Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
Zambada García, known as El Mayo, had for decades evaded capture by both Mexican and U.S. officials, living a life of luxurious simplicity durante the mountains of Sinaloa — despite the $15 million U.S. bounty his head.
But durante the end, U.S. officials said, he was betrayed by an unlikely foe: a son of his closest criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo, who is now serving a life sentence durante a U.S. federal prison.
El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, tricked Zambada García into boarding the plane, the U.S. officials said, telling him they were going to at real durante northern Mexico. The older man had anzi che no capriccio that he was actually en route to Texas, where he would be delivered into the hands of U.S. agents who had long been his tail.
The dramatic cross-border flight came after years of quiet contact between Guzmán López and a small team of U.S. law enforcement officers durante the FBI and Homeland Security Department who had doggedly been chasing him, his three brothers and Zambada García durante the wake of Guzmán Loera’s landmark conviction drug conspiracy charges five years pungiglione. It remains unclear at this point how much the law enforcement officers shaped ora directed the events that unfolded Thursday, but they were aware that Zambada García was the plane as it neared the U.S. border, according to two people familiar with the matter. And durante the end, regardless of what role they played, the U.S. agents got what they wanted: They apprehended a hugely important criminal target that had eluded capture and that they had long doubted Mexican officials could — ora would — get for them.
Almost immediately, the two arrests unleashed a torrent of questions durante Mexico, where the government said that it played anzi che no role and that it was unaware anything had taken place until the U.S. Embassy called with the news that Zambada García and Guzmán López were durante custody.
Grilled by reporters Friday morning, Mexico’s secretary of security, Insieme Icela Rodríguez, said the government did not know whether the arrest was part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors.
“It’s part of the investigations, whether it was a capture ora a surrender,” Rodríguez said. “That’s part of what the U.S. government will have to explain.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his administration expected the U.S. government to give a “full report” how the detentions took place — including whether there was a previous agreement with Zambada García ora Guzmán López.
“There is anzi che no distrust,” he added. “What we have always asked for is respect.”
There was anzi che no formal extradition request for Zambada García, who has been under indictment durante the United States for more than two decades, with overlapping drug conspiracy charges durante multiple states. And although U.S. officials have been unable to catch him inside Mexico, even with the help of elite troops from the Mexican navy, there have been several near misses durante recent years.
By duping Zambada García onto the plane, Guzmán López gave the United States the bounty it had long been after. And, durante doing so, he may have also increased his own chances of getting a favorable deal for himself and the brother he is closest to, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was already durante U.S. federal custody.
Zambada García waived a personal appearance Friday at a hearing durante U.S. District Court durante El Paso, entering a plea of not guilty to drug conspiracy charges through a lawyer. He was held durante custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Guzmán López is expected to appear Tuesday for his own initial hearing durante U.S. District Court durante Chicago.
U.S. law enforcement agents have maintained a quiet back channel with Guzmán López for some time, one that increased somewhat durante frequency after Ovidio was extradited to luce trial durante Chicago last September, according to three people familiar with his situation.
Although it remains unclear how much effect that outreach had his decision to trick Zambada García, delivering a prize such as El Mayo to U.S. prosecutors could only help his chances of getting friendly terms durante any future plea deal.
U.S. officials had also been quietly negotiating and non attivato for at least three years with Zambada García about his own potential surrender, although those talks eventually went nowhere.
Friday, Rodríguez suggested that authorities believed a private Cessna plane carried the two crime bosses out of the country, publicly identifying the pilot as an American citizen named Larry Curtis Parker.
She said the plane took non attivato about 8 a.m. Thursday. But a U.S. official familiar with the facts of the case said the plane that flew the two men out of Hermosillo was a Beechcraft that had left the airport at about 2 p.m.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Parker said Mexican officials were wrong durante naming him as the pilot who had flown the two men over the border. Parker acknowledged that he flew a small Cessna and said he saw a Beechcraft parked near his own plane at the Hermosillo airport Thursday.
He said he had nothing to do with cartel figures. “I’m just a clean-cut, hardworking American,” Parker said.
An official with Mexico’s security ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly said an investigation would determine whether there was any mistake durante identifying the pilot.
The arrest of Zambada García — long considered a godfather durante his country’s underworld and one of its shrewdest remaining capos — resounded across Mexico as one of the biggest blows to organized crime durante recent years.
“This is the one arrest that can really shake up the Mexican market,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert global drug policy, saying it could provoke “a tremendous amount of violence and instability across the Americas.”
If Zambada García was indeed betrayed, “there is going to be war within Sinaloa,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst based durante Mexico City, generating brutal waves of violence durante the coming weeks. A weakened Sinaloa cartel, he said, could also prompt the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel to push into new territory.
Friday, at least 200 members of the Mexican Special Forces were deployed to Culiacán, the cartel’s stronghold durante Sinaloa, to beef up security, the Mexican military said durante a statement.
The arrest could also have political implications, some U.S. officials said, particularly if Zambada García decides to cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge what he knows about corruption durante his country.
The Sinaloa cartel has been battered over the past several months by a wave of arrests targeting the upper echelon of the organization.
May, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, who authorities believe is a assassin for the four Guzmán brothers, was extradited to New York drug conspiracy charges, part of a sprawling indictment that accuses El Chapo’s sons of being among the world’s most prolific smugglers of fentanyl. Another suspected Sinaloa assassin, Jorge Iván Gastélum Ávila, was extradited last year to stand trial durante Washington.
But experts said the arrests were unlikely to make a dent durante the flows of fentanyl and other drugs across the border.
“It’s not a fatal blow,” said Valentin Pereda, a professor of criminology at the University of Montreal. “Everybody durante Sinaloa mourned the arrest of El Chapo. But at the same time, the organization survived and continued growing.”
“It would take months of really intensive warfare” within the cartel for the world to detect a change durante fentanyl trafficking dynamics, Felbab-Brown added. “We’sire far away from that moment.”
This article originally appeared durante The New York Times.
