SANTA TERESA, New Mexico – Two “VIPs” were set to arrive at a sleepy airport in the desert near the U.S.-Mexico border.
That’s all airport manager Bill Provance knew Thursday before the twin-engine plane touched down and law enforcement swarmed the tarmac. The “VIPs” turned out to be Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, one of the world’s most elusive and dangerous drug kingpins, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of Zambada’s partner-in-crime, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“I went out to see what was going on,” said Provance, manager of the Doña Ana County International Jetport. The federal agents gave him a vague response. “They said, ‘We’ve got VIPs coming in.'”
Former law enforcement officials involved in the decades-long hunt for Zambada say his arrest Thursday is as monumental as the 2016 capture of “El Chapo” Guzman given his role as the chief strategic thinker of what is universally considered to be the world’s most powerful organized crime organization.
But Zambada’s arrest is also shaping up to be a story of epic betrayal by one of Chapo’s sons, one key player told USA TODAY − and a direct result of their business strategy to flood the U.S. with deadly fentanyl over the past decade. That galvanized the U.S government to launch a scorched-earth campaign to go after them.
Media reports initially suggested the two were arrested in El Paso, Texas, and speculated that Guzman Lopez tricked Zambada into going for a plane ride to look at real estate on the Mexico side of the border before crossing into the United States. But law enforcement actually took the men into custody on the tarmac of this small airport in New Mexico where El Paso’s wealthiest residents keep their private planes.
And late Saturday, criminal defense lawyer Frank Perez of Dallas told USA TODAY that his client, Zambada, did not get on the Beechcraft plane of his own accord, but as part of a deal by the son of El Chapo to negotiate a better plea agreement with U.S. authorities for himself.
“My client neither surrendered nor negotiated any terms with the U.S. government,” Perez said in a statement given exclusively to USA TODAY. “Joaquin Guzman Lopez forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquin.”
After that, Perez said, Zambada’s “legs were tied, and a black bag was placed over his head. He was then thrown into the back of a pickup truck and taken to a landing strip. There, he was forced onto a plane, his legs tied to the seat by Joaquin, and brought to the U.S. against his will. The only people on the plane were the pilot, Joaquin and my client.”
In an interview, Perez said Zambada was meeting someone for breakfast and that instead of that person showing up, Guzman Lopez and his aides appeared and assaulted him.
That caught Zambada and his small security detail off guard, and he was tied up, thrown in the back of a pickup truck and driven about 20 minutes away to an airport, where he was put on the plane with Guzmán López, Perez said.
“He was the one who set up the meeting” to get Zambada to come out, Perez said of Guzman Lopez. He said the son of El Chapo then personally tied his father’s longtime partner to the chair of the aircraft so he couldn’t escape.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer representing Guzman Lopez, had no comment on Perez’s specific claims. “He’s free to employ any defense he sees fit to defend against the charges,” Lichtman told USA TODAY.
Neither Zambada nor Guzman Lopez have been convicted of any crimes in the U.S. and the Justice Department, per policy, says the charges are only allegations and that they are innocent until proven guilty. The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
Flying in from the south
The plane with a royal blue tail flew in from the south then parked in front of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection building at the airport, according to a local pilot who watched from the tarmac.
It was a hot, clear afternoon. On board the aircraft, Zambada would have been able to see the rusted steel border fence cutting through orange sand below as the plane entered U.S. airspace. Sprawling twin plants lay between the border fence and the airport, warehouses and factories connected to industrial manufacturing in Ciudad Juárez across the border.
The local pilot saw one man, who he later understood to be Guzman Lopez, deplane first.
“He shook all the hands of the law enforcement,” said the pilot, who asked his name be withheld out of fear of retribution by organized crime. The man he later understood to be Zambada “remained on board. Obviously he came out later and was calmly taken into custody.”
Inside the plane, there were snacks including chips and Gansitos, Mexican vanilla cakes covered in chocolate. There also appeared to be unused plastic zip ties in a convenience store bag.
Many details of the arrest of the two Sinaloa Cartel leaders remain steeped in secrecy.
But already, the case has caused reverberations from Washington to the border and deep into Mexico, where the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said it was not involved.
‘The brains’ behind the Sinaloa Cartel’s rise – and the American fentanyl crisis
Current and former federal authorities say Zambada was the brains and the elder Guzman, now locked up in U.S. federal prison, was the muscle of one of the deadliest worldwide fentanyl trafficking organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel.
“The cartel’s generating billions of dollars from fentanyl and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans is, to me, what ultimately brought these guys down,” said former Drug Enforcement Administration Chief of Operations Ray Donovan, who led the government-wide effort against Sinaloa Cartel until his retirement in April 2023.
“Chapo was more the brawn of the cartel and Mayo was the brains, the methodic business-minded leader who generated the revenues,” Donovan told USA Today on Saturday. “The Sinaloa cartel would not be as powerful as it became if not for El Mayo.”
Zambada eluded U.S. and Mexican authorities for decades. Even in the era of cellphone cameras and social media, only one photograph had ever emerged – until Thursday. The Mexican government released a photo provided by the U.S., according to Mexican officials, of Zambada with dark hair and a mustache, wearing a blue polo-style with the word “Boss” embroidered on the chest.
Now that Zambada is in U.S. custody, it is likely to start another bloody power struggle between factions within the cartel, according to Donovan and others familiar with its operations.
“Now that their leader is gone, Ivan Guzman, Chapo’s oldest son, is a young, hard-charging violent leader and he’s going to want to consolidate power,” Donovan said. “And either Mayo’s faction of the cartel is going to fall in line or they’re going to fight.”
A cat-and-mouse hunt for Ismael Zambada
Former federal law enforcement officials familiar with the cat-and-mouse hunt for Zambada in recent decades said he and his family already had been experiencing increasing internal tensions with the Sinaloa Cartel faction led by El Chapo and his sons, especially over the lethal drug fentanyl.
El Mayo, El Chapo and a third man known as El Azul, or Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, launched what is now known as the Sinaloa Cartel after being brought together by major trafficker Felix Gallardo, who headed the feared Pacific Cartel in the 1980s.
The three branched off from Gallardo and created the Federation, which transformed into the Sinaloa Cartel as it became a global juggernaut that grew, manufactured and sold much of the marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine headed for the United States.
Zambada was responsible for much of the business growth of the organization, remaining behind the scenes while El Chapo became the public and more violent face of Sinaloa. Zambada, according to Donovan, “was very much about the business, generating revenue” even as El Chapo’s violence made him the stuff of Mexican folklore.
As the fentanyl epidemic reached crisis proportions by 2017, federal law enforcement agencies ramped up their efforts to neutralize those responsible for it. That effort was led by the DEA and its multi-agency Special Operations Division nerve center in Chantilly, Va., but the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security also played crucial roles, Donovan said.
“We increased the reward money. We put in a whole-of-government approach to trying to go after these guys. A lot more resources and efforts into zeroing in on them,” Donovan said.
Turning up the heat, gaining the cooperation of insiders
One of the first big breaks came in the case of Zambada’s son, Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla or “El Vicentillo”, who was arrested in Mexico City in 2009. Eager to minimize his time in U.S. prisons, he began cooperating with authorities and testified against fellow members of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The younger Zambada testified against El Chapo at the historic trial in New York that led to his conviction and long prison sentence, said Derek Maltz, the former head of DEA’s Special Operations Division.
In recent years, as U.S. law enforcement agents continued to hunt for El Vicentillo’s father, they also focused intensively on the Chapitos, the sons of El Chapo who inherited much of the control of the Sinaloa Cartel empire from their father – including the U.S.-bound fentanyl trafficking business.
Another big break came with the capture of one of the Chapitos, Ovidio Guzmán. He was initially arrested by Mexican authorities in 2019 but later released after heavily armed Sinaloa gunmen engaged in violent clashes with Mexican authorities. Once captured again in 2023 and extradited to the United States to face trial, he too allegedly began cooperating.
And as U.S. law enforcement authorities continued to extract information and intelligence from his brother Ovidio, they also ramped up back-channel negotiations with Guzmán López, The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with his situation.
“It’s very clear, based on my knowledge and experience, that they were developing a plan to get not only the kid, Joaquin Junior, to surrender, as part of Ovidio’s good faith cooperation with the government, but then you have Joaquin Junior down there also figuring that I can come up with a plan to take Mayo down too,” Maltz told USA TODAY.
The lure of a potential deal
Officials at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security declined to comment when reached by USA TODAY about the circumstances of what led to the Thursday arrests, and Attorney General Merrick Garland did not mention them in his videotaped statement on the case.
“Both men are facing multiple charges in the United States for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly drug manufacturing and trafficking networks,” Garland said before vowing to continue to go after their associates who continue to traffick metric tons worth of the lethal synthetic opioid across the southern border. “The Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”
But two current and two former U.S. officials familiar with the situation told Reuters – which first reported the arrests – that Guzman Lopez planned to give himself up upon landing and duped Zambada into getting on the plane under the false pretense of looking at real estate in northern Mexico near the border.
Guzman Lopez had engaged in lengthy surrender talks with U.S. authorities, as is often the case in these protracted efforts to capture them, Reuters said, but authorities were not hopeful that El Chapo’s son actually would surrender. They were caught unaware when Guzman Lopez sent a last-minute message saying he would be flying to the U.S. airport, Reuters reported, and bringing the infamous Zambada with him.
“El Mayo was the cherry on top,” one U.S. official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the arrests, told Reuters. “It wasn’t expected at all.”
That set off a mad scramble as U.S. agents from the FBI and DHS investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations or HSI, raced to the scene just in time for the tiny Beechcraft King Air plane to land on the runway Thursday afternoon.
Provance, the airport manager watched the scene through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his corner office. “The plane landed, and that was it.”
There was no gunfight, no drama and no resistance.
Law enforcement officers wrapped a chain around the propeller, and the plane remained parked in the same spot on the tarmac for more than 24 hours before it was ferried into a hangar.
Border residents, curious about the notorious Mexican drug lord, parked at the county’s War Eagles Air Museum. They walked up to a chain link fence for a glimpse of the plane Zambada came in on.
Omar Ornelas contributed to this report.
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