El Chapo's ex-wife, daughter among 17 relatives who crossed US border in surprise deal: reports
The ex-wife of jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and 16 other relatives strolled across the US southern border as part of a secret plea deal with the feds, according to reports.
Griselda Lopez Perez, who was married to the notorious former Sinaloa drug cartel boss, her daughter and other kin entered the US at the Tijuana/San Diego crossing Friday — a move believed to be tied to the government's case against El Chapo's youngest son, Mexico News Daily reported.
5 Drug trafficker El Chapo's ex-wife and 16 other relatives entered the US Friday as part of a deal with the feds.
Blog del Narco
'It's clear that with his family going to the United States, it's connected to this negotiation or plea deal opportunity provided by the Department of Justice itself,' Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch told the Spanish-language outlet Radio Formula on Wednesday.
Video footage posted on X by the outlet on Tuesday shows the drug trafficker's family lugging suitcases as they wait to be processed at the border — reportedly packing $70,000 in cash with them.
Griselda's son with the drug lord, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a narcotrafficker known as 'El Raton,' or the Mouse, was extradited to the US in September 2023, eight months after he was captured in a massive raid by heavily armed Mexican police that left 29 dead.
5 Griselda Lopez Perez, the ex-wife of jailed drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, entered the US with 16 relatives.
5 Ovidio Guzman Lopez, the youngest son of jailed drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, is facing charges in Chicago.
Guzman Lopez, 35, is one of the four El Chapo sons known as 'Los Chapitos,' and was charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and other counts after being extradited to the US.
According to court records, he pleaded guilty to five counts in the federal indictment and was scheduled for a 'status hearing' in the case in Illinois on Monday — three days after his mom crossed the border.
However, those proceedings were scrapped, and he is now due to appear for a plea hearing on July 9.
US prosecutors have not revealed the terms of a possible plea offer nor how the family's arrival may be tied to it. The Mexican ministry told CNN that the relatives themselves were not wanted on charges there.
5 Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, once one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers, is serving life at a Colorado prison.
Newsflash
5 Ovidio Guzman's pending guilty plea is believed to be behind his family's deal with the FBI to enter the US.
Blog del Narco
The elder Guzman was once one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Under his leadership, the Sinaloa cartel grew to one of the largest importers of narcotics into the US.
He was arrested and extradited to the US in 2017 and was later convicted on drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges and sentenced to life in prison.
He is being held at ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Colorado.
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Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story
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Officials, he said, followed a strategy of focusing on the minority of violent convicted criminals so they could justify enforcement policies that are proving to be less popular. 'I think they know that if they were honest with the American public that they're arresting people who cook our food, wash dishes in the kitchen, take care of people in nursing homes, people who are just living in part of the community … there's a large segment of the public, including a large segment of Trump's own supporters, who would be uncomfortable and might even oppose those kinds of immigration practices.' 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ICE data shows that about 31% of the immigrants arrested across the L.A. region from June 1 to June 26 had criminal convictions, 11% had pending criminal charges and 58% were classified as 'other immigration violator,' which ICE defines as 'individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action.' The L.A. region's surge in arrests of noncriminals has been more dramatic than the U.S. as a whole: Arrests of immigrants with no criminal convictions climbed nationally from 57% in April to 69% in June. Federal raids here have also been more fiercely contested in Southern California - particularly in L.A. County, where more than 2 million residents are undocumented or living with undocumented family members. 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As White House chief adviser on border policy Tom Homan put it: 'If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem.' Still, things did not really pick up until May, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE's top field officials to shift to more aggressive tactics: arresting undocumented immigrants, whether or not they had a criminal record. Miller set a new goal: arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day, a quota that immigration experts say is impossible to reach by focusing only on criminals. 'There aren't enough criminal immigrants in the United States to fill their arrest quotas and to get millions and millions of deportations, which is what the president has explicitly promised,' Bier said. 'Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there's half a million removable noncitizens who have criminal convictions in the United States. Most of those are nonviolent: traffic, immigration offenses. It's not millions and millions.' By the time Trump celebrated six months in office, DHS boasted that the Trump administration had already arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants. '70% of ICE arrests,' the agency said in a news release, 'are individuals with criminal convictions or charges.' But that claim no longer appeared to be true. While 78% of undocumented immigrants arrested across the U.S. in April had a criminal conviction or faced a pending charge, that number had plummeted to 57% in June. In L.A., the difference between what Trump officials said and the reality on the ground was more stark: Only 43% of those arrested across the L.A. region had criminal convictions or faced a pending charge. Still, ICE kept insisting it was 'putting the worst first.' As stories circulate across communities about the arrests of law-abiding immigrants, there are signs that support for Trump's deportation agenda is falling. A CBS/YouGov poll published July 20 shows about 56% of those surveyed approved of Trump's handling of immigration in March, but that dropped to 50% in June and 46% in July. About 52% of poll respondents said the Trump administration is trying to deport more people than expected. When asked who the Trump administration is prioritizing for deporting, only 44% said 'dangerous criminals.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have repeatedly accused Trump of conducting a national experiment in Los Angeles. 'The federal government is using California as a playground to test their indiscriminate actions that fulfill unsafe arrest quotas and mass detention goals,' Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom told The Times. 'They are going after every single immigrant, regardless of whether they have a criminal background and without care that they are American citizens, legal status holders and foreign-born, and even targeting native-born U.S. citizens.' 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In the rush to blast out mugshots of some of the most criminal L.A. immigrants, the Trump administration left out a key part of the story. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, its staff notified ICE on May 5 of Veneracion's pending release after he had served nearly 30 years in prison for the crimes of assault with intent to commit rape and sexual penetration with a foreign object with force. But ICE failed to pick up Veneracion and canceled its hold on him May 19, a day before he was released on parole. A few weeks later, as ICE amped up its raids, federal agents arrested Veneracion on June 7 at the ICE office in L.A. The very next day, DHS shared his mugshot in a news release titled 'President Trump is Stepping Up Where Democrats Won't.' The same document celebrated the capture of Phan, who served nearly 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder. CDCR said the Board of Parole Hearings coordinated with ICE after Phan was granted parole in 2022. Phan was released that year to ICE custody. But those details did not stop Trump officials from taking credit for his arrest and blaming California leaders for letting Phan loose. 'It is sickening that Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass continue to protect violent criminal illegal aliens at the expense of the safety of American citizens and communities,' DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
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2nd whistleblower speaks out on Emil Bove appellate court appointment
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UPI
4 hours ago
- UPI
2nd whistleblower speaks out on Emil Bove appellate court appointment
Emil Bove, attorney for former President Donald Trump, sits in the courtroom at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York in 2024. Bove's nomination to a lifetime appeals court judgeship is challenged by a second whistleblower alleging misconduct. File photo by Jeenah Moon/UPI | License Photo July 27 (UPI) -- A second whistleblower has come forward in the appointment of Emil Bove to a lifetime appellate court judgeship, saying Bove directed attorneys to give false information and defy court orders. Bove, a former member of President Donald Trump's criminal defense team in his fraud case in New York, is the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Trump nominated him for Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Philadelphia. The second whistleblower, who is not named, is a career Department of Justice attorney and is represented by Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal organization that helps public- and private-sector workers report and expose wrongdoing. They disclosed evidence to the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General that corroborates the first whistleblower's claims that Bove and other senior DOJ officials were "actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law," Whistleblower Aid said. "What we're seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump Administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person's fundamental rights not only under our Constitution, but their natural rights as humans," Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj said in a statement. "What this means is that federal career attorneys who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution are now being pressured to abdicate that promise in favor of fealty to a single person, specifically Donald Trump. Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States," he said. The DOJ defended Bove. "Emil Bove is a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again," spokesperson Gates McGavick told CNN. "He will make an excellent judge -- the Department's loss will be the Third Circuit's gain." Bove has contradicted the complaints. "I don't think there's any validity to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed ... calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge," Bove told the Senate the committee during his confirmation hearing. "I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order," Bove said. As Trump's personal attorney, Bove defended him in his federal criminal cases, which were dismissed after his reelection. He also represented Trump in his New York hush-money case. In that case, he was found guilty of all 34 charges. The previous whistleblower Erez Reuveni provided documents earlier this month saying that Bove is the person who gave the Trump administration the directive to ignore a court order to stop flights taking migrants to a Salvadoran prison. Bove allegedly said to prepare to tell the courts "f- you." Bove told Congress he doesn't remember using the F-word and sidestepped other questions about the incident. Reuveni was fired from his job as the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation after he disclosed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported in error. He worked for the DOJ for 15 years. The Senate gave its preliminary approval for Bove's appointment. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said "Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there's no scandal here. Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn't misconduct - it's what lawyers do."
