This week, two former senior officials from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, both accused by US prosecutors of ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, surrendered to US authorities in separate events.
Retired Mexican Army General Gerardo Mérida Sánchez, former Minister of Public Security for the state of Sinaloa, surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service after crossing the U.S. border in Hermosillo, Sonora. He was arrested and appeared in court in Tucson, Arizona, before being transported to New York. This afternoon, he pleaded “not guilty.”
Mérida Sánchez was one of nine Mexican officials indicted by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Court in late April, in an unprecedented targeting of Mexican politicians and security figures accused of working for the “Los Chapitos” faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Mérida Sánchez was the security chief of the state of Sinaloa between April 2023 and December 2024, when she resigned after violence between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel resulted in a massive increase in gunfights, murders, and disappearances.
In October 2024, the "Mayo Zambada" faction of the Sinaloa Cartel dropped leaflets on Culiacán accusing the "Chapitos" faction of acting with government support, a claim that Mérida Sánchez denied.
Today, Enrique Díaz Vega, the former Secretary of Administration and Finance of the state of Sinaloa, also surrendered to U.S. authorities. Media reports say he turned himself in at a U.S. Consulate in Europe before being arrested and flown to New York. Díaz Vega was a close political ally and family friend of Rubén Rocha Moya, the Sinaloa governor who resigned two weeks ago after becoming the center of U.S. allegations of cartel corruption.
These two figures are the first to fall following increased US targeting of corrupt Mexican officials.
On April 29, the SDNY indicted Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, the mayor of Culiacán, and seven other Mexican officials on charges related to collaboration with the Sinaloa Cartel. The charges include a wide range of Sinaloa state figures, from politicians to police.
The lawsuit, which is based on the testimony of senior cartel figures who are cooperating with US justice, alleges a deep penetration of the cartel into state institutions, including interference in Moya's 2021 elections, meetings between officials and cartel leaders to negotiate non-compliance with the law, as well as kidnappings carried out by police on the orders of the cartel.
Mexican President Sheinbaum rejected an extradition request from US authorities, stating that Mexico would cooperate if evidence were made available, either from the US or from the investigation they themselves have already launched, writes Borderland Beat.
