Sinaloa Drug Cartel Co-Founder Tricked Into Flying To Small US Airfield, Greeted With Handcuffs

In a story destined to be dramatized on the big screen, a major Mexican drug lord was tricked on Thursday into flying aboard a small plane that landed near El Paso, Texas, where federal agents greeted him on the tarmac with handcuffs. 

That big prize was 76-year-old Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who co-founded the infamous Sinaloa cartel with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the late 1980s. El Chapo was extradited to America in 2017 and is serving a life sentence at the federal supermax penitentiary in  Florence, Colorado. El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzman Lopez, may become his “so close and yet so far” neighbor at the Alcatraz of the Rockies, as he was also nabbed in the creative scheme — and reportedly participated in it. 

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, now 76 years old, is said to have co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel three decades ago (Mexico Attorney General/AFP/Getty Images via Wall Street Journal)

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the arrests in a statement issued Thursday: 

“The Justice Department has taken into custody two additional alleged leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world…Both men are facing multiple charges in the United States for leading the Cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.” 

According the Wall Street Journal’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) sources, El Mayo was led to believe the small aircraft he was boarding would take him to survey covert airstrips inside Mexico. The scheme was months in the making, and was a joint project with the FBI.

Adding to the cinematic intrigue, a high-ranking cartel member is said to have tricked the two into boarding the US-bound airplane. Plot twist: The New York Times reports that it was Guzman Lopez — El Chapo’s son who was also aboard and arrested. Fox News‘ Bryan Llenas reports that a source tells him Guzman Lopez was said to have turned on El Mayo because he blamed him for his father’s apprehension.  

While the DOJ and DEA statements didn’t identify the airstrip, reports from Reuters and KTSM indicate the plane landed at Santa Teresa International Jetport, which is located in New Mexico, just across the state line from El Paso. “One worker at the Santa Teresa airport…[said] that he saw a Beechcraft King Air land on the runway, where federal agents were already waiting,” Reuters reports. 

The accused drug kingpins were flying in a Beechcraft King Air similar to this one (via AOPA)

Since the Sinaloa Cartel is widely believed to be the foremost smuggler of illicit fentanyl, the twin-arrests represent a major triumph for federal law enforcement, and come at a time when Donald Trump and other Republican candidates are sharply criticizing the Biden administration’s performance on that particular drug-war front. 

Another of Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzman, was extradited to the US in January 2023. El Chapo’s four sons are known as “Los Chapitos,” and the same name is used by the criminal organization they’ve run, which is one of four that comprise the Sinaloa Cartel. In October, the Sinaloa Cartel reportedly banned fentanyl production and trafficking, but the DEA dismissed the announcement as “probably a publicity stunt,” noting that the volume of fentanyl seized at the border was undiminished.  

“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” said Garland. Synthetic opioids — including fentanyl — were responsible for more than 74,000 deaths in the United States in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While the DEA crowed that the arrest of El Mayo represents an “enormous blow to the Sinaloa Cartel,” don’t count on it to have a material impact on the flow of drugs into the United States. “We aren’t talking about a structure that depends on a few kingpins — it’s very diffuse and resilient to these kinds of hits,” International Crisis Group senior analyst Falko Ernst tells the Times. In the near term, he adds, the principal result will likely be violence as the cartel’s succession competition plays out. 

It should also be noted that, in a grand example of unintended consequences of government market interventions, the rise of fentanyl is itself a product of the war on drugs. Per Richard Cowan’s Iron Law of Prohibition, “As law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases.” That’s because high-potency drugs are easier to smuggle — giving a 10-pound parcel of fentanyl a far better risk/reward/ROI profile than a truckload of marijuana.