Mexico detains alleged trafficker wanted in novel California narco-terrorism case

Mexican authorities have captured the lead defendant in a San Diego-based federal indictment that was the first in the nation to allege narco-terrorism charges against suspected drug traffickers, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.

Federal prosecutors in San Diego alleged last year that Pedro Inzunza Noriega had been a prolific cocaine trafficker since the early 2000s, and that more recently he became a leader of “one of the largest and most sophisticated fentanyl production networks in the world.” Prosecutors said Inzunza Noriega led a faction of the Sinaloa cartel.

Patel posted on social media last week that Inzunza Noriega was captured in Mexico on U.S. charges, though he provided no details of the operation.

Mexican media reported that Inzunza Noriega — who goes by the monikers “Sagitario” and “El de la Silla,” a reference to the wheelchair he has used since he was partially paralyzed in a shooting by a rival cartel — was captured on New Year’s Eve morning in Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa.

His arrest came about a month after his son, Pedro “Pichón” Inzunza Coronel, the No. 2 defendant in the San Diego indictment, was killed by Mexican military personnel in Sinaloa, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

RELATED: California prosecutors unseal first ever narco-terrorism indictment against Mexican drug traffickers

The father-son duo made international headlines in May when the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against them and five other defendants that for the first time alleged narco-terrorism charges against Mexico-based suspected drug traffickers. The Trump administration paved the way for such charges early last year when it designated the Sinaloa cartel and five other Mexican criminal groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

According to U.S. officials, Inzunza Noriega was one of three top leaders of the Beltrán Leyva organization, which was once one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels. Prosecutors said the group, so named for the five Beltrán Leyva brothers who once led it, was previously its own organization that was separate from, but aligned with, the Sinaloa cartel. More recently, it has become a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, according to U.S. officials.

The Beltrán Leyva organization’s two other alleged leaders — Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, alias “El Musico,” and Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, alias “Chapo Isidro” — remain at large. Both have been indicted in multiple federal districts in the U.S., including San Diego.

As for the father-son duo of Inzunza Noriega and Inzunza Coronel, prosecutors alleged that over the past several years they “trafficked tens of thousands of kilograms of fentanyl into the United States.”

Prosecutors said that in December 2024, Mexican authorities raided multiple fentanyl production labs across Sinaloa that were allegedly controlled by the father and son and made the world’s largest ever fentanyl seizure, which totaled more than 3,300 pounds of the ultra-potent drug.

About six months later, at the news conference in downtown San Diego announcing the narco-terrorism charges against the father and son, San Diego-area U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon issued a warning: “To the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, you are no longer the hunters, you are the hunted. You will be betrayed by your friends, you will be hounded by your enemies, and you will ultimately find yourself and your fates here, in a courtroom in the Southern District of California.”

Gordon and his office declined to comment Monday on Inzunza Noriega’s arrest and questions about when he might be extradited to San Diego. Of the seven people named in the indictment, two have since been brought to San Diego to face charges.