Officers introduced that they seized “varied weapons and armored automobiles… together with rocket launchers able to capturing down plane and destroying armored automobiles” on account of the raid. Such heavy military-grade weapons don’t simply materialize with out anyone realizing about them. Lots of people, in reality. Who offered them to Mencho’s paramilitary group? The place did they originate? Are there others? Officers received’t have the chance to interrogate Oseguera in regards to the influential individuals who have been on his payroll as he grew his ultra-violent cartel into a world powerhouse.
However in line with DEA intelligence, his cartel is price billions and has a presence in all 50 American states and 40 nations. Some American brokers consider the Mexican authorities by no means wished to take him alive. In reality, for many of his profession, as he was consolidating his energy, Mexican leaders have instructed the U.S. that their forces have been unable to search out and arrest him. What modified? Specialists consider no less than two issues.
First, Mexican leaders lastly obtained fed up with El Mencho’s blood-soaked reign. “The CJNG was public enemy primary” for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, Michael Chavarria, previously the Drug Enforcement Administration’s senior chief in Guadalajara, the Mexican cartels’ authentic base of operations, instructed The Cipher Transient. “It’s the one cartel out of favor with President Claudia Sheinbaum, particularly because it was answerable for the try on the lifetime of Safety Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, simply previous to Sheinbaum’s election.”
Garcia Harfuch, an aggressive, outspoken crime-fighter thought-about to be Mexico’s second strongest official, survived a cartel assassination try in 2020, when he was Mexico Metropolis’s police chief. He grew to become the CJNG’s implacable nemesis.
Second, beneath strain from President Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress, Sheinbaum and different prime officers began collaborating overtly with the U.S. army and intelligence group, an unthinkable occasion just some years in the past. However that modified with the election of Donald Trump.
The U.S. Navy’s Seal Staff 2 arrived in Mexico round Feb. 16, ostensibly for a coaching train with Mexican army counterparts aimed toward interdicting Chinese language shipments of chemical precursors used to make the lethal opioid fentanyl, which has killed tons of of 1000’s of People. The timing is noteworthy. In line with U.S. officers, Navy SEALs skilled elite Mexican navy particular forces models that captured, amongst others, notorious drug kingpins Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in 2016 and Rafael Caro Quintero in 2022.
For these operations and plenty of others, DEA brokers posted to Mexico and alongside the border supplied intelligence gleaned from scores of paid informants recruited over a long time. Many operations failed, apparently as a result of they have been compromised, however sufficient succeeded to persuade President Trump, who declared drug trafficking and unlawful migration prime nationwide safety threats, to order the CIA and different U.S. intelligence companies to step up their intelligence collections aimed on the Mexican underworld. The CIA reportedly added extra drone surveillance flights over the border area because of this.
However sharing intelligence with the Mexican authorities has all the time been a fraught enterprise. Some plans have been sluggish walked. For others, operational safety was compromised by corruption at each stage of the Mexican authorities. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, overtly disdained U.S. anti-drug efforts and famously stated he would deal with the crime cartels with “hugs, not bullets.”
“The CJNG established a nation-wide community of corrupt alliances amongst federal, state, and native police and regional army – adequate to afford them a level of safety,” Chavarria instructed us. The DEA had recruited loads of human sources inside Mexico over the a long time, however brokers complained. The issue was getting the Mexican authorities to make use of that intelligence to take motion in opposition to key cartel lieutenants.
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In December 2024, because the CJNG’s energy inside Mexico and world wide expanded precipitously, the Biden administration raised the reward for El Mencho from $10 million to $15 million.
As quickly as he took workplace for the second time, Trump designated the CJNG and different Mexican cartels as overseas terrorist organizations. Trump himself repeatedly pressed Sheinbaum to permit the U.S. army to mount anti-cartel operations deep in Mexican territory. She all the time refused. Trump and her workforce have been warned that such incursions would inflame Mexican politicians and certain backfire, damaging Sheinbaum’s capability to work with the U.S.
The compromise appears to have been that every one boots seen on the bottom and all triggers pulled can be strictly Mexican, whereas, behind the scenes, U.S. regulation enforcement, army and intelligence group personnel would supply “intelligence help,” as White Home spokesperson Karoline Leavitt posted yesterday on X.
Despite the fact that El Mencho has been declared lifeless, U.S. safety consultants say the battle on the cartels shouldn’t be even near being over.
“He died like a canine,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tex., a Navy SEAL veteran who has led Congressional anti-cartel initiatives, posted on X yesterday. “Trigger for celebration – completely – however not a victory lap. Now, greater than ever, it’s important to maintain the strain on the Mexican cartels.”
DEA veterans say that El Mencho will likely be rapidly changed by one among his key lieutenants, most likely his stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, 41, often known as El R-3, El JP, Tough Tres or just 03. He inherits narco DNA, not simply from Mencho, a farm boy-turned-enforcer however, much more importantly from the Valencia clan, who’re narco royalty.
“El Mencho married into the Valencia household, taking Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia as his spouse,” says Chavarria, an professional on the Valencias and writer of the e-book Junior, a couple of DEA penetration of the cartels. “This can be a frequent follow amongst drug trafficking households – designed to solidify loyalty and to guard in opposition to betrayal. Narco intermarriages have been and are commonly encountered in Mexico’s underworld.”
“The operation in opposition to Mencho is extra about cracking the concept highly effective cartel leaders function with impunity than bringing in regards to the downfall of a cartel,” says Carlos Olivo, previously DEA’s agent in cost in Guadalajara and assistant agent in cost in the important thing border metropolis of El Paso. “Mencho had close to absolute management in that space of Jalisco and for that to be penetrated and profitable exhibits us {that a} keen associate can certainly flip the tide in Mexico,” he instructed The Cipher Transient.
Olivo, an ex-Marine who led a DEA workforce looking Mencho till not too long ago and is now writing a e-book in regards to the CJNG, warns that taking down the kingpin and his successors is “only one pillar. Corrupt politicians and banking and enterprise sectors have to be subsequent.”
With the stakes within the billions and highly effective, revered households concerned within the nation’s politics, banking and enterprise sectors, and cleansing up Mexico’s establishments will take greater than firepower and good intelligence.
“For us People, actuality received’t change,” says Chavarria. “Identical medicine coming throughout, due to our demand. Identical violence in Mexico. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s a small skirmish victory in a chronic drug battle. There will likely be extra Menchos. On a optimistic observe, nonetheless, no kingpin can final ceaselessly. They will run however they can not escape their eventuality. Kingpins fall.”
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