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A Mexican lawmaker has been arrested by the DEA after voluntarily turning himself in to federal authorities on Saturday over allegations of partnering with the Sinaloa Cartel to import massive quantities of drugs into the United States.
Getting into it: The lawmaker was identified as Sinaloa Senator Enrique Inzunza Cazárez, 53, who surrendered to DEA agents in San Diego and was placed into federal custody, according to multiple Mexican news outlets reporting on the arrest. He faces charges of narcotics importation conspiracy, possession of and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, and could face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Inzunza Cazárez is a member of Mexico’s ruling Morena party who has held his Senate seat since August 2024 and previously served as Sinaloa’s Secretary General under Governor Rubén Rocha Moya. He was widely considered a likely Morena candidate for governor in Sinaloa’s 2027 elections before the federal indictment dropped.
The April indictment alleges that Inzunza Cazárez personally met with Los Chapitos leaders and “agreed on specific plans for the government in Sinaloa, under Rocha Moya, to support and protect the cartel for favors from the cartel that, in turn, help the defendants and other corrupt officials in power.” Federal prosecutors specifically allege that Inzunza Cazárez worked with Díaz Vega to install corrupt officials inside the Sinaloa state government to protect the Chapitos’ drug trafficking operations and that the two men acted as middlemen between El Chapo’s sons and Governor Rocha Moya.
Inzunza Cazárez publicly denied the allegations against him as recently as Sunday on social media, just one day after the report of his Saturday surrender first emerged in Mexican media.
He also denied a May 2 report from Mexican newspaper El Universal claiming that his lawyers had been in talks with the DOJ about a voluntary surrender that would see him become a government cooperating witness, posting “utterly false” on X at the time.
