The U.S. government knew there was a possibility that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was being transported against his will to U.S. soil on July 25, 2024, the day he was kidnapped by Joaquín Guzmán López. However, U.S. agents were not certain if this would actually happen, according to experts.
Upon hearing this, the agents went to Doña Ana Airport, located in the community of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, 30 minutes from the federal offices in El Paso, and waited for the Beechcraft King Air 350 to land. The plane was indeed carrying “El Mayo” Zambada.
Bill Provance, the administrator of Doña Ana Airport, recalls seeing three men disembark from the aircraft, as he told this weekly publication. However, it wasn’t until hours later that he learned that the men awaited by HSI and FBI agents were El Mayo and Joaquín Guzmán, while the third was the pilot, who remains unidentified.
In his guilty plea, Joaquín Guzmán López stated that “the United States government never requested, induced, sanctioned, approved, or tolerated the hijacking.”
For analysts like Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, former director of the Cisen in Mexico, and Mike Vigil, a former DEA undercover agent, it is entirely impossible that the U.S. didn’t know that Ismael Zambada was also on the plane.
“It’s impossible to do it without having previously arranged it (with the United States). That’s why they were waiting for them,” Valdés Castellanos explained.
Vigil explained that these types of operations do occur, and that it makes no sense that the U.S. was unaware of what its agents were doing. Even when there is skepticism about what the informant, collaborator, or anyone wishing to surrender proposes, there is always someone who knows what is happening.
“The United States knew that Mayo Zambada was on that plane because it was something Joaquín Guzmán had already negotiated with federal agents. What they didn’t know was if he could actually pull it off, because realistically, a thousand things could have happened,” Vigil noted.
Andrew Erskine, a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, observed that Guzmán López’s plan in surrendering was to obtain a series of legal benefits for himself and his brother Ovidio if he surrendered and turned in the drug lord.
Without specifying whether the entire negotiation took place in person or by phone, Erskine indicated that the reason for the surrender was the benefits, although according to Vigil, it’s impossible that these agreements were made in person given precedents like that of Vicente Zambada Niebla, who met with U.S. agents in 2009 and was arrested a few hours later.
“Joaquín (Guzmán López) knew that if he met with the agents, they could arrest him, which is why everything was done by phone. These kinds of agreements are almost always like that,” Vigil observed.
Regarding the negotiations that El Chapo Guzmán’s son may have conducted with the U.S., El Mayo’s surrender must have always been on the table, and the benefits would have only been promises made by the agents.
The Silence
Guzmán López’s testimony, very similar to that given by Zambada García’s lawyer days after his arrest, indicates that he summoned El Mayo to Culiacán to resolve a dispute that existed in the city.
When Zambada García arrived at the meeting point, he was led to a private room inside the house located in the Huertos del Pedregal country club. Once inside, Guzmán López locked the door, and through a window whose glass he had removed, several men entered and subdued El Mayo. They then took him to an airstrip near La Palma, in Navolato, where they put him on a plane that flew him to New Mexico, United States.
Omitting the names of the people who would be involved in the meeting, El Güero Moreno, which is Joaquín Guzmán López’s nickname in Culiacán, said that he gave Zambada García a drug to drink to dope him during the flight, and that he would have done the same.
