2 Sinaloa Cartel Kingpins are arrested in El Paso Texas.
2 Sinaloa Cartel Kingpins are arrested in El Paso Texas and detained The arrest in the United States of two top leaders of the Sinaloa drug cartel came after what initial accounts suggest was a dramatic betrayal that saw one of the men, a son of the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo, lure the other under false pretenses onto a plane that delivered them both into the hands of American law enforcement. One of the operatives taken into custody, Ismael Zambada García, was arguably the most powerful criminal in Mexico, a septuagenarian kingpin who helped to found the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo decades ago and remained at large even after his partner was extradited to the United States and convicted at a trial in New York City. The other was one of El Chapo’s own sons, Joaquín Guzmán López, who with his brothers had inherited a large swath of their father’s illicit business moving massive amounts of cocaine and fentanyl into the United States, Europe and elsewhere. The two men were arrested at a small local airport outside of El Paso, Texas, on Thursday afternoon after their Beechcraft King Air plane landed there on a flight from Mexico, U.S. officials said. Mr. Guzmán López had persuaded Mr. Zambada García to join him on the flight by saying they were going to look at real estate, officials said, but the plane instead headed north across the border. (NY Times)