Sources from MILENIO confirmed that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be admitted to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, after the plane carrying him landed on U.S. territory shortly after 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 3.
It is noteworthy that, in the U.S. prison, Maduro will be a neighbor of several Mexican drug traffickers and criminals who are behind bars. HERE is a list of the most relevant names and how they were sent to the United States.
Ismael El Mayo Zambada: The kidnapping en route to the U.S.
On Thursday, July 25, 2024, it was reported that the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael El Mayo Zambada, had been arrested in Mexican territory and was on a plane headed to the United States. Hours later, it was learned that the drug lord wasn’t alone, but was accompanied by one of the sons of his partner Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán: Joaquín Guzmán López, who had allegedly kidnapped him.
Days later, Zambada García’s defense attorney, Frank Pérez, sent various media outlets a letter allegedly written by his client, in which he confirmed the version of having been kidnapped by one of the members of Los Chapitos.
In the letter, El Mayo revealed that he was tricked into meeting with two important political leaders of the state, a meeting that was also allegedly to include Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, El Chapo’s son, who took control of the organization after his father’s extradition to the United States.
“Joaquín Guzmán López asked me to attend a meeting to help resolve the differences between the political leaders of our state. I was aware of an ongoing dispute between Rubén Rocha Moya, governor of Sinaloa, and Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda, former federal deputy, mayor of Culiacán, and rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS), over who should lead that institution,” read a fragment of the letter. Recently, U.S. prosecutor Andrew Erskine recounted that Guzmán López summoned El Mayo Zambada—who was never referred to by his name, but only by the nickname “Individual A”—to a meeting that was actually a trap orchestrated by Los Chapitos.
During the hearing, it was detailed that Joaquín Guzmán López took El Mayo to a room—most likely at the Huertos del Pedregal ranch, on the outskirts of Culiacán—where workers of El Chapo’s son kidnapped him.
Subsequently, they put him in a van, took him to an airfield, then sedated him and put him on a small plane, along with Guzmán López.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Individual A (El Mayo Zambada) was sedated before the plane took off and landed in the United States.
Rafael Caro Quintero: Justice for Kiki Camarena
In 2025, the Mexican government orchestrated the extradition of more than 50 criminals to the United States, including none other than Rafael Caro Quintero, former leaders of Los Zetas, and several high-ranking members of Los Chapitos, a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
These extraditions took place in two separate events: the first on Thursday, February 27, 2025 (29 kingpins), and the most recent on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 (26 kingpins), as part of the security cooperation between the United States and Mexico.
The most prominent name on the first list was Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, whom the U.S. government had sought for decades for the murder of former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985.
The United States had identified the “Narco of Narcos” as one of the DEA’s most wanted fugitives, who was wanted by a New York court.
He was arrested on July 15, 2022, in Sinaloa, after the DEA placed him back on its most-wanted list and offered a $20 million reward (339,476,000 Mexican pesos) for information leading to his capture.
In 1984—four years after infiltrating Mexican criminal organizations—Kiki Camarena requested a transfer to Jalisco, where he managed to work as a farmer for the Guadalajara Cartel, a criminal group led by Rafael Caro Quintero, which at that time was considered the most dangerous in the country.
The Guadalajara Cartel is considered the first Mexican organization to dedicate itself exclusively to drug trafficking. Among its founders were kingpins such as Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, who facilitated the trafficking of opium, cocaine, and marijuana to the United States. Camarena quickly became an important figure within the Guadalajara Cartel, responsible for the security of the drug lords and their plantations in several states along Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Taking advantage of the trust the cartel leaders had placed in him, Enrique Camarena decided to investigate the drug trade in northern Mexico from the air. He flew in a small plane piloted by Alfredo Zavala—another DEA informant—and discovered, in the middle of the desert, a large green area with perfectly cultivated plants.
According to an article in MILENIO, it was a marijuana plantation the size of 1,470 soccer fields, located on a ranch called El Búfalo—belonging to Caro Quintero—in the state of Chihuahua, in the area known as the Golden Triangle.
Thus, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 7, 1984, Camarena coordinated with elements of the Mexican Army and the DEA to dismantle the ranch and seize just over 9,000 tons of marijuana, a blow to the Guadalajara Cartel equivalent to $8 million.
La Tuta: How the Founder of the Knights Templar Operated
Among the 55 drug lords extradited to the United States last year, with whom Nicolás Maduro will share a prison, stands out Servando Gómez Martínez, La Tuta, founder and leader of the Knights Templar, and also a key operator of La Familia Michoacana at one time.
While free, La Tuta was known for giving a series of public interviews. In one of them, he stated that the only politician who approached him at the time was the sister of former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, with whom he allegedly had ties.
Although the U.S. Department of Justice and the Mexican drug trafficker’s defense team have currently asked a New York judge to postpone the trial preparation hearing scheduled for December 9, 2025, in Manhattan, following the alleged initiation of negotiations between the two parties, La Tuta was once one of the United States’ top targets.
Servando Gómez Martínez, even before being extradited to the United States, was accused by the U.S. government of violating Section 960(a) of Title 21, which combines drug trafficking and terrorism offenses into a single article.
La Tuta liked to surround himself with people of Guatemalan origin, whom he hired to cultivate drugs or as hitmen.
This modus operandi connected him to Carlos Rosales Mendoza, El Carlitos or El Tísico, the godfather of the leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén.
According to a report prepared by the then Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the defunct Secretariat of Public Security, federal authorities described him as a fanatic of esotericism, a financial backer of politicians, and a strategist of media campaigns to discredit federal officials. The document listed each of his romantic partners, the places where he lived, the places he liked to visit, the vehicles he used, the arrest warrants and preliminary investigations against him, as well as his closest associates.
In the ministerial statement given by Servando Gómez Patiño, alias El Pelón, son of La Tuta, on January 29, 2009, he stated that his father began to get involved in marijuana trafficking on his own in 2001 or 2002.
Naasón Joaquín García and His Sins That Led Him to the US
Finally, there is the case of Naasón Merarí Joaquín García, whose religious organization, La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World), was embroiled in a sexual scandal in 2019 that allegedly dated back generations.
On December 8, 2014, followers of La Luz del Mundo suffered a major blow after the death of their leader, Samuel Joaquín Flores, who had inherited the position from his father not only through blood ties but also through a supposed divine calling.
The Netflix documentary “The Darkness of La Luz del Mundo” describes Samuel as a charismatic human being capable of moving large crowds, skills that would be very difficult to find in another leader, but which, given the need to have a leader as quickly as possible, led to the appointment of his son, Naasón Joaquín García, as his universal heir.
Unlike his father, Naasón was considered a “junior,” that is, a young man who grew up in his family’s wealth at the expense of the tithes of the followers of La Luz del Mundo.
Former members of La Luz del Mundo, close to the Joaquín García family, indicated that Naasón lived like a prince, surrounded by luxury cars and properties in every city where the religious group had a presence. He also habitually traveled on private jets, went horseback riding, and stayed in five-star hotels.
Although there were significant doubts about whether Naasón was the right person to lead the congregation, on December 14, 2014—days after his father’s death—the prince of La Luz del Mundo was received with open arms.
From then on, Naasón Joaquín García began a tour of various parts of the world to solidify his religious figure. He even founded his own television station, Berea Internacional, a media outlet that accompanied him to broadcast his message. It is said that between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2019, La Luz del Mundo began to become a more politicized organization.
However, Naasón’s true personality began to become evident. The Netflix documentary points out that the man was sarcastic and rude, which led him to form a kind of group of women who served him, to the point that he forced them to bathe him.
It was in this context that the first allegations of sexual abuse against the leader of La Luz del Mundo began to circulate on a Reddit forum.
In the forum, it was claimed that Naasón Joaquín García had several groups of women with different sexual tasks, ranging from performing stripper dances to women tasked with waking him up with oral sex or having sexual relations with animals while being filmed.
It was in June 2019—at the height of his leadership in La Luz del Mundo—that Naasón Joaquín García was arrested in the United States, where he was accused of more than 20 counts of rape, child pornography, and other sexual offenses.
The complaint was filed by a group of five women under the pseudonym Jane Doe, a term used in the United States to refer to anonymous victims of sexual assault.
Among the complainants, one of them stated that Naasón Joaquín García kept pornographic videos of his young female followers on his iPad.
During the proceedings against Naasón, it was noteworthy that the U.S. judges granted him bail of 90 million pesos. To put this into perspective, it was a measure that even Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t entitled to.
It should be noted that when the leader of La Luz del Mundo was arrested, two women were also apprehended, including Alondra Ocampo, who allegedly acted as a groomer for Naasón, but who, during the trial, was discovered to have also been a victim of abuse and manipulation.
The five Jane Does stated that Naasón Joaquín García forced them to have sexual relations, making them believe that they were chosen by God to please his representative on Earth.
For her part, Alondra Ocampo pleaded guilty to complicity and reached an agreement with U.S. authorities to testify against Naasón Joaquín García, after realizing that she had been sexually abused by him and by her own father, Samuel.
By 2020, it was expected that the leader of La Luz del Mundo would spend more than 24 years in prison, although the victims sought a life sentence. In addition to his sexual offenses, the United States was investigating Naasón Joaquín for money laundering and tax evasion of more than 360 million pesos and one million dollars.
In 2022, the five Jane Does began making public statements; however, Naasón Joaquín reached an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to plead guilty and thus reduce his sentence to 16 years in prison. That same year, in June, the former leader of La Luz del Mundo pleaded guilty to only three counts of sexual abuse, for which Judge Ronald Coen sentenced him to 16 years and eight months in prison, after calling him a predator and criticizing the families who didn’t support the victims in the legal process.
For her part, one of the Jane Does questioned the decision of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and stated that she decided to speak out because she had been promised that there would be no plea deal with the defendant.
The victims’ legal representative pointed out that, because the victims were Latina women, the sentence against the defendant was much lighter than expected, according to the Netflix documentary.
According to the California Attorney General’s Office, in 2019, Joaquín García was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport along with one of his assistants, Susana Medina Oaxaca, on charges of child sexual abuse, rape, possession of child pornography, and human trafficking.
Since then, he has remained incarcerated in federal prisons, first in Los Angeles and currently in the federal prison in Brooklyn, New York.
Recently, Naasón Joaquín García was again indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for allegedly belonging to a transnational criminal network that includes five alleged accomplices, among them his mother, Eva García de Joaquín, and his nephew, Joram Núñez Joaquín.
The federal trial formally began in New York with six criminal charges against the leader of the Church of La Luz del Mundo.
According to the New York Department of Justice, Naasón and his accomplices formed what is called the Joaquín LLDM Enterprise, an organization that allegedly exploited the structure of the Christian church to commit systematic sexual abuse of minors and women, sex trafficking, production of child pornography, forced labor, and financial crimes.
“A multi-year, nationwide investigation supported by dozens of courageous victims culminated in the charges filed today, stemming from decades of alleged exploitation and blatant abuse of young women and children,” said Ricky J. Patel, Special Agent in Charge of the New York office.
Source: Milenio
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