How El Chapo’s son helped US arrest fabled narco chief ‘El Mayo’

New York, July 28

As a propeller plane on Thursday whirred towards the US-Mexico border to cross illegally, US agents raced to meet it at a small municipal airport near El Paso, Texas, and arrest two men who were part of Mexican drug trafficking royalty.

The son of jailed former Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman planned to give himself up upon landing. The other passenger —legendary septuagenarian trafficker Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — did not and was duped into getting on the plane by the younger man, according to two current and two former US officials familiar with the situation.

Zambada’s arrest followed lengthy surrender talks between US authorities and El Chapo’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the sources said. But many American officials had given up hope on Joaquin turning himself in, and were caught unaware when he sent a last-minute message that he would arrive with a kingpin US authorities had been chasing for four decades.

“El Mayo was the cherry on top,” said one US official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the arrests. “It wasn’t expected at all.” Guzman Lopez had convinced Zambada to board the plane by telling him that they were flying to see real estate in northern Mexico, according to the two current and one former US officials.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the two agencies who carried out the operation, scrambled agents from their local El Paso offices and barely reached the airport by the time the private plane was landing, according to a fifth source, a US official who declined to give further details on the arrests.

One worker at the Dona Ana County International Jetport, near El Paso, told Reuters he saw a Beechcraft King Air plane land on Thursday afternoon on the runway, where federal agents were already waiting. “Two individuals got off the plane … and were calmly taken into custody,” said the man.

The unexpected arrest of El Mayo, in his late 70s, and the way he appears to have been betrayed by Guzman Lopez, who is about 38 years old, has jolted the Mexican drug trafficking world, triggering fears of a bloody fissure in the Sinaloa Cartel between the two families that control the group’s biggest power bases.

Zambada is accused of being one of the most consequential traffickers in Mexico’s history, having co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with “El Chapo” Guzman, who was extradited to the US in 2017 and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

Reuters could not determine why Guzman Lopez betrayed his father’s long-time partner, though the four current and former sources said it was likely due to his desire to obtain a more favourable plea bargain deal from US authorities and help his brother, Ovidio, who was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2023.

His lawyer, Frank Perez, said on Friday Zambada did not come to the US voluntarily. On Saturday night, Perez said Guzman Lopez had “forcibly kidnapped” in Mexico and brought him to the US against his will. — Reuters