A man believed to be the leader of the Gulf drug cartel, which controls some of the most valuable and violently contested smuggling routes along the US border, has been arrested by Mexican marines, the navy announced.
If confirmed, the capture of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez on Wednesday could open a power vacuum and intensify a turf war south of the Texas border in northeast Mexico, a region that has seen some of the most horrific violence in the country’s six-year war among law-enforcement and rival gangs.
The navy said in a brief statement late on Wednesday that a man detained in the northern state of Tamaulipas said he was the capo known as “El Coss”. One of Mexico’s most-wanted men, the 41-year-old is charged in the US with drug-trafficking and threatening US law enforcement officials. US authorities offered US$5 million for information leading to his arrest.
The Mexican navy gave no details of his purported arrest but was expected to present the alleged drug boss to the media in Mexico City on Thursday morning.
The Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel was once one of Mexico’s strongest, smuggling and distributing tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana into the United States under the leadership of the Cardenas Guillen family, three brothers who took over from one another as their siblings were captured or killed.
Costilla was born in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas. He worked for several years as a local police officer before joining the Gulf Cartel in the 1990s and became a lieutenant for then-leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen.