In a captivating tale likely to hit the big screen, a major Mexican drug lord was deceived on Thursday into boarding a small aircraft that landed near El Paso, Texas, where federal agents greeted him with handcuffs. The target: 76-year-old Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who co-founded the notorious Sinaloa cartel alongside Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the late 1980s. El Chapo was extradited to America in 2017 and is now serving a life sentence at the federal supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzman Lopez, may soon become his “so close and yet so far” neighbor at the Alcatraz of the Rockies, as he was also apprehended in the ingenious scheme — and reportedly played a part in it.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the arrests in a statement issued Thursday.
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. Both men are facing multiple charges in the United States for leading the Cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.
According to Wall Street Journal’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) sources, El Mayo was led to believe that the small aircraft he was boarding would take him to survey covert airstrips within Mexico. The scheme had been in the works for months and was a joint project with the FBI.
Adding to the cinematic intrigue, a high-ranking cartel member is said to have tricked the two into boarding the US-bound airplane. In a twist of irony, it was Guzman Lopez — El Chapo’s son who was also aboard and arrested. Fox News’ Bryan Llenas reports that a source tells him Guzman Lopez was said to have turned on El Mayo because he blamed him for his father’s apprehension.
While the DOJ and DEA statements did not reveal the location of the airstrip, reports from Reuters and KTSM indicate that the plane landed at Santa Teresa International Jetport, which is located in New Mexico, just across the state line from El Paso. One worker at the Santa Teresa airport…[said] that he saw a Beechcraft King Air land on the runway, where federal agents were already waiting,” Reuters reports.
Since the Sinaloa Cartel is widely believed to be the top smuggler of illicit fentanyl, the twin-arrests represent a major victory for federal law enforcement, and they come at a time when Donald Trump and other Republican candidates are heavily criticizing the Biden administration’s performance on that particular drug-war front.
Another of Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzman, was extradited to the US in January 2023. El Chapo’s four sons are known as “Los Chapitos,” and the same name is used by the criminal organization they have run, which is one of four that make up the Sinaloa Cartel. In October, the Sinaloa Cartel reportedly banned fentanyl production and trafficking, but the DEA dismissed the announcement as “probably a publicity stunt,” noting that the volume of fentanyl seized at the border remained unchanged.
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,” said Garland. Synthetic opioids — including fentanyl — were responsible for more than 74,000 deaths in the United States in 2019.
However, it should also be noted that, in a grand example of unintended consequences of government market interventions, the rise of fentanyl is itself a product of the war on drugs. Per Richard Cowan’s Iron Law of Prohibition, “As law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases.” That’s because high-potency drugs are easier to smuggle — giving a 10-pound parcel of fentanyl a far better risk/reward/ROI profile than a truckload of marijuana.
