In the hours after the arrest of Ismael Zambada Garcia, the last godfather of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, U.S. authorities offered their first clues to the central mystery: How did a fugitive who had evaded capture for decades end up delivered directly into their hands?
Zambada Garcia, officials said, had been lured by a son of his former partner, the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo, onto a private plane that took him across the border without his permission.
But after further verification of the account by El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, with people who had knowledge of the matter, U.S. officials have arrived at a different, more dramatic version of what happened in Mexico.
Ismael Zambada, one of his country’s most wanted men, had emerged from a mountain hideout last week and was ambushed in the Mexican city of Culiacan in what he thought would be a friendly meeting with Guzman Lopez, according to three federal officials who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive details of the case. Guzman Lopez then forced Zambada Garcia across the border in a turboprop Beechcraft King Air, where he was detained by U.S. federal agents, according to the officials.
This version of events is consistent with one recently offered by Zambada García’s lawyer, who told The New York Times and other media outlets that his client had not been tricked into boarding the plane but had been kidnapped. According to the lawyer, Guzmán López assaulted Zambada García with a group of henchmen who handcuffed him, put a bag over his head and forced him into a car and then onto the plane, where he remained tied up for the duration of the flight.
“My client did not surrender nor negotiate any terms with the U.S. government,” said the attorney, Frank Perez, in a statement to the press. “Joaquin Guzman Lopez forcibly kidnapped my client.”
This marks the latest narrative twist in a murky and shifting tale shaped by multiple parties with a stake in its outcome: U.S. and Mexican officials, cartel sources and lawyers for the kingpins. As new versions of the capture continue to emerge, the only thing that is clear is that no one has yet told the whole story publicly.
Even now, the precise events of Thursday that landed Zambada García and Guzmán López in U.S. custody at a regional airport near El Paso, Texas, remain unclear. More details about what happened that day could emerge on Wednesday when Ismael Zambada appears in court in El Paso.
All three officials told the Times that the U.S. government had no involvement in, nor had real-time knowledge of, the specific methods used to bring Zambada García to the United States. However, the U.S. government did gain more information about what happened in Mexico last week, they said, after more thorough questioning of sources with knowledge of what had happened.
According to one of the officials, the Culiacan ambush turned violent when bodyguards loyal to Guzman Lopez clashed with those of Zambada Garcia.
Legal experts say that even if Zambada Garcia came to the United States under physical duress, it might not have any effect on the criminal charges he faces. There is longstanding legal precedent that allows prosecutors to pursue cases against defendants who were brought to the United States against their will, the experts said.
“U.S. law is pretty clear that even kidnappings that violate extradition treaties do not provide a basis for the defendant’s benefit,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia Law School.
But Zambada García’s lawyer may try to capitalize on the kidnapping allegations, potentially complicating U.S. law enforcement efforts to prosecute him, if not as a legal issue, then perhaps as a diplomatic one.
Relations between U.S. law enforcement and Mexican authorities have been strained since 2020, when U.S. federal agents arrested Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former defense secretary, in Los Angeles, only to release him and drop charges after the Mexican government expressed outrage at not being informed of the operation. The Mexican government has said it had no role in the arrests of the two top El Paso cartel bosses and was informed of them only after they occurred.
“The issue has more to do with diplomatic niceties and public relations than whether a U.S. court can hear this allegation,” Richman said.
Mexico’s Secretary of Public Safety and Citizen Protection Rosa Icela Rodriguez said Monday that authorities had opened their own investigation into the events in Mexico and “the crimes that may have occurred.”
A person close to Guzmán López, along with two current and two current U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said no formal agreement was reached with him before his surrender.
But his role in capturing Zambada did not come out of nowhere; it was the culmination of a secret channel that a small team of FBI agents had maintained with him and some of his brothers for years, current and former officials said.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed the existence of such a channel at his daily morning press conference on Monday, saying that U.S. officials had been in discreet contact with Guzmán López for some time. Mexico’s security secretary said U.S. authorities had been informed on multiple occasions that Guzmán López was considering turning himself in to U.S. authorities.
The conversations with the sons, which took place directly and through intermediaries, began nearly five years ago, shortly after El Chapo — whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán Loera — was convicted on drug conspiracy charges in a trial in Brooklyn and sentenced to life in prison, said three of the people familiar with the discussions.
The goal of the talks had always been to persuade Guzmán Loera’s sons, known collectively as the Chapitos, to avoid their father’s fate and turn themselves in to the United States, where they all face federal charges. The talks became more intense and frequent, according to people familiar with them, after one of the sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, was extradited from Mexico last fall to face trial in Chicago.
That led to a conversation with U.S. officials about the possibility of Joaquín turning himself in and bringing Ismael Zambada García with him, whether voluntarily or not, according to one current and one former official.
Such a move would have two direct benefits for the Guzman brothers: It would increase the likelihood that Joaquin and Ovidio would obtain favorable terms in any future plea deal, and it would help the two brothers who remain in Mexico by eliminating one of their main rivals in the Sinaloa cartel, Zambada Garcia.
Talks with Joaquin intensified this month, two of the people familiar with them said, when he began telling American interlocutors that he was close to persuading Zambada Garcia to meet with him without his typical security detail.
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It is not unheard of for U.S. law enforcement to maintain discreet contacts with even the most violent Mexican traffickers.
In fact, for several years, some of the same U.S. officials who were speaking with El Chapo’s sons were also in communication with Zambada García, trying to negotiate the possibility of his own surrender, according to one of the officials.
On Thursday morning, when the trip was apparently confirmed, Guzmán López’s interlocutors notified a small group of U.S. officials who were interested in prosecuting Zambada García, according to the official.
U.S. federal agents were then briefed, the official said, as the meeting took place and the plane took off toward El Paso with Zambada Garcia on board. The plane quietly entered U.S. airspace with the help of Customs and Border Protection.
Agents were waiting for him at Doña Ana County International Airport, a small airport just outside El Paso.
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