A stone’s throw away from El Paso an election with implications for both the United States and México is happening tying El Chapo, the Drug War and the future of the borderland judiciary together. Tomorrow, an election will be held across México for the first time electing judges to adjudicate justice in Mexican courts. Silvia Rocío Delgado, a Juárez attorney, is running for judge.
On September 15, 2024, a controversial judicial reform went into effect in México, changing the process of appointing judges to the benches to having them elected by popular vote. With less than a month left in his six-year term, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) pushed forth one of the key reforms he wanted – fundamentally reforming the Mexican judiciary. Tomorrow’s election includes filling 881 federal judicial seats. There are over 3,000 candidates running for judge. Around 11% of the electorate is expected to cast ballots tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s vote marks the first time that judges will be elected under AMLO’s judicial reform. The reform led over 50,000 judges across México to strike against the reform. With AMLO’s party, Morena, firmly in control of the legislature, the judicial reform easily passed in the lower house with 359 votes in support of it and 135 against it.
However, at the Senate, the controversial vote included two senators either disappearing for a time or stepping down to be replaced by the father of the senator. The controversy also forced the senators to vote on the measure in another building away from the senate floor when it was taken over by protestors trying to block the vote. Eventually the reform was enacted by one vote that Miguel Angel Yunes Linares helped to facilitate after he joined Morena to support the reform.
Yunes was first a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) before switching over to the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN). After supporting AMLO’s judiciary reforms, Yunes was expelled by the PAN. He joined AMLO’s party, Morena.
On the night the crucial vote was held, Yunes Linares was temporarily holding the Senate seat for his son, Miguel Angel Yunes Márquez who had taken a leave of absence for health reasons. Both father and son publicly stated that they supported AMLO’s judicial reform, leading PAN leaders to condemn the father as a “traitor”. But it wasn’t the father who cast the decisive 86th vote approving the measure. It was his son who appeared at the mansion where the vote was taken after the senate was forced to reconvene there for the vote after protestors took control of the senate chambers to stop the vote.
What led the father to temporarily hold office on behalf of his son started on September 3, 2024, when the younger senator publicly stated that he would vote against the judicial reform. The day before the vote was to be held, it was the elder Yunes who stood for the son, publicly declaring he would vote to support the reform. On September 11, the son appeared and in apparent reversal voted in favor of AMLO’s reform providing the crucial vote needed to send the constitutional amendment to the state legislatures to vote on enacting it. Two days later, 23 states approved the constitutional amendment enacting AMLO’s reform.
The upcoming votes will see the federal judges from the Mexican Supreme Court down to the district court judges be elected by voters. México is now the only country where all judges are elected by popular vote. The United States only allows for the election of local and state judges.
The Wilson Center has labeled AMLO’s judicial reform as setting “the grounds for unprecedented control and influence” by organized crime. The issue, according to the Wilson Center, is that Mexican judges will now be accountable to the voters instead of the constitution. Human Rights Watch agrees that México’s judiciary is need of an overhaul but argues that AMLO’s focus on the judges is wrong when the problem lies on prosecutors’ unwillingness “to prosecute capacity to investigate.”
It is against this backdrop that tomorrow’s elections will be held for judges to fill various judicial seats before the rest of the judicial positions are voted on in 2027.
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There are several candidates running tomorrow that have been tied to drug traffickers. Among them is a candidate that was imprisoned in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Leopoldo Javier Chávez Vargas is on the ballot in Durango although he served almost six years in an American federal prison for trafficking methamphetamines.
In a May 5 Facebook video, Chávez admits to being incarcerated on drug charges in the US. Chávez was detained at the Abraham Lincoln Bridge in 2015 for attempting to smuggle drugs into the United States. He served a little over five years in federal prison. In the video, Chávez explains that although he is “not the perfect candidate,” he is running because the legal system is unjust. Chávez does not address the fact that he was convicted in the U.S. and not in México in his explanation to the voters video.
Notwithstanding his drug criminal conviction, AMLO’s party, Morena nominated him for judge in tomorrow’s election. Chávez is one of several other controversial candidates tied to drug traffickers running for judge. Among them include Fernando Escamilla Villareal who defended Los Zetas Z40, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales. Treviño was among the 25 drug cartel members extradited by México to the US to face criminal charges connected to drug trafficking in February.
Chávez is not the only controversial candidate linked to drug traffickers running for judge tomorrow. Joining Chávez is Silvia Delgado who is running in Juárez.
Silvia Rocío Delgado García
One of the candidates running tomorrow includes one of El Chapo’s former attorney’s, Silvia Rocío Delgado García. Critics have decried her defense of El Chapo. She has defended her defense of him by stating that “defending people’s individual guarantees” does make her “illegitimate” as a candidate for judge.
According to the resume she submitted to run for office, Delgado lists that she graduated from the Universidad Autónoma de Cd. Juárez with a legal degree in 2006. She received her masters in 2009 and is currently working towards a master’s in business law. She has been a practicing attorney in Juárez since 2007.
Delgado has not been convicted of any crime and is not facing any charges, but human rights advocates criticize her because of her work for El Chapo, arguing that once someone works for a drug kingpin, “it is very difficult that they get out.” Additionally, there is the issue of whether she can be a judge after accepting payments for her services from funds tied to drug crimes.
While in prison in Juárez, El Chapo alleged a prison guard sexually harassed him, according to a press conference organized by Delgado. According to Delgado, in addition to sexual harassment by the prison official that allegedly improperly touched him while conducting searches for contraband, the lawyer accused Mexican officials of psychological abuses committed against El Chapo and impeding his lawyer’s the ability to stop his extradition to the US through the courts.
El Chapo was extradited to the United States on January 20, 2017 to face criminal charges in the U.S. related to drug trafficking. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), El Chapo was convicted on February 12, 2019 on drug charges and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years on July 17, 2019. He is currently serving his sentence at the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records search on May 31, 2025. (BOP Register Number: 89914-053)
Delgado’s ties to El Chapo, as one of his many attorneys has raised questions about her. But the drug cartels have been a source of friction to the US government, including Joe Biden and Donald Trump which have criticized México’s lack of controlling the drug trade. Yet, the families of notorious drug kingpins somehow enter the US unimpeded or with the help of US officials while migrants are often maligned as part of the drug problem.
El Chapo’s Family Crosses Into The US
While the Trump Administration is focused on deporting immigrants it has labeled criminals it quietly allowed El Chapo’s family to enter the United States to apparently live in the country. Earlier this month, 17 family members of imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán were allowed to apparently immigrate to the US. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum complained that “U.S. authorities had failed to notify their Mexican counterparts of what appeared to be a highly choreographed operation by Washington to transport the drug lord’s extended family across the border from Tijuana to San Diego.
U.S. authorities have not explained why they allowed Chapo’s extended family members to enter the U.S. but it has been speculated that it was part of a deal prosecutors made with Chapo’s son, Ovidio Guzmán López, also known as “El Ratón,” or the mouse in English. Around midday, on May 9, 17 people, carrying “more than $70,000 in cash,” crossed the border into the US. Before that another El Chapo son and another drug lord were captured.
On July 25, 2024, a plane landed at the Santa Teresa airport with two drug kingpins on it, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López, another El Chapo son. Zambada García has said that he was deceived into boarding the aircraft that landed near El Paso and led to his arrest by U.S. officials.
AMLO has been criticized for pushing forth the reforms because he often criticized the judiciary for impeding his programs while he was in office. Although the judicial reforms were enacted before Claudia Sheinbaum assumed office, she has, nonetheless, been publicly supportive of them. Human Rights organizations have suggested that AMLO’s reforms can be detrimental to México. Now that México’s judges must court the electorate to be in office it leaves open the possibility of narco-influences on the judges. México, thanks to AMLO’s reforms, is the only country whose judges are elected to office.
But on the War on Drugs, not everything is what it seems to be.
Fentanyl Seizures Down
According to The Washington Post today (paywall), there is “mysterious” drop in fentanyl seizures on the US-México border that no one seems to be able to explain. Except for Khat, seizures of narcotics are down across all types of illicit drugs crossing the border according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Khat is shrub that is abused by chewing it according to the DEA.
The report in The Washington Post explains that “U.S. officials are confronting a new puzzling reality at the Mexican border.” It is that fentanyl seizures are down while even though the Trump Administration has used fentanyl as a reason for targeting Canada, China and México with tariffs and for enhanced border security and rising deportations of migrants.
The White House has taken credit for the drop in seizures. However, the decline began before Trump took office. Both antidrug officials and researchers are puzzled. Some argue that it can be because Mexican cartels are producing less or have found ways to bring it across the border that escapes detection. Others attribute the infighting among factions of the Sinaloa cartel as the reason for the decline. Others say that the precursors needed to cook fentanyl is harder to find, leaving the labs without the materials to make more.
But the troubling question is that if fentanyl is dropping, why isn’t its price increasing in the streets? In addition to users transitioning to smoking it, others theorize that so many users have died from it that there is less demand now for the drug.
Although no one seems to agree on the reasons for the drop in fentanyl seizures all generally agree that the Sinaloa cartel, previously led by El Chapo, and later his sons were the main suppliers of it. Both sons and their father are in American prisons today and several members of the family are now in the country as well. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García was apparently kidnapped by one of El Chapo’s sons and delivered to American authorities.
Nonetheless waring factions of the Sinaloa cartel remain operating and yet the drop in seizures is yet to be understood, while an election is being held tomorrow that some have argued will empower the remnants of the Mexican cartels to influence the judges that can rule for or against them in criminal proceedings.