On October 15, Mexican general Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was arrested as he stepped off a plane in Los Angeles. He was subsequently charged with four counts of drug trafficking and money laundering during the period of his tenure as defense secretary in the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–18).

Denied bail, he is now awaiting transferal to New York to stand trial at the same Eastern District Court of New York that convicted Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and is currently trying former security minister Genaro García Luna. If found guilty, the seventy-two-year-old retired general faces thirty years in prison, effectively a life sentence.

The charges allege that Cienfuegos, known as “El Padrino” or the Godfather, accepted millions of dollars in bribes from a cell of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel known as H2 in order to facilitate the manufacture, export to the United States, and distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana.