With President Biden scheduled to visit the country next week, Mexico on Thursday captured Ovidio Guzmán, one son of the notorious drug dealer known as El Chapo and himself a major fentanyl trafficker, the Washington Post reports.
Guzmán’s arrest was a point of pressure Biden had been putting on the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, seeing it as a sign of Mexico’s commitment to stem the flow of drugs coming into the United States from Mexico. Ovidio Guzmán’s father, Joaquín Guzmán, was captured by Mexican forces in 2014 with assistance from Barack Obama’s administration.
More than 900 army soldiers, national guard troops and state police officers captured Ovidio Guzmán in the western Mexican town of Culiacan, a place where army forces had previously detained him three years ago but released him and abandoned the town after it learned cartel forces were descending on the location to free their leader.
More fentanyl comes to the United States from Mexico than any other country. Mexican supplies surpassed the amount of fentanyl coming from China this year, although many of the components of the drug created in Mexico come from China.