Leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Drug Cartel Arrested in Texas

One of the world’s most powerful drug lords, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, has been arrested by US federal agents in El Paso, Texas.

Zambada, 76, founded the criminal organisation with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is currently jailed in the US.

Arrested with Zambada on Thursday was Guzman’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, said the US justice department.

In February, Zambada was charged by US prosecutors with a conspiracy to make and distribute fentanyl, a drug more powerful than heroin that has been blamed for the US opioid crisis.

Citing Mexican and US officials, the Wall Street Journal reports that Zambada was tricked into boarding the plane by a high-ranking Sinaloa member following a months-long operation by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.

Believing that he was going to inspect clandestine airstrips in southern Mexico, Zambada was instead flown to a private airfield outside El Paso, Texas.
Lopez was also arrested alongside Zambada by federal agents when the plane landed.

Officials said Zambada was “lured” onto a private plane under “false pretences” by Lopez, the New York Times reports.

Mexico’s Security Minister Rosa Rodriguez said his government was made aware of the detention of both Zambada and Lopez by the US Government but that the Mexican authorities were not involved in the operation to apprehend them.

Fox News Correspondent Bryan Llenas said Lopez surrendered to US authorities and turned on Zambada because he “blamed Mayo for the capture of his father”.

In a written statement on Thursday evening, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the two men lead “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organisations in the world”.

Zambada co-founded the Sinaloa cartel in the wake of the collapse of the Guadalajara cartel at the end of the 1980s.

While Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was the public face of the organisation and the most notorious of the two men, many believed it was in fact El Mayo who was its real leader.

Not only ruthless, he was also innovative, creating and maintaining some of the earliest links with Colombian cartels to flood the US with cocaine and heroin.

And more latterly, fentanyl.

His leadership of the criminal empire has endured in the face of changing presidents in Mexico and the US, amid repeated anti-drug offensives from successive governments and constant efforts by his enemies in other drug-trafficking organisations to bring him down.

That is no mean feat in the violent, dangerous and treacherous underworld in which he has operated as an unassailable kingpin for many years.

Yet that extraordinary resilience appears to have run out in El Paso, Texas – a city blighted by the influx of the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, much of which was smuggled in by his organisation.

Source: BBC