Mexico investigates whether US lied about role in capture of drug lord

Mexico has launched an investigation into whether the US lied about its involvement in the capture and secretive transfer of a top Sinaloa cartel member in 2024, in what would be a potential violation of the country’s sovereignty.

The US has long denied it played any role in the operation to detain the drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, a founder of the Sinaloa cartel, inside Mexico. Recent reporting by the local media outlet Pie de Nota, however, suggested that the FBI was involved in his capture.

“If recent reports are confirmed,” said the Mexico attorney general, Ernestina Godoy, on Wednesday, “then all signs point to three serious issues: a series of violations of Mexican and international law; a pact made outside the bounds of the law; and a lie told by a US diplomat, which would constitute a breach of the cornerstone principle of good faith in diplomatic relations.”“The issue here is whether there was a violation of sovereignty,” said the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, at a news conference on Thursday.

Although the incident took place under the previous administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the row comes at an extremely delicate moment in US-Mexico relations.

Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to launch a ground invasion in Mexico to attack the drug cartels, ratcheting up fears for Mexican sovereignty. Meanwhile, in April, reports emerged that several CIA agents had been involved in a raid on a drug lab in northern Mexico, apparently without the approval or knowledge of the federal government.

Now, the potential direct involvement of a US agency in an operation on Mexican soil has again stirred fears over the presence of American operatives in Mexico.

In July 2024, Zambada García was tricked by fellow trafficker Joaquín Guzmán López, whose father was the drug lord known as “El Chapo”, into getting on a small plane inside Mexico and flying into Texas, where US authorities arrested them both at an airport near El Paso.

Mexico has questioned Washington numerous times about what role it played, and complained of being kept in the dark. The American ambassador at the time, Ken Salazar, insisted that the US was not involved.

After Mexican authorities insinuated Salazar had lied, the former ambassador on Wednesday reiterated his position: “It was not our plane, not our pilot, and not our operation,” he wrote on X. “La verdad es la verdad, the truth is the truth.”

But the plane in which the traffickers traveled was recently put on display in the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. A plaque next to the plane shared on social media notes that two FBI agents “successfully executed a highly complex, secretive and daring arrest of two of the world’s most wanted fugitives”.

Godoy said Mexican officials had attempted to inspect the plane in August 2024 but were barred from doing a thorough inspection or taking photographs. The Americans, she said, had also “provided false or inaccurate identification data for that aircraft”.