In a spectacular move in late July, U.S. authorities arrested notorious Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada on the tarmac of a small airport near El Paso, Texas, after more than 40 years of evading capture.
The operation was hailed as one of the most significant busts in the history of the war on drugs. It also shed light on a little-known U.S. agency with enormous global reach involved in the arrest: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Created under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, HSI has built a large presence around the world in recent years. With more than 7,000 field agents, it is the second-largest federal law enforcement agency in the United States after the FBI. It has offices in more than 50 countries, and its largest international outpost is in Mexico.
President George W. Bush gave HSI broad jurisdiction at its creation — from sex trafficking to financial crimes, terrorism, human trafficking and art theft. Agents have customs authority to search computers and cargo without a warrant. They have access to U.S. bank records and Treasury data on international money-laundering schemes and the ability to issue U.S. visas to informants who face danger abroad.
In June, HSI helped repatriate pre-Hispanic artifacts stolen from Seattle to Mexico.
But it is south of the Rio Grande where HSI has quietly led the fight with Mexican authorities to take down high-profile criminals, from major drug traffickers to human smugglers and arms dealers.
Its role in combating organized crime in Mexico expanded significantly under the Trump and Biden administrations as its focus shifted to the southwest border. A surge in illegal migration prompted the U.S. government to target criminal groups that operate human trafficking networks and traffic in drugs like fentanyl, the highly addictive opioid that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans since it was introduced to U.S. streets more than a decade ago.
Growing isolation of the DEA in Mexico
HSI has quietly helped capture some of the biggest U.S. security targets in Mexico in recent years, U.S. and Mexican officials say. HSI’s emergence as a major player in Mexico comes as the DEA, once the leading agency in the fight against drugs, has been stymied by leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He has called DEA agents rogue actors in Mexico who do not respect the country’s sovereignty.
At the same time, HSI officials in Mexico City were deepening ties with their Mexican security counterparts, Mexican and U.S. government officials say.
HSI now works with the largest unit of Mexican-approved security officials of any U.S. law enforcement agency in the country, U.S. and Mexican officials say. Members of the Mexican units are polygraphed for cartel ties and trained in the United States.
Bilateral security cooperation remains strong, officials from both countries say. Last year, there were more extraditions of U.S. security targets from Mexico than at almost any time in the past 20 years, many of them HSI targets.
“It’s a lesser-known agency with a bigger impact,” said Oscar Hagelsieb, former deputy director for organized crime at HSI. The agency’s low profile abroad is intentional.
Early signals from Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum suggest collaboration with HSI is likely to expand, Mexican and U.S. officials say. The agency worked with senior members of Sheinbaum’s security team when she was mayor of Mexico City. In 2022, HSI provided intelligence that resulted in the largest cocaine seizure in the city: some 1.6 tons of bricks wrapped in plastic and stamped with fake Prada and Tesla logos.
‘The Nini’ and ‘The Mouse’
In 2023, HSI provided intelligence to Mexican law enforcement officials that led to the capture of Néstor Isidro “El Nini” Pérez Salas, the top hitman for “Los Chapitos,” the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. They inherited their father’s drug empire—a faction of the Sinaloa cartel—after he was captured in 2016 and sent to a maximum-security prison in the U.S. three years later.
More recently, Biden highlighted the importance of the capture of Zambada, a target with a $15 million price on his head who was on the DEA’s most wanted list. The DEA filed the charges against Zambada and Guzmán López but was not involved in their capture, U.S. officials said.
One of HSI’s biggest drug trafficking targets in Mexico was Ovidio Guzmán López, another son of El Chapo known as “El Ratón.” Ovidio had become a pioneer in the fentanyl business in Sinaloa, according to Mexican and U.S. officials, and the operator of a drug lab in Sinaloa.
In 2019, Mexican Army special forces, using intelligence from HSI, captured Ovidio in a house in an upmarket neighborhood of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state and a cartel stronghold. But hundreds of gunmen mobilized by his brothers laid siege to the city, threatening to execute captured soldiers and firing on a housing complex for military families. Within hours, López Obrador was forced to release Ovidio to avoid a “bloodbath,” the president said.
In 2023, also with intelligence from HSI, the Mexican military struck again in an operation that had been planned for months, Mexican officials said. Hundreds of Mexican special forces in Black Hawk helicopters attacked Ovidio’s vacation resort in a town near Culiacán. About 100 gunmen and 10 Mexican soldiers were killed in the battle, according to people familiar with the operation.
To increase security cooperation under Sheinbaum’s administration, U.S. law enforcement agencies will need to keep a low profile, said Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute.
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