17 members of a cartel kingpin’s family were escorted into California from Mexico. Why?
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- Mexico’s security chief confirmed reports that relatives of drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán were allowed to enter San Diego.
- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum complained that U.S. authorities had failed to notify their Mexican counterparts about the operation.
MEXICO CITY — Key pillars of the Trump administration’s policy toward Mexico involve large-scale deportations and a crackdown on cartels.
But reports in the Mexican media suggest that U.S. authorities recently orchestrated the secret, cross-border move of at least 17 relatives of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin — Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel — to California.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, clearly frustrated, said U.S. authorities had failed to notify their Mexican counterparts of what appeared to be a highly choreographed operation by Washington to transport the drug lord’s extended family across the border from Tijuana to San Diego.
“We are doing our work” to fight drug trafficking, Sheinbaum said. “The issue is: What information is out there and how do they [U.S. officials] explain this? They have to give information.”
Various social media sites have circulated images purporting to show El Chapo’s kin lugging rolling suitcases as they waited to enter the United States last week at the San Ysidro border crossing connecting Tijuana and San Diego.
In a radio interview Tuesday, Omar García Harfuch, Mexico’s security chief, confirmed that the move took place.
He characterized the transfer of El Chapo’s relatives as part of a “negotiation” between the U.S. Justice Department and representatives of one of El Chapo’s sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, who faces drug smuggling and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
Mexico extradites Ovidio Guzmán López, son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, to the United States to face drug trafficking charges.
Guzmán López was initially arrested in a 2019 military raid that sparked gun battles paralyzing the city of Culiacán, prompting then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to order him freed in a bid to end the violence. He was rearrested in 2023 in a second bloody operation that left at least 29 dead, including 10 Mexican soldiers. Mexico extradited him to the United States in September 2023 to face drug trafficking charges.
Guzmán López, 35, known as El Ratón (“The mouse”), plans to change his not guilty plea to guilty, according to court papers, but the terms of his potential plea deal remain publicly unknown. A court hearing is set for July 9 in federal court in Chicago.
“As we saw in the news, Ovidio begins a negotiation with the Department of Justice of the United States and it’s evident that, [with] his family going to the United States, it’s because of that negotiation,” García Harfuch told Mexico’s Radio Formula.
The current whereabouts of the El Chapo relatives could not be determined. It was unclear whether they were under some form of protective custody.
In Mexico, security experts say, El Chapo’s relatives could be vulnerable to the violence associated with a civil war raging within the Sinaloa cartel.
The case against Guzmán López is part of a wide-ranging U.S. effort to take down the Sinaloa gang, which is considered Mexico’s most extensive criminal organization. The Sinaloa cartel is one of six in Mexico that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
There has been speculation in Mexico that, in exchange for a reduced prison term and other concessions, Guzmán López could agree to testify for the government in drug cases. Such “cooperation” agreements, experts say, routinely include protection for the relatives of potential witnesses.
Mexico’s transfer of 29 cartel figures — including Rafael Caro Quintero and accused Zeta members — has led to jockeying by attorneys willing to defend them.
The Justice Department has not explained why Mexico apparently was not notified of the operation to move El Chapo’s extended family across the border. It is unclear whether the decision was an oversight or a deliberate omission out of fear that news of the move would be leaked to criminal elements in Mexico.
A Justice Department spokeswoman, Nicole Navas, declined to comment. Guzmán Lopez’s New York-based attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, did not return messages.
El Chapo, who was convicted in 2019 of running a vast drug network, is serving a life sentence at a “supermax” prison in Colorado.
The accounts about El Chapo’s relatives entering San Diego originated with Luis Chaparro, a Mexican journalist who specializes in stories about Mexico’s drug world.
On Monday, citing “sources,” Chaparro reported on his YouTube channel that 17 of El Chapo’s relatives — including his ex-wife, various nephews and nieces, a grandson, a daughter and a son-in-law — entered U.S. territory in San Ysidro around midday May 9 and were met by FBI agents. They carried more than $70,000 in cash, reported Chaparro, who said at least one sniper watched over the group as they turned themselves in to U.S. authorities.
Among the group was Griselda López, El Chapo’s former wife and the mother of Ovidio and his elder brother, Joaquín Guzmán López, who is also in U.S. custody facing drug charges.
There has been widespread speculation in the Mexican press that the two jailed brothers may seek a plea deal and possibly agree to testify against Ismael Zambada García, a co-founder, with El Chapo, of the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
More than 140 people have been killed in the last month in Culiacán as two factions of the Sinaloa compete to fill a power vacuum.
Zambada has said he was kidnapped by Joaquín Guzmán López in the summer and flown into the custody of U.S. agents outside El Paso. Mexican authorities say they too were blindsided by that sensational operation, which Mexican authorities say was probably orchestrated by U.S. agents. Zambada is reportedly in plea negotiations with U.S. authorities to avoid a potential death penalty.
His arrest has sparked a bloody turf war splitting the Sinaloa cartel. Backers of Zambada are fighting supporters of El Chapo’s sons, known as Los Chapitos, for control of the notorious organization. Two of El Chapo’s other sons are both fugitives who have remained in Mexico and avoided arrest while assuming their father’s legacy of running the cartel, authorities say.
Times staff writer Keegan Hamilton in Los Angeles and special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto del Río in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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