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 one of the ex-wives 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.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer who has represented the elder Mr. Guzman and his sons, did not respond to several messages seeking comment.
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.
Ever since their father, El Chapo, was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. federal judge in 2019, the American authorities have turned their sights on his four sons. Federal investigators opened a quiet back channel to the sons, making clear to them that if they ever grew tired of the dangerous narco-trafficking life, they could turn themselves in at any time.
Joaquín Guzmán López, using the back channel, kidnapped his father’s former business partner, Ismael Zambada Garcia, in Mexico this summer and forcibly flew him across the border into U.S. custody.
The security secretary stressed the Mexican role in Ovidio 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.”
Alan Feuer, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and James Wagner contributed reporting.
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