Failed raid against El Chapo’s son leaves 8 dead in Mexico
CULIACAN, Mexico: Mexican security forces aborted an attempt to capture a son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman after finding themselves outgunned in a ferocious shootout with cartel henchmen that left at least eight people dead and more than 20 wounded, authorities said Friday.
The gunbattle Thursday paralyzed the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, Culiacan, and left the streets littered with burning vehicles. Residents took cover indoors as automatic gunfire raged outside.
It was the third bloody and terrifying shootout in less than a week between security forces and cartel henchmen, raising questions about whether President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding the use of force and focusing on social ills is working.
López Obrador defended the decision to back down, saying his predecessors’ strategy “turned this country into a cemetery, and we don’t want that anymore.”
But Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration who worked undercover in Mexico, called the violence “a massive black eye to the Mexican government” and a “sign that the cartels are more powerful” than it is.
Streets in Culiacan, a city of over 800,000, remained blocked with torched cars Friday morning, schools were closed, and some public offices asked their employees to stay home. Few buses were running.
Teresa Mercado, who had just returned to her native Culiacan on Thursday, said: “This is worse than what I had lived through years ago.”
Authorities said 35 troops arrived at a home Thursday afternoon to arrest Ovidio Guzmán López on a 2018 extradition request from the US They entered the home, where Guzman and three others were inside.
Heavily armed men in greater force surrounded the house and also unleashed mayhem elsewhere, taking over toll booths and main roads into the city. Men carrying high-caliber weapons blocked major intersections.
Amid the chaos, inmates at a prison rioted, seized weapons from guards and fled. Fifty-six prisoners escaped, and 49 were still at large Friday, according to Sinaloa Public Security Secretary Cristóbal Castañeda. Two guards were taken captive and later freed.
Videos on social media showed a scene resembling a war zone, with gunmen, some in black ski masks, riding in the back of trucks and firing mounted machine guns as smoke rose above the cityscape. People ran for cover as gunfire rattled around them, and motorists drove frantically in reverse, trying to escape the bullets.
Five attackers, a member of the National Guard, a civilian and a prisoner died in the gunbattles, Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval said. He said seven members of the security forces were wounded and eight held captive before being released unharmed.
The government’s security cabinet made the decision to withdraw the troops to avoid greater loss of life.
“The capture of one criminal cannot be worth more than the lives of people. They made the decision and I supported it,” López Obrador said. He added: “We do not want deaths. We do not want war.”
Security cabinet officials said they were not informed about the operation beforehand. They said troops surrounded the house without a search warrant and came under fire before one could be delivered, at that point deciding to enter without the warrant. And they said the troops underestimated the cartel’s response.
Sandoval said that if the security cabinet had known about the operation, it would have gone about it differently and deployed more troops and even sent air support.
“This group ... rushed things. It did not consider the consequences,” he said.
It was not clear what happened to Guzmán after the troops left. Federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said he was never under formal detention. José Luis González Meza, a lawyer for the Guzman family, said he was told Ovidio is “alive and free.”
José Reveles, the author of several books on the Sinaloa cartel, said the operation was done clumsily from both an operational and a political standpoint.
“If the government says it did not know anything, that’s absolutely unheard of, and especially for an operation of this magnitude,” Reveles said. “If you’re going to do an operation of this size, you should do it right — guard all flanks, add security in the prison.”
At the same time, he allowed that “doing a surgical operation there is impossible; the strength of the Sinaloa cartel was made clear.”
Vigil, the former DEA agent, worried that the retreat could lead to more bloodshed.
“This is going to set an example for the other groups,” Vigil said. “It sends them the message that if they capture a member of the cartel, all they have to do is go in the city and intimidate the citizenry and security forces.”
The elder Guzman is serving a life sentence in the US after being convicted last February of industrial-scale drug trafficking.
Ovidio is not one of the drug lord’s best-known sons. Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán are known as “Los Chapitos,” or “the little Chapos,” and are believed to be running their father’s cartel together with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
But Ovidio Guzmán was indicted in 2018 in Washington, along with a fourth brother, on charges of trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.
Gunbattles between gangs and security forces are relatively common in Mexico, but this week has seen three notable and frightening clashes. On Monday, 13 police officers were killed in a cartel ambush in the state of Michoacan, and the following day soldiers killed 14 gunmen while losing one of their own in neighboring Guerrero state.
Failed raid against El Chapo’s son leaves 8 dead in Mexico
Failed raid against El Chapo’s son leaves 8 dead in Mexico
Trump pivots to new 10 percent global tariff, new probes after Supreme Court setback
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump moved swiftly on Friday to replace tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court with a temporary 10 percent global import duty for 150 days while opening investigations under other laws that could allow him to re-impose the tariffs.
Trump told a briefing he was ordering new tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, duties that would go on top of surviving tariffs. These would partly replace tariffs of 10 percent to 50 percent under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act that the top court declared illegal.
Trump said later on Truth Social that he had signed an order for the tariffs on all countries “which will be effective almost immediately.”
A spokesperson for the US Customs and Border Protection agency declined comment when asked when collections of the illegal IEEPA tariffs would halt at ports of entry.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said the new 10 percent duties and potentially enhanced tariffs under the Section 301 unfair practices statute and the Section 232 national security statute would result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.
“We will get back to the same tariff level for the countries. It will just be in a less direct and slightly more convoluted manner,” Bessent told Fox News, adding that the Supreme Court decision had reduced Trump’s negotiating leverage with trading partners.
The never-used Section 122 authority allows the president to impose duties of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days on any and all countries to address “large and serious” balance of payments issues. It does not require investigations or impose other procedural limits. After 150 days, Congress would need to approve their extension.
“We have alternatives, great alternatives,” Trump said. “Could be more money. We’ll take in more money and we’ll be a lot stronger for it,” Trump said of the alternative tools.
While the administration will likely face legal challenges, the Section 122 tariffs would lapse before any final ruling could be made, said Josh Lipsky, international economics chair at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington.
Trump said his administration also was initiating several new country-specific investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 “to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”
Trump’s shift to other statutes, including Section 122, while initiating new investigations under Section 301 had been widely anticipated, but these have often taken a year to complete.
The 10 percent tariffs only last five months, but Trump said that would allow his administration to complete investigations to enhance tariffs.
Asked if rates would ultimately end up being higher after more probes, Trump said: “Potentially higher. It depends. Whatever we want them to be.”
He said some countries “that have treated us really badly for years” could see higher tariffs, whereas for others, “it’s going to be very reasonable for them.”
The fate of dozens of trade deals to cut IEEPA-based duties and negotiations with major US trading partners remained unclear in the wake of the ruling, though Trump said he expected many of them to continue. He said deals that are abandoned “will be replaced with the other tariffs.”
“This is unlikely to affect reciprocal trade negotiations with our trading partners,” said Tim Brightbill, trade partner with the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington. “Most countries would prefer the certainty of a trade deal to the chaos of last year.”
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said details on new Section 301 investigations would be revealed in coming days, adding these are “incredibly legally durable.” Trump relied on Section 301 to impose broad tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term.
The Supreme Court’s ruling puts about $175 billion in tariff revenue collected over the past year subject to potential refunds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by Penn-Wharton Budget Model economists.
Asked if he would refund the IEEPA duties, Trump said, “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years,” a response indicating that a quick, automatic refund process was unlikely.
Speaking in Dallas, Bessent told business leaders that since the Supreme Court did not provide any instructions on refunds, those were “in dispute,” adding: “My sense is that could be dragged out for weeks, months, years.”
Part of the reason why Trump opted for IEEPA to impose tariffs last year was because the 1977 sanctions statute allowed fast and broad action with almost no constraints. Until Friday, he had also used it as a cudgel to swiftly punish countries over non-trade disputes, such as Brazil’s prosecution of former president and Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.
While Trump’s new investigations will prolong tariff uncertainty, they could inject more order into his tariff policy by forcing him to rely on trade laws that have well-understood procedures, research and public comment requirements, and longer timelines, said Janet Whittaker, senior counsel with Clifford Chance in Washington.
“The administration will need to follow these set processes, conduct the investigations, and so for businesses, that means more visibility into the process,” Whittaker said.
Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s trade chief during his first term, said on Fox News that he hoped Congress would revise decades-old trade laws to give Trump new tariff tools.
“I think there’s consensus in this Congress that we have to change the old system, and I hope that they will take this as an opportunity to do that,” Lighthizer said.
