Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García He has pleaded guilty to the drug trafficking crimes for which he is being tried by a New York court. The co-founder of Sinaloa Cartel He thus accepts the maximum penalty, life imprisonment, which will surely include the sentence that Judge Brian M. Cogan must hand down on July 20, 2026, although he asked not to be confined in a maximum security prison.
The US Attorney’s Office has warned of “the serious security risks it represents” and maintains that the prisons proposed by the defense may “not be appropriate.”
He also requests that 15,000 million dollars be confiscated. This accounts for the criminal level of your prison organization. “It would be difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of the accused’s crimes and the scale of corruption, violence and other evils that he spread throughout Mexico, the United States and the world,” indicates the Prosecutor’s Office letter, which characterizes him as one of the “most prolific and powerful” drug traffickers.
According to data published by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there are 12,430 Mexican citizens in US federal prisons, which represents 8.1 percent of the entire federal prison population.
If the prisons of each state and local prisons are counted, where more than 90 percent of the prison population in the United States is found, there are many more, although statistics by nationality are not offered. But, What other high-profile Mexican prisoners are in US prisons? These are ten of the main ones.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel
He is serving a life sentence in the ADX Florence maximum security prison, in Colorado, after being convicted in 2019 in the United States for drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime.
Guzmán, who has carried out two escapes from Mexican prisons, then received a confiscation order of 12.6 billion dollars, which reflected the profits of the group under his joint leadership with ‘El Mayo’.
Ovidio Guzmán López, ‘the Mouse’
He is one of the sons of ‘El Chapo’ and, along with his brothers, one of the leaders of ‘Los Chapitos’the most powerful faction of the Sinaloa Cartel in recent years, accused of introducing fentanyl into the United States. He was briefly detained in 2019 and later released after a wave of drug violence in Culiacán. He was arrested again in 2023, the year in which the United States requested his extradition.
In 2025 he pleaded guilty before the Northern District Court of Chicago, as did his brother. Joaquín Guzmán López. He was transferred from Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to an unknown location, presumably due to his cooperation with authorities.
Rafael Caro Quintero, co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel
After spending almost 28 years imprisoned in Mexico, from 1985 to 2013, he was later recaptured in 2022 and extradited to the United States in 2025. He was claimed, among other things, for the kidnapping and murder of the DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena in 1985. For that crime he could face the death penalty.
He is imprisoned at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York. This is the same prison in which the former president of Venezuela is located, Nicolas Maduro since early January 2026. Caro Quintero awaits trial in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York, where he pleaded “not guilty” at his first appearance. One of his sons still leads a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, ‘El Viceroy’
Also known as ‘el Frequent’, he is the brother of Amado Carrillo Fuentesknown as ‘the Lord of the Skies’, and founder and leader of the Juarez Cartelin which ‘El Viceroy’ made his prison career.
After the death of his brother during plastic surgery, he assumed leadership of the organization, which was involved in a fierce confrontation with the Sinaloa Cartel. He was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to 28 years in prison, although he was later extradited to the United States, where the FBI had offered five million dollars for him. He has been in prison for more than 12 years.
Genaro García Luna, former Secretary of Security
He was Secretary of Public Security of Mexico and, as such, most responsible for the fight against organized crime during the government of Felipe Calderón.
He is the highest-ranking Mexican official convicted in the United States, after he was found guilty in New York in 2023 of cocaine trafficking, organized crime, and accepting million-dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. In October 2024 he was sentenced to 38 years in prison. He is in the high-security federal penitentiary in Lee, Virginia, after passing through the Oklahoma Federal Transfer Center.
Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, ‘Z-40’
Former leader of Los Zetas, one of the most violent criminal organizations in Mexico, ‘El Cuarenta’ began linked to the Gulf Cartel in the late 90s. Los Zetas were the bloodthirsty armed wing of this cartel, formed to recruit former members of the Army Special Forces. After the death of Heriberto Lazcano‘el Lazca’, Treviño Morales assumed the leadership of the group.
He was arrested on July 15, 2013 in Mexico and kept in custody until his transfer to the United States in February 2025, for which he has now been imprisoned for 13 years.
Omar Trevino Morales, ‘Z-42’
Brother of the ‘Z-40’ and his successor in the direction of The Zetas. He was arrested in Mexico in 2015, leaving the group beheaded and fragmented. And he was also transferred to US custody along with him and other Mexican drug trafficking leaders in 2025.
He is located at the Lewisburg Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. He was transferred there after threatening one of the guards at the Virginia detention center where he was held. “I’ll find out where you live,” he told her. “Give me a month and I will know everything about you,” he added, according to the correctional facility’s own report. He also told him that he had three thousand men under his command in Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Zetas cartel has practically dissolved, although its bloody trail continues in successor groups such as the Northeast Cartel. another brother, Jose Trevino Moraleswas prosecuted in the United States for money laundering related to racehorses.
Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, ‘El Nini’
Skills the head of security for Los Chapitos and one of the most important operational figures of the Sinaloa Cartel. He was arrested in November 2023 in Culiacán. At that time, the US Justice Department was offering a reward of three million dollars for him.
He was extradited to the United States in 2024, when he was 32 years old, and prosecuted for drug trafficking. He was accused of being a key player in fentanyl trafficking to the United States. The authorities have not specified which prison he is in.
Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, ‘Tony Montana’
Brother of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, ‘El Mencho’ (pictured), leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) despondent this year.
In 1999 he was arrested in the United States for heroin trafficking and deported to Mexico. He rose through the ranks in the CJNG until his new arrest in 2015, although he would be released due to procedural irregularities. He was arrested again in 2022 and in 2025 he was extradited to the United States along with the Treviño Morales brothers and other drug trafficking bosses.
Other prominent Mexican prisoners have been detained in the United States, such as the total Salvador Cienfuegosformer Mexican Defense Minister arrested in 2020, but returned to Mexico that same year. Or the governor of Tamaulipas, between 1999 and 2005, Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcabadetained in Italy and later extradited to the US, who was released in July 2024.
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