedly denied that Mexico produces the drug and accused U.S. authorities of spying and espionage after the indictments were unsealed.
El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel’s founder, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
In January, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, alleging that he has been subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.
Mexico’s president lashed out Monday at what he called U.S. “spying” and “interference” in Mexico, days after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against 28 members of the Sinaloa cartel for smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl into the United States. The three sons of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — known as the “Chapitos” — were among those charged.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested Monday that the case had been built on information gathered by U.S. agents in Mexico, and said “foreign agents cannot be in Mexico.”
He called the Sinaloa investigation “abusive, arrogant interference that should not be accepted under any circumstances.”
A former top U.S. drug enforcement agent called the president’s comments unjustified. Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said López Obrador was mistakenly assuming that U.S. agents needed to be in Mexico to collect intelligence for the case. In fact, much of the case appears to have come from trafficking suspects caught in the U.S.
“He wants to completely destroy the working relationship that has taken decades to build,” Vigil said. “This is going to translate into more drugs reaching the United States and more violence and corruption in Mexico.”
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a news conference at the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection in Mexico City, Mexico March 9, 2023.
HENRY ROMERO / REUTERS
López Obrador continued Monday to describe fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually in the United States – as a U.S. problem, claiming it isn’t made in Mexico. He has suggested American families hug their children more, or keep their adult children at home longer, to stop the fentanyl crisis.
The Mexican president also made it clear that fighting fentanyl trafficking takes a back seat to combating Mexico’s domestic security problems, and that Mexico is helping only out of good will.
“What we have to do first is guarantee public safety in our country … that is the first thing,” López Obrador said, “and in second place, help and cooperate with the U.S. government.”
Vigil pointed out that it was the very same cartels trafficking fentanyl and methamphetamines that cause most of the violence in Mexico. Avoiding confrontations with cartels is unlikely to bring peace, Vigil said, noting “it is going to have exactly the opposite effect.”
The U.S. charges announced Friday revealed the brutal and shocking methods the cartel, based in the northern state of Sinaloa, used to move massive amounts of increasingly cheap fentanyl into the United States.
Federal officials on Friday detailed the Chapitos’ gruesome and cruel practices aimed at extending their power and amassing greater wealth — from testing the potency of the fentanyl they allegedly produced on prisoners to feeding victims of their violence to tigers in order to intimidate civilians.
Apparently eager to corner the market and build up a core market of addicts, the cartel was wholesaling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl for as little as 50 cents apiece.
López Obrador own administration has acknowledged finding dozens of labs where fentanyl is produced in Mexico from Chinese precursor chemicals, mainly in the northern state of Sinaloa.
Most illegal fentanyl is pressed by Mexican cartels into counterfeit pills made to look like other medications like Xanax, oxycodone or Percocet, or mixed into other drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Many people who die of overdoses in the United States do not know they are taking fentanyl.
López Obrador deeply resents U.S. allegations of corruption in Mexico, and fought tooth and nail to avoid a U.S. trial of former defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on U.S. charges of aiding a drug gang in 2020.
López Obrador at one point threatened to kick DEA agents out of Mexico unless the general was returned, which he was. Cienfuegos was quickly freed once he returned. Since then, the Mexican government has imposed restrictive rules on how agents can operate in Mexico, and slowed down visa approvals for a time.
Washington — Federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges against 28 members and associates of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel — including the three sons of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — accusing them of orchestrating a transnational fentanyl trafficking operation into the United States.
Announcing the charges on Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Justice Department officials laid the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives from fentanyl squarely at the feet of the defendants.
Investigators say the accused — part of the “Chapitos” network — facilitated the purchase of the precursor chemicals of fentanyl from China, manufactured the deadly drug in Mexico, and then worked to smuggle the substance into the U.S.
Four Chinese nationals and one Guatemalan national were charged with supplying fentanyl ingredients to the cartel. The FBI wants the four Chinese nationals captured and is offering a $1 million reward, though taking them into custody to face charges in the U.S. will likely prove difficult. On Friday, the Treasury Department also announced sanctions against two Chinese companies for their role in supplying the precursor chemicals.
Once manufactured, the investigators allege the cartel used a network of vehicles, tunnels, aircraft, and couriers to smuggle the fentanyl into the United States, despite knowing the drug would kill Americans. Ivan Guzman Salazar, Alfredo Guzman Salazar, and Ovidio Guzman Lopez — El Chapo’s son — allegedly made hundreds of millions of dollars by sending fentanyl to the U.S., according to the Justice Department.
Other charged individuals include operators of secret labs in Mexico where fentanyl is made, weapons dealers who help the Sinaloa Cartel arm its security, and money launderers who funded the operations. Of the 24 charged, eight are in custody across the globe. The attorney general said the U.S. government would work to seek their extradition to face charges on American soil.
“The United States government is using every tool at its disposal to combat the fentanyl epidemic,” Garland said, “Many of us have heard the stories of those who have lost loved ones to fentanyl poisoning. In the face of unimaginable pain, those families have shown extraordinary bravery in sharing their stories. We are grateful to them. We know that nothing can repair the harm they’ve suffered or bring back the loved ones they have lost.”
“We are doing everything in our power, and using every authority we have, to bring those responsible to justice,” he added.
Federal officials on Friday detailed the Chapitos’ gruesome and cruel practices aimed at extending their power and amassing greater wealth — from testing the potency of the fentanyl they allegedly produced on prisoners to feeding victims of their violence to tigers in order to intimidate civilians.
According to the Justice Department, between August 2021 and August 2022, 107,735 people died of drug overdoses in the United States, two-thirds primarily from fentanyl. Nearly 200 people die every day from fentanyl poisoning. And in 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized more than 50 million fentanyl-laced pills, more than double the amount collected the year prior, the Justice Department said.
Garland said Friday that the Sinaloa Cartel is “largely responsible” for the increased fentanyl trafficking into the U.S.
The news comes just one day after Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco met with members of Mexican security officials in Washington, D.C. in part to discuss the fentanyl crisis. According to the Justice Department, both sides “pledged” to increase information-sharing and cooperation on criminal investigations.
Last month, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador controversially stated that the deadly drug is neither created nor consumed in his country and blamed Americans for the totality of the epidemic.
Garland said that Justice Department officials met Thursday with their counterparts in the Mexican government and the two countries renewed their commitment to working together against fentanyl and firearms trafficking.
Monaco highlighted the need to combat drug trafficking and fentanyl proliferation on social media, telling reporters on Friday that she and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram met with social media companies last week discuss how social media companies “must do more to stop the sale of fentanyl on their platforms.”
“It’s no longer enough to protect our children from drug dealers in the park or on the street corner—because now those drug dealers ply their deadly trade on social media apps running on the phones in our kids’ pockets,” Monaco said. She said online platforms are usually where the initial contact between buyer and sellers occurs and described social media applications as the “super highway” of the fentanyl supply chain.
Mexico City — Mexican authorities have arrested a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Chapito” for the drug-related killing of eight people near Mexico City, the federal Public Safety Department said Thursday. The boy allegedly rode up on a motorcycle and opened fire on a family in the low-income Mexico City suburb of Chimalhuacan.
Another man was also arrested in the Jan. 22 killings, and seven other members of the gang were arrested on drug charges.
An aerial view of the municipal garbage dump (bottom) and the Escalerillas neighborhood in Chimalhuacan, a low-income suburb of Mexico City, Mexico, February 24, 2021.
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty
The victims were holding a party at their house at the time of the attack, which also left five adults and two children wounded. It was reportedly a birthday party.
The boy’s name was not released, but his nickname — “Little Chapo” — is an apparent reference to imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. El Chapo has been serving a life sentence in a “supermax” maximum security prison in Colorado since his 2019 conviction on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
The motive in the killings has not been made public, but drug gangs in Mexico frequently dabble in kidnapping and contract killing. They also kill rivals selling drugs on their territory, or people who owe them money.
Mexico is no stranger to child killers.
In 2010, soldiers detained a 14-year-old boy nicknamed “El Ponchis” who claimed he was kidnapped at age 11 and forced to work for the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang. He said he had participated in at least four decapitations.
After his arrest, the boy, who authorities identified only by his first name, Edgar, told reporters that he was drugged and threatened into committing the crimes.
Also Thursday, prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said they had arrested a woman linked to as many as nine murders in the border city of Mexicali.
The state prosecutors’ office said that the woman had outstanding warrants for two killings, but that she had been named in seven other homicide investigations. The office did not say what the possible motives might be in those killings.
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Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Just like his father, he is an alleged drug trafficker who was wanted by the United States. Errol Barnett has more.
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Ovidio Guzmán, the son of infamous Mexican drug lord “”El Chapo,”” was arrested Thursday in a military raid in Mexico. Guzman is wanted by the U.S. for alleged drug trafficking.
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The head of the prison where Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped has been fired. Mexican authorities are offering a $3.8 million reward for the drug kingpin’s capture. David Gaddis, CEO of G-Global Protection Solutions and former regional director of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Mexico, joins the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts to discuss “El Chapo’s” influence in Mexico and how he may have pulled off the brazen escape.
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