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Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Two of Mexico's most violent drug gangs 'form super cartel'
Two of the most violent drugs gangs in Mexico are feared to have joined forces to form a 'super cartel.' The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the 'Los Chapitos' faction of the Sinaloa Cartel are feared to have put aside their differences and joined forces to create a massive syndicate that many fear will make them deadlier than the sum of their individual parts. New video footage that has been shared across social media apparently shows dozens of heavily armed members of both cartels kneeling together in the dead of night. The person holding the camera says as it pans, referring to a nickname for members of the Los Chapitos cartel: 'This is just about to get started. The rumours are true, the alliance between the New Generation Cartel and La Chapiza is confirmed.' The cameraman also refers to the head of the CJNG Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as as El Mencho, and to one of Joaquín Guzmán Loera's sons who have been identified as leaders of the notorious gangs. As the video ends, the group of men fired their weapons into the air in celebration. The apparent merger, if confirmed, would be a massive shift in cartel politics. Los Chapitos is an offshoot of the Sinaloa Cartel that has long been fighting with other factions in the massive crime syndicate. It has long considered CJNG a mortal enemy. In 2016, Jesús and Iván Salazar, two sons of the infamous Sinaloa leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera, were kidnapped by CJNG operatives from a restaurant in an upscale part of Puerto Vallarta, which lies in CJNG territory. They were later released without harm. But it appears that Los Chapitos has put aside its hatred for CJNG. While the exact date of origin of the video is not currently known, it began circulating across the internet just weeks after the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) revealed it was worried that CJNG and Los Chapitos were joining forces. It said in the memo, released earlier this month, that the move may have come about in response to inter-factional warfare within the Sinaloa Cartel. The report reads: 'CJNG could capitalize on the conflict between the Los Mayos and Los Chapitos factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, essentially by choosing sides in favour of their former rivals, Los Chapitos, against Los Mayos.' The DEA said that the consequences of this merger would be catastrophic: 'A strategic alliance between CJNG and Los Chapitos has the potential to expand these groups' territories, resources, firepower, and access to corrupt officials, which could result in a significant disruption to the existing balance of criminal power in Mexico and could serve to increase northbound drug flow and southbound weapons trafficking at the US-Mexico border.' The reports said in its introduction: 'The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels (CJNG), together with their procurement, distribution, and financial support networks stretching across Latin America, China, and other key global nodes, remain the dominant threats for the trafficking of these and other drugs into the United States.' In his introduction to the 2025 DEA report, Acting Administrator Robert Murphy wrote that these groups are 'the primary groups oroducing the illicit synthetic drugs driving US drug poisoning deaths and trafficking these drugs into the United States.' He wrote: 'The cartels are not only fuelling the drug poisoning deaths in the United States, but also committing egregious acts of violence, threatening the security and stability of our partners across the Western Hemisphere.'
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Cartel Family Members Crossed Into U.S., Mexican Official Says
A group of family members of Sinaloa Cartel leaders crossed into the United States last week, likely as part of a deal with the Trump administration, Mexico's secretary of security said on Tuesday evening. For days, rumors had spread that 17 relatives, including the ex-wife of the crime boss known as El Chapo, had flown from a cartel stronghold to Tijuana, Mexico, and then crossed into the United States. A news outlet, Pie de Nota, reported that they had surrendered to U.S. federal authorities there, citing anonymous sources. The Sinaloa Cartel, co-founded by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, is one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world, although it has been divided by violence between rival factions as several of its leaders face prison and prosecution in the United States. When asked about reports that the family members had entered the United States on Monday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said 'there is no more information' than what she had seen. But the security secretary, Omar García Harfuch, then confirmed late Tuesday that relatives of the cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán López, one of El Chapo's four sons, had surrendered to American authorities. Mr. Guzmán López was extradited to the United States in 2023. 'It is evident that his family is going to the U.S. because of a negotiation or a plea bargain that the Department of Justice is giving him,' Mr. García Harfuch told the Mexican network Radio Fórmula. 'The family that left were not targets and were not being sought by the Mexican authorities,' he added. Mexican officials were waiting for the U.S. Department of Justice to share information, he said. He said that he believed Mr. Guzmán López was naming members of criminal organizations, likely as part of a cooperation agreement. Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters on Wednesday morning that U.S. officials 'have to inform' their Mexican counterparts whether there was an agreement or not, urging transparency with both the American public and Mexicans, and noting that Mexican soldiers had died in the operation to capture Mr. Guzmán Lopez. Ovidio Guzmán López plans to plead guilty to federal drug charges, according to court papers, in what would make him the first of El Chapo's sons, often called Los Chapitos, to acknowledge guilt in a U.S. federal courthouse. Mr. Guzmán López was twice captured by the Mexican authorities over the last decade. He was first detained, briefly, in 2019, until his own gunmen engaged in a bloody battle with the Mexican military in the city of Culiacán and forced his release. Then he was arrested by Mexican security forces in 2023 in that same city and quickly extradited to the United States. Along with a full brother, two half brothers and one of his father's former business partners, Mr. Guzmán López was named in a sprawling indictment. His full brother, Joaquín Guzmán López, has also been in negotiations with federal authorities in Chicago to reach his own plea deal. (Their father, El Chapo, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in the United States in 2019.) The security secretary stressed the Mexican role in Mr. Guzmán López's case, saying, 'Ovidio was detained 100 percent by the Mexican authorities.' The security minister's confirmation came the same day that the U.S. Department of Justice announced new charges against men accused of being Sinaloa Cartel leaders, the first since President Trump designated it a terrorist organization. Those charges include narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering. In announcing the charges, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, Adam Gordon, directly addressed cartel leaders in a news conference, telling them they would be 'betrayed by your friends' and 'hounded by your enemies.' The movement of the family members to the United States — and the speculation that it could mean a plea agreement with the U.S. government — has fueled high-profile discussion in Mexico about who might be implicated by imprisoned cartel leaders. 'The Chapitos are going to sing, and we're going to learn many things,' Senator Ricardo Anaya, an opposition lawmaker, told reporters this week. 'Because the North American government doesn't offer immunity in exchange for nothing, they offer it in exchange for information.'
CTV News
13-05-2025
- CTV News
Relatives of El Chapo enter U.S. as part of ‘negotiation,' Mexico's security secretary says
Cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is escorted by Mexican security forces at a Navy hangar in Mexico City, Mexico, in January 2016. (Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource) Several family members of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán have entered the United States as part of negotiations in a case against one of his sons, Mexico's Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch told the Mexican network Radio Fórmula on Tuesday. El Chapo's son Ovidio Guzmán López is facing drug trafficking charges in the US over his alleged role in the Sinaloa Cartel, which his father co-founded. Ovidio was extradited to the U.S. in September 2023, several months after Mexican authorities arrested him in a large-scale operation that resulted in at least 29 deaths. Days after his extradition, he pleaded not guilty to the drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court. But last week, he reached an agreement to change his plea, according to a court document reviewed by CNN. The document did not specify details of the agreement. 'It's clear that with his family going to the United States, it's connected to this negotiation or plea deal opportunity provided by the (U.S.) Department of Justice itself,' García Harfuch told Radio Fórmula. Several Mexican media outlets reported Tuesday that 17 of Ovidio's relatives had crossed the border into the United States. CNN has requested more information from the Mexican Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, as well as the US Department of Justice. García Harfuch added that the relatives who left the country were not wanted by Mexican authorities. 'Los Chapitos' Ovidio is one of four sons of El Chapo who have been charged in the US with various crimes over their alleged roles in the Sinaloa Cartel. Collectively known as 'Los Chapitos,' the brothers are thought to have been brought into the cartel as teenagers to learn the ins and outs of the organization, according to the think tank InSight Crime. Their roles became more prominent around the mid-2010s, roughly when their father was captured and extradited to the United States. Another son of El Chapo, Joaquín Guzmán López, is also in U.S. custody. He was arrested in July 2024 when he flew into the United States on a private plane from Mexico alongside Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, a co-founder of the cartel who the brothers had been at odds with. Joaquín had allegedly organized his arrest and that of El Mayo by luring him on the flight to examine a piece of land he thought was in Mexico, an official familiar with the operation had told CNN at the time. Instead, the plane landed in El Paso, Texas, where federal agents arrested them. Mexico Secretary of Security Rosa Icela Rodriguez said in August that Joaquín had reached an agreement with his brother Ovidio 'so that they would go to the United States to surrender.' However, an attorney for Ovidio told CNN that Rodriguez's claim was 'a complete and utter fabrication.' An attorney for El Mayo said he 'neither surrendered nor negotiated any terms with the US government' and described the flight to the US as a violent kidnapping. Two other sons of El Chapo, Ivan Archivaldo and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, are still at large. The US has accused them of leading large-scale drug trafficking operations for the cartel and has issued US$10 million bounties for information leading to each of their arrests. Mexican forces had previously arrested Ovidio in a 2019 operation that ended in failure. Shortly after he was detained in October of that year, the cartel quickly mobilized dozens of gunmen to battle Mexican authorities and try to free him. Ovidio was eventually released on the orders of then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to stop the violence. He then went into hiding until his second arrest and eventual extradition in 2023. This is a developing story and will be updated. Verónica Calderón and Michael Rios, CNN
Wall Street Journal
12-05-2025
- Wall Street Journal
The Underground Hunt for Mexico's Most Wanted Drug Kingpin
MEXICO CITY—Mexican special forces blasted into a safe house in the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacán earlier this year looking for Mexico's most wanted man: Iván Archivaldo Guzmán. The son of Sinaloa cartel founder Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán and current leader of the cartel's most powerful faction narrowly evaded capture, according to Mexican officials. A cabinet in a bathroom obscured the entrance to a tunnel where Guzmán escaped as special forces moved in.
