Sinaloa Cartel

On Friday, July 25, everything seemed to be running smoothly at the private airport in El Paso, Texas, as a private Lear jet landed in the midday heat.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the “invisible” leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the man who believed he succeeded El Chapo, was as calm as he could be with a hood over his head until the plane came to a stop.

U.S. agents arrested two top leaders of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel in Texas on July 25, the justice department said, striking a major blow to one of the most powerful and violent criminal organizations in the world.

Undated images of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia provided by the Mexican Attorney General's office in Mexico City on August 1, 2003. Two top leaders of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, including its co-founder Ismael Zambada Garcia, were arrested on July 25, 2024 in Texas, the US Department of Justice said.

The operation to detain Ovidio Guzman, the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, unleashed firefights that turned the northern city of Culiacan into a war zone with 30 dead, authorities said on Jan. 6. 

At least three people died in clashes in the Mexican state of Sinaloa after the arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of notorious drug lord El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.

Mexico extradited its drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to New York on Jan. 19, likely ending a decades-long criminal career that included two jail breaks and a lead role in a national drug war, the day before Donald Trump assumes the U.S. presidency. 

Mexico recaptured the world's top drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in a pre-dawn shootout and chase through drains on Jan. 8, returning him to the same prison he escaped from six months ago, in a boost for the beleaguered government. 

Bullet holes on roofs, charred cars and deserted villages were left in the wake of a military operation to catch fugitive drug baron Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in northwest Mexico.
 

Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has escaped from a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City, authorities said on July 12, a second jail break in 14 years that deals an embarrassing blow to the government.

A gunfight between security forces and an armed group claimed the lives of at least 43 people in the state of Michoacan in southwestern Mexico on Friday.

The shoot-out, which lasted for about three hours and was probably drug-related, took place in Tanhuato near the Jalisco state border.