It seemed like a page torn from a gripping narco thriller – a Mexican drug lord, Ismael Zambada García, lured onto an airplane, flown across the border, and handed over to American authorities by the son of his former crime partner.
On a Thursday evening, a Beechcraft King Air turboprop touched down at a small municipal airport near El Paso, revealing the capture of one of Mexico’s most notorious figures – El Mayo, a key figure in the Sinaloa drug cartel, who had managed to elude authorities for years in the mountains of Sinaloa.
Despite the $15 million U.S. bounty on his head, Mr. Zambada García, also known as El Mayo, had led a life of relative luxury and seclusion until his unexpected apprehension. The twist in the tale came from an unexpected source – the son of his former criminal ally, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, famously known as El Chapo, currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison.
It was revealed that El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, orchestrated Mr. Zambada García’s capture by deceiving him into boarding the plane under false pretenses, suggesting they were exploring real estate opportunities in northern Mexico. Little did the unsuspecting Mr. Zambada García know that he was en route to Texas, where he would be handed over to American agents who had long sought his arrest.
The cross-border operation followed years of meticulous coordination between Joaquín Guzmán López and a dedicated team of U.S. law enforcement officers from the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security. These officials had persistently pursued Mr. Guzmán López, his brothers, and Mr. Zambada García since El Chapo’s conviction on drug conspiracy charges half a decade ago.
