MEXICO CITY — Key pillars of the Trump administration’s coverage towards Mexico contain large-scale deportations and a crackdown on cartels.
However experiences within the Mexican media counsel that U.S. authorities not too long ago orchestrated the key, cross-border transfer of not less than 17 kinfolk of Mexico’s most infamous drug kingpin — Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — to California.
Varied social media websites have circulated photographs purporting to indicate El Chapo’s kin lugging rolling suitcases as they waited to enter america final week on the San Ysidro border crossing connecting Tijuana and San Diego.
In a radio interview on Tuesday, Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s safety chief, confirmed that the transfer came about.
He characterised the switch of El Chapo’s kinfolk as a part of a “negotiation” between the U.S. Justice Division and representatives of one in every of El Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, who faces drug-smuggling and different costs in federal court docket in Chicago.
Ovidio Guzmán was initially arrested in 2109 in an operation that sparked gun battles paralyzing town of Culiacán, prompting then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to order him freed in a bid to finish the violence. He was rearrested in 2023 in a second bloody operation that left not less than 29 useless, together with 10 Mexican troopers. Mexico extradited him to america in September 2023 to face drug trafficking costs.
He plans to vary his not responsible plea to responsible, in accordance with court docket papers, however the phrases of his potential plea deal stay publicly unknown. A court docket listening to is ready for July 9 in federal court docket in Chicago.
“As we noticed within the information, Ovidio begins a negotiation with the Division of Justice of america and it’s evident that, [with] his household going to america, it’s due to that negotiation,” García Harfuch advised Mexico’s Radio Method.
The present whereabouts of the El Chapo kinfolk couldn’t be decided. It was not clear in the event that they have been beneath some type of protecting custody.
There was hypothesis in Mexico that, in change for a lowered jail time period and different concessions, Ovidio Guzmán may conform to testify for the federal government in drug instances. Such “cooperation” agreements, specialists say, routinely embrace safety for the kinfolk of potential witnesses.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated Monday that the experiences had blindsided her — she discovered of it from information accounts — and that her authorities was searching for clarification from Washington.
A Justice Division spokeswoman, Nicole Navas, declined to remark. Ovidio Guzmán’s New York-based legal professional, Jeffrey Lichtman, didn’t return messages.
El Chapo, who was convicted in 2019 of working an enormous drug community, is serving a life sentence at a so-called supermax jail in Colorado.
The accounts about El Chapo’s kinfolk getting into San Diego originated with Luis Chaparro, a Mexican journalist who makes a speciality of tales in regards to the convicted drug trafficker.
On Monday, Chaparro, citing “sources,” reported on his YouTube channel that 17 of El Chapo’s kinfolk —together with his ex-wife, numerous nephews and nieces, a grandson, a daughter and a son-in-law — entered U.S. territory in San Ysidro at about mid-day on Might 9 and have been met by FBI brokers. They carried greater than $70,000 in money, reported Chaparro, who stated not less than one sniper watched over the group as they turned themselves in to U.S. authorities.
Among the many group was Griselda López, El Chapo’s former spouse and the mom of Ovidio and his elder brother, Joaquín Guzmán López, who can also be in U.S. custody dealing with drug costs.
There was widespread hypothesis within the Mexican press that Ovidio Guzmán and his elder brother might search a plea deal and presumably conform to testify in opposition to Ismael Zambada García, a co-founder, with El Chapo, of the infamous Sinaloa cartel.
Zambada has stated he was kidnapped by Joaquín Guzmán López final summer season and flown into the custody of U.S. brokers outdoors El Paso, Texas. Zambada is reportedly in plea negotiations with U.S. authorities to keep away from a possible demise penalty.
Zambada’s arrest has sparked a bloody turf conflict splitting the Sinaloa cartel. Backers of Zambada are preventing supporters of El Chapo’s sons, referred to as Los Chapitos, for management of the storied legal group. Heading Los Chapitos, authorities say, are two of El Chapo’s different sons, each wished males who’ve remained in Mexico and averted arrest and doable extradition to america.
Contributing have been workers author Keegan Hamilton in Los Angeles and particular correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto del Río in Mexico Metropolis.
