EL PASO, Texas — The leader of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, along with a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, were arrested Thursday by the FBI.
The Justice Department confirmed that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez were arrested in El Paso, Texas. Zambada and “El Chapo” co-founded the cartel. The notorious drug kingpin “El Chapo,” was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in 2019,
Zambada, who eluded authorities for decades, was duped into flying into the U.S., where he was arrested alongside a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, according to a report by the Associated Press. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada got on an airplane to the U.S. believing he was going somewhere else.
“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,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
President Biden on Friday commended law enforcement for making the arrests and “their work to bring Sinaloa Cartel leaders to justice.” Biden went on to say, “Too many of our citizens have lost their lives to the scourge of fentanyl. Too many families have been broken and are suffering because of this destructive drug. My Administration will continue doing everything we can to hold deadly drug traffickers to account and to save American lives.”
Zambada was indicted in Brooklyn in February for fentanyl trafficking among other charges, and both men are facing multiple charges in the U.S. for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.
Zambada was arrested after having been a U.S. fugitive for many years. In 2016, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture, and the DEA’s profile of the kingpin said the reward was up to $15 million.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the arrest of Zambada “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.”
The Tijuana-based Sinaloa cartel, which has operated since the 1980s, is one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent criminal organizations. Zambada founded the cartel along with “El Chapo,” who was captured in 2016 and is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in the U.S. after being convicted on charges including drug trafficking and money laundering. Zambada took over the cartel after “El Chapo” was arrested. Milgram said Lopez and several of his brothers have also led the cartel since their father’s arrest.
Lopez is one of El Chapo’s 12 children, four of whom go by the nickname “Los Chapitos” because they are accused of being heavily involved in Sinaloa’s operations. Lopez was first indicted on federal drug trafficking charges in 2018 and has had multiple charges since then. As reported by Emily’s Hope, in April 2023, the three other Chapitos were among 28 alleged members and associates of Sinaloa accused of orchestrating a transnational fentanyl trafficking operation into the U.S. Officials say they are to blame for the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives from fentanyl.
The Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution, and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to an indictment released by the U.S. Justice Department last year.
Federal officials said that the Chapitos also tested the potency of the fentanyl they allegedly produced on their prisoners.