Pilot Who Helped Mexican Kingpin ‘El Chapo’ Escape in Custody

On October 8, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office announced that the pilot who helped notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán escape from a high-security prison had been captured. This was the first time any mention had been made of a pilot being involved in the plot, and authorities did not say if the arrest was bringing them any closer to discovering Guzmán’s whereabouts.

The capture wasn’t even announced at a press hearing or other media event; Attorney General Arely Gomez provided a quick statement about the arrest at a Mexican Senate hearing. However, according to CNN, she didn’t mention any details about the pilot’s identity, where and how he was captured, or which agency arrested him.

El Chapo escaped in mid-July 2015, only 16 months after being captured following a 13-year manhunt. He used a sophisticated tunnel with an opening by his cell shower just out of the surveillance camera’s view. The tunnel even contained a motorcycle specially modified to ride on rails for more than a mile. Almost three dozen people have been arrested in connection with the escape and hundreds of pieces of evidence have been collected from the tunnel, but nothing has indicated where Guzmán may have gone.

Gomez did tell Mexico’s El Universal that the PGR had come across several telephonic communications they hoped to exploit to determine where Guzmán might be hiding.

Sylvia Longmire is a border security expert and Contributing Editor for Breitbart Texas. You can read more about cross-border issues in her latest book, Border Insecurity: Why Big Money, Fences, and Drones Aren’t Making Us Safer.