Behind the New Indictments of El Chapo’s Sons, Rivalry Seethed Between Agencies

Last May, a crew of federal brokers chasing the sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord often called El Chapo, caught a break.

Through a mix of digital knowledge and human intelligence, the brokers had tracked one of many sons — Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar — to a location within the western Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Eager to leap into motion, the crew ready to work with the Mexican army and go after Mr. Guzmán Salazar, one of many world’s most needed criminals.

But ultimately, in keeping with data obtained by The New York Times and three folks conversant in the matter, they have been informed to face down by the Justice Department. Another federal company, the Drug Enforcement Administration, was individually investigating Mr. Guzmán’s sons and it was thought that any lively measures to take them into custody might disrupt that inquiry — and even get folks killed.

Under the perfect circumstances, it’s difficult for U.S. federal brokers to chase drug lords in Mexico, the place they’re required to work with native companions who can typically be unreliable or untrustworthy. But the episode involving Mr. Guzmán Salazar — one in every of 4 sons of El Chapo who’re often called the Chapitos — factors to an issue nearer to residence: the rivalries that may erupt when completely different regulation enforcement companies go after the identical targets.

The quarrel on this case pitted officers on the D.E.A., who helped convey a sprawling indictment towards the Chapitos in New York, towards federal prosecutors and brokers in Chicago, Washington and San Diego, who joined forces to convey their very own case towards Mr. Guzmán’s sons.

Neither the dispute nor its penalties have been seen final month when Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — flanked by representatives from all the companies — gathered in Washington to announce the brand new indictments towards the Chapitos. Mr. Garland celebrated the collective fees as a sweeping assault towards the flexibility of the Guzmáns’ group, the Sinaloa drug cartel, to ship fentanyl and different medication from Mexico throughout the U.S. border.

“The Justice Department is attacking every aspect of the cartel’s operations,” Mr. Garland stated.

This week, paying attention to the behind-the-scenes spat, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, despatched a letter to Mr. Garland and to the heads of three federal regulation enforcement companies, asking for a proof about how the pursuit of the New York case particularly could have “impacted any attempts to arrest or capture” Mr. Guzmán’s sons.

The letter additionally requested any data associated to how the D.E.A., the F.B.I., a number of U.S. lawyer’s workplaces and Homeland Security Investigation, the investigative part of the Department of Homeland Security, had “de-conflicted” the assorted circumstances in regards to the Chapitos.

The roots of the squabble attain again to the autumn of 2021, when senior leaders on the D.E.A. realized that brokers in one in every of their high investigations items — often called the 959 Group — had covert sources who claimed that they had perception into the Chapitos’ bustling fentanyl enterprise, in keeping with a senior D.E.A. official.

Fentanyl, which kills tens of 1000’s of Americans a 12 months, was a high precedence for Anne Milgram, the administrator of the D.E.A., who vowed after taking management of the company to convey down the cartels most liable for promoting it.

The senior official stated the D.E.A. instantly noticed the opportunity of constructing a serious case that would assault not simply the Chapitos themselves, however their total fentanyl community: chemical producers, cash launderers, smugglers and distributors. The plan, the official added, was to convey collectively every thing the D.E.A. knew in regards to the Chapitos to bolster the 959 Group’s inquiry, which was being carried out with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Manhattan.

Around the identical time, federal prosecutors in Chicago, San Diego and Washington — a few of whom had been investigating the Chapitos for the higher a part of a decade — got here up with a unique plan. They needed to merge three separate circumstances that they had been engaged on involving Mr. Guzmán’s sons right into a single case primarily based in Chicago, in keeping with 5 folks conversant in the matter.

The Chicago case didn’t focus immediately on the Chapitos’ fentanyl operation, nevertheless it took a sweeping have a look at the lads’s drug gross sales and violent crimes reaching again, in some cases, to 2008. It was constructed on the work of a coalition of brokers from the D.E.A., the F.B.I. and Homeland Security Investigations and integrated an enormous trove of proof from a secure of cooperating witnesses and an preliminary spherical of indictments towards the Chapitos.

Jesús Alfredo, for instance, had first been charged in Chicago in 2015 and his brother, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, had first been charged in San Diego one 12 months earlier. Prosecutors in Washington had unsealed fees towards their two half brothers — Ovidio Guzmán López and Joaquín Guzmán López — in 2019, simply days after the daddy was convicted on all fees at his personal trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

The two sides — these concerned within the Manhattan case and people concerned within the Chicago case — disagree on what occurred subsequent.

Five folks related to the Chicago prosecution declare that the D.E.A. pulled its sources out of their broader investigation simply because it was reaching completion in favor of the New York fentanyl case. The senior D.E.A. official stated the brokers engaged on the Chicago case have been merely informed to place their involvement in it on maintain till the battle was resolved by way of a type of mediation course of.

In the tip, the senior D.E.A. official stated, officers on the Justice Department, serving as arbiters, secured an settlement about tips on how to proceed. The consolidated Chicago case might transfer ahead, the D.E.A. official stated, offered that the prosecutors in command of it coordinated with their New York counterparts and didn’t take any “proactive” measures that may expose the sources working with the 959 Group or in any other case hurt the New York prosecution.

But some folks related to the Chicago case noticed issues otherwise. They believed the Justice Department had successfully ordered them to face down on bringing their up to date indictment till the prosecutors in New York had an opportunity to catch up and end their work.

Fights amongst competing law-enforcement companies are, in fact, routine in high-profile legal circumstances. Over the years, a number of law-enforcement companies — from New York to Nogales, Ariz. — took half within the hunt for the elder Mr. Guzmán, resulting in his ultimate arrest in 2016 and his extradition to the United States in 2017.

By the time El Chapo went to trial in Brooklyn, he was already going through indictment in six different cities. He was convicted in early 2019, largely primarily based on accounts from a number of former aides who testified towards him and on refined wiretaps of his communications system.

But each side appear to agree that the dispute over the dueling Chapitos circumstances was extra painful and contentious than typical.

Indeed, the Justice Department stepped in once more final spring because the F.B.I. and Homeland Security Investigations homed in on a few of the males. There have been already provisional arrest warrants in Mexico for all 4 Chapitos primarily based on the pre-existing indictments, and a number of other folks concerned within the consolidated case stated that when the opportunity of an arrest arose in May 2022, they needed to take it.

But when phrase reached the D.E.A., the company despatched up an alarm, the senior D.E.A. official stated. Any try to go after the Chapitos at that time would have risked the lifetime of no less than one of many 959 Group’s delicate sources, the official stated.

The D.E.A. official additionally famous that the company by no means sought to cease the Mexican authorities from taking down the Chapitos on their very own. And in January they did simply that: Mexican safety forces arrested Ovidio Guzmán López.

The seize got here after the Mexican authorities had briefly detained Mr. Guzmán López after which launched him in October 2019 as cartel gunmen unleashed a wave of gun assaults, burned vehicles and took members of the safety forces hostage.

It stays unclear when Mr. Guzmán López could be extradited to the United States and, if he in the end is, whether or not he’ll stand trial on the New York fentanyl fees or on one of many different indictments. His brothers stay at giant in Mexico.

Complicating issues, the flurry of exercise involving the Chapitos has come at a second of a profound rigidity between U.S. and Mexican officers over their deteriorating law-enforcement relationship — and particularly, the difficulty of who’s in charge for the scourge of fentanyl.

In February, Ms. Milgram lashed out on the Mexican authorities, saying officers there had supplied no help to U.S. brokers engaged on circumstances involving fentanyl from Mexico. Weeks later, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shot again with baseless claims that his nation had nothing to do with the drug.

Even the Chapitos themselves have waded into the fray.

This month, they launched a letter to the Mexican news media, denying the U.S. authorities’s claims that they deal in fentanyl in any respect.

“We have never produced, manufactured or marketed fentanyl or any of its derivatives,” the letter stated. “We are victims of persecution and they made us a scapegoat.”