U.S. authorities announced late Thursday that they had taken into custody Ismail Zambada Garcia, nicknamed El Mayo, a co-founder of the feared Sinaloa Cartel. Also taken into custody was Joaquin Guzman Lopez, son of the other co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, now serving time in a federal prison.
Nearly a day later, details remained sketchy. Multiple news reports in the United States and Mexico said the men apparently were on a small aircraft, surveying land to be purchased when their plane landed near the Texas border city of El Paso. They were met there by federal agents, the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security confirmed late Thursday.
The Mexican government on Friday said that the pilot was Larry Curtis Parker, providing his U.S. passport number. The government presented data showing he entered Mexico 27 times as a tourist between Jan. 2, 2021, and Thursday.
In a presentation made public Friday, Mexican security officials said they received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City around 3:30 pm local time informing of the arrests. Officials asked for photographic proof, which was provided of the two in custody, albeit partially redacted.
“The Mexican government did not participate in this detention or surrender,” said Rosa Icela Rodriguez, head of Mexico’s security and citizen protection agency, during a press conference Friday flanked by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
After nearly 24 hours of silence, she was asked repeatedly and confirmed Mexico was unable to determine yet if the two alleged cartel leaders surrendered or were tricked and captured. She said in Mexico, Zambada Garcia faced four outstanding arrest warrants for organized crime, crimes against health, and weapons.
On Friday, the administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Anne Milgram, said in a statement that the arrests of the two men “strikes at the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland lauded a long-awaited result, emphasizing that “fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced.”
“‘El Mayo’ and Guzman Lopez join a growing list of Sinaloa Cartel leaders and associates who the Justice Department is holding accountable in the United States,” Garland said in a videotaped statement issued Friday morning. “This includes the cartel's other co-founder, El Chapo, another of El Chapo's sons and an alleged cartel leader, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, and the cartel's alleged sicario, or assassin, known as El Nini.”
Zambada Garcia, 76, faces charges for fentanyl trafficking, money laundering, firearms offenses, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder, the Justice Department said. Guzman faces charges for trafficking in large quantities of cocaine, heroin, and meth, among other drugs.
Although Zambada Garcia has criminal complaints in multiple U.S. jurisdictions, the fentanyl charges were added in February in what’s known as a superseding indictment. It modified federal charges that were brought back in 2009 in the Southern District of New York.
Guzman Lopez has open, active federal criminal cases involving alleged drug trafficking with sealed indictments in the Northern District of Illinois, in 2009, and the District of Columbia in 2018. He is believed to have been part of a family operation dubbed “Chapitos,” or little Chapos, who carried on the cartel’s business after El Chapo’s sentencing in 2019 to life in prison in the United States.
Both men are expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in the next several days and will be under tight protection.
FBI director Christoper Wray called the arrests “an example of the FBI's and our partners commitment to dismantling violent transnational criminal organizations like the Sinaloa Cartel."
The high-profile arrests potentially mark the end of an era in Mexico. The Sinaloa Cartel, under Zambada Garcia, rose to prominence over decades as one of the most violent, ruthless and well-organized criminal groups. Much of this was made public during El Chapo’s trial.
Zambada Garcia faced new federal charges in February and had a DEA-bounty of $15 million on his head. The septuagenarian was a contemporary of many other fallen drug lords like the Arrellano-Felix family that had run the Tijuana Cartel in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Zambada Garcia also outlasted contemporaries like Rafael Caro Quintero, who headed the Guadalajara Cartel.
When leaders of those cartels fell, the drug-trafficking landscape was rearranged, in part through bloody turf wars. With much of the Guzman and Zambada clans now arrested - Zambada Garcia’s son Vicente is also in a U.S. prison - it’s unclear whether the Sinaloa Cartel’s current structure can survive.
“I think history has shown that getting rid of of the leadership of vertically integrated organizations leads to immediate, usually violent internal fighting, and then a stabilization that does not necessarily disrupt the overall operations long-term,” said Douglas Farah, president of IBI Consultants, a security consultancy that works with federal agencies including the DEA. “Sometimes the structures fracture into smaller pieces, which I assume we will see some of with Sinaloa.”
Even if the Sinaloa Cartel survives, the arrests were significant, he suggested.
“It is a somewhat fractious structure with infighting, and the fentanyl trade is in a period of growth and readjustment. So I think it is always good to get experienced operators off the field,” Farah said. “Sinaloa has a deep bench and if they come out of the succession battle more or less intact, the level of trafficking over time will remain relatively unchanged.”
A global investigation led by OCCRP called NarcoFiles: The New Global Order showed how the Sinaloa Cartel and other organized crime groups have gone global in their illicit trade.
The reporting showed that like the Greek mythological figure Hydra, when the head of one organization is lopped off the body doesn’t die but grows new leaders. Drug trafficking organizations are layers deep and consist of numerous independent actors who control portions of what has become an interconnected global business.
What remains to be seen is whether other cartels make a move on some of the Sinaloa Cartels strongholds, and how much internal infighting there might be within the cartel.
A former DEA chief of international operations, Michael Vigil, said it is unlikely the arrests will splinter the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
“There is always that possibility but the Sinaloa Cartel is the most powerful one, they've been in existence since 1989, and they actually have a horizontal hierarchy instead of a traditional vertical one,” Vigil said. “They operate like McDonald's, they have franchises. They supply the drugs and these franchises, as I call them, will distribute them.”
The arrests probably won’t greatly affect operations, he suggested.
“It is not going to make a dent. Use Chapo Guzman as an example, when he was extradited to the U.S, it had no impact on the cartel. None,” said Vigil, noting the family operation remained strong with money launderers, hitmen, logisticians and the like. “So taking out one or two, including the leader, is not going to help… to have an impact you have to go after the entire infrastructure.”