Mexico’s top security official confirmed Tuesday that 17 relatives of high-ranking cartel leaders crossed into the United States last week, as part of what appears to be a controversial deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration a move critics say shows the president was manipulated into allowing a dangerous crime family into the country.
Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch confirmed an earlier report that family members of Ovidio Guzmán López the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán were allowed to enter the U.S. Video footage captured the family rolling suitcases as they crossed the border from Tijuana into the hands of waiting U.S. agents.
Guzmán López, who was extradited to the United States in 2023 on multiple drug trafficking charges, is one of the so-called “Chapitos” who inherited leadership of a major Sinaloa Cartel faction after their father’s arrest. There had been speculation that he might plead guilty in exchange for leniency or a broader cooperation deal.
During a radio interview, García Harfuch said it was obvious to Mexican authorities that the family’s border entry was part of a negotiation between Guzmán López and the Trump administration. The timing and nature of their crossing with no effort to conceal it suggest it was pre-arranged.
He noted that Guzmán López had already begun implicating other members of organized crime groups, likely as part of a deal with U.S. prosecutors. This suggests, Harfuch said, that the entry of the 17 family members is connected to those cooperation efforts.
“It is evident that his family is going to the U.S. because of a negotiation or an offer that the Department of Justice is giving him,” García Harfuch said.
Critics argue that Trump’s administration opened the door for a notorious criminal family to step onto U.S. soil under the guise of a legal arrangement, potentially risking national security. Others see the move as a dangerous precedent one where justice negotiations may come at the cost of letting in the very people once tied to a brutal narco empire.