EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Hundreds of supporters gathered at Juarez International Airport to welcome Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to the border on Friday.
Lopez Obrador and President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo were scheduled to tour a new government hospital in the late afternoon in Juarez.
The visit comes amid unanswered questions of how two top Sinaloa cartel leaders ended up in U.S. custody after an airplane that took off from Mexico brought them to a small New Mexico airport just across the state line from Texas.
Lopez Obrador says he doesn’t know that himself.
“We are going to wait, but it’s true they (U.S. authorities) have not delivered sufficient information,” the president said at a Friday morning news conference broadcast on social media. “We need to know if there was a deal and if it was two people of their own accord or if a foreign agency intervened. What we are absolutely sure of is that the Mexican government did not intervene.”
U.S. federal agents on July 25 took into custody Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez at the Doña Ana County (New Mexico) International Jetport.
Guzman Lopez was flown to face federal drug charges in Chicago the next day while Zambada, reputed cofounder of the Sinaloa cartel, remains jailed in El Paso. His lawyer says he expects Zambada to face trial not in Texas but in New York.
The president of Mexico says the U.S. has shared it had been talking to Guzman Lopez for some time and that the airplane arrived not just with Guzman Lopez but with Zambada.
“That is the information. There has been nothing more,” Lopez Obrador said at his news conference. “What happened to the pilot, for instance, what did they do with him? Who was the pilot and, of course, do they know where the airplane took off? And we want to know more about the negotiation, if it was a deal or, as Zambada’s lawyer has said, that he was detained” against his will.
Zambada, 76, allegedly has led one of the most ruthless criminal organizations in the world since his partner Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited to the U.S. in 2017.
U.S. officials blame the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for much of the illegal fentanyl exports that have led to the deaths of thousands of Americans in the past few years.
AMLO: Cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, not free rein
Lopez Obrador emphasized that Mexico is a sovereign nation and it’s his duty to inform his citizens of any U.S. involvement in the country.
“We constantly assist, we constantly detain criminals, destroy (illegal drug) labs – more than ever before. We do it because we cannot allow illicit activities and also for solidarity with a friendly, neighboring government, for human beings who are suffering the drug pandemic, especially the consumption of fentanyl that causes so many deaths,” the Mexican president said on Friday.
He said he has met with Republican and Democrat lawmakers who wanted him to talk to China to stop illicit precursor chemical shipments to Mexico. Lopez Obrador said he sent a letter to the Chinese president asking as much.
“We have made progress but we don’t want things to go back to the way they were, that (American) agencies came in and from the U.S. Embassy directed (Mexican) armed units and executed plans like ‘Fast and Furious’ that introduced guns to Mexico that killed Mexicans and Americans,” Lopez Obrador said. “We stopped that. We continue to cooperate but with the understanding we are a sovereign country.”
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