BREAKING: Mexican Special Forces, Backed by U.S. Intelligence, Kill "El Mencho" — CJNG Unleashes Carnage

A dawn raid in the Jalisco highlands has eliminated the most wanted narco-terrorist in the Western Hemisphere. President Sheinbaum: "We must remain informed and calm."

JALISCO — Mexican Special Forces killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes — “El Mencho” — during a raid in Tapalpa, Jalisco Sunday morning. He was wounded in the firefight and died while being airlifted to Mexico City, the Defense Ministry confirmed, decapitating what had become the most violent criminal organization in the Americas, and a major source of the fentanyl flooding North America.

President Claudia Sheinbaum posted to X at 4:22 PM, pledging the full weight of the Mexican state behind her response to the spreading violence. Acknowledging “various blockades and other reactions” triggered by the operation, she insisted there was “absolute coordination with the governments of all states” and that across “the vast majority of the national territory, activities are proceeding with complete normality.”

That normality was hard to find on the ground. Violence rippled across southwestern Mexico as criminal groups erected flaming roadblocks in Jalisco, Michoacán, and Guanajuato, triggering shootouts with security forces and reported explosions, according to Canada’s official travel advisory for Mexico.

In Puerto Vallarta, authorities issued a shelter-in-place order and suspended all taxi and rideshare services, while travel disruptions mounted — including flight delays and cancellations.

Aguascalientes, Colima, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Michoacán, Zacatecas, and Tamaulipas all reported blockades, burning vehicles, and armed clashes within hours of the killing — a coordinated narco-convulsion spanning nearly a third of the country.

Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro activated a full “code red,” suspended all public transportation, and ordered residents indoors. In Puerto Vallarta, CJNG operatives seized and torched heavy vehicles near the cruise ship ports and main arterial roads, cutting the resort city off entirely. In Guadalajara, gunmen stormed the international airport, with eyewitness video showing workers and passengers sprinting across terminals as gunfire echoed near the entrances.

CBS News reported that the raid was supported by U.S. intelligence. A U.S. defense official confirmed the military played a role via the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel, which regularly works alongside the Mexican military. The Army team had received specialized training from U.S. Navy SEAL instructors who arrived in Mexico on February 15 as part of a classified program targeting top-level cartel figures, they reported.

Urgent first person accounts from vacationers have been uploaded to social media all day.

At 6 PM, Donna Kemp, a Puerto Vallarta tourist from Canada, posted a video of a helicopter flying over a flume of black smoke.

“Military helicopters circling our hotel in the Romantic Zone PV now. Lots of fires in businesses near here, mostly Kioskas. Random explosions still happening,” she wrote.

Earlier Sunday, posting a photo of streets below from a hotel balcony, she wrote: “Kioska across street on fire now. Some guys on motorbikes drove up and threw Molotov cocktails inside. Not a fire truck anywhere.”

At 3:42 PM, Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong urged Ottawa to step in.

“Conservatives are very concerned about reports of Canadians trapped in Jalisco State in Mexico as a result of drug cartel violence,” he wrote, adding “We call on the Government of Canada to urgently work with Canada’s allies, and the government of Mexico, to ensure the safety of our citizens and to coordinate an evacuation.”

The CJNG kingpin killing is the latest and most dramatic strike in a rapidly escalating U.S.-backed campaign against Latin American criminal networks. Just last month, former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding — allegedly one of the largest cocaine traffickers in North America and a member of the Sinaloa Cartel — was arrested in Mexico City following weeks of coordinated pressure from U.S. and Mexican law enforcement.

The Wall Street Journal later reported that members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were involved in the operation, a disclosure that rattled Mexico City, where foreign agents are legally barred from participating in arrests on Mexican soil. The same apparatus — U.S. intelligence, elite Mexican forces — appears to have been at work in the Tapalpa hills Sunday morning.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called El Mencho “one of the bloodiest and most ruthless drug kingpins” and declared the killing “a great development for Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world.” In a follow-up post, he acknowledged watching “the scenes of violence with great sadness” but warned: “we must never lose our nerve.”

Who exactly was El Mencho — and what did he build?

CJNG split from the Sinaloa Cartel in 2010, after the death of a senior Sinaloa figure created a power vacuum, and has since expanded across Mexico into a hierarchical, franchise-model operation generating billions annually. Oseguera Cervantes had been significantly involved in drug trafficking since the 1990s and co-founded CJNG around 2007.

In February 2025, the Trump administration formally designated the cartel a foreign terrorist organization, citing not only fentanyl trafficking but extortion, migrant smuggling, oil theft, and weapons trade. The cartel pioneered the use of explosive drones and land mines against military targets, and in 2020 carried out a brazen assassination attempt against Mexico City’s police chief using grenades and high-powered rifles in the heart of the capital.

Under El Mencho, CJNG reportedly shot down military helicopters, massacred police officers, and built a narco-army with an estimated force of up to 20,000 fighters — a force that is now, leaderless, on the rampage.

Southwest, Alaska, Air Canada, WestJet, and Flair Airlines all canceled Puerto Vallarta flights. Delta issued travel waivers for both Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. Mexico’s embassy in Washington moved swiftly to dispel circulating social media threats attributed to CJNG, calling claims that the cartel planned to target civilians “unfounded” and identifying a specific X account as a source of disinformation.

The DEA considers CJNG as powerful as the Sinaloa Cartel, with a presence in all 50 U.S. states. Canadian law enforcement has warned that CJNG has established a foothold in the country, with the RCMP reporting signs of cartel-linked drug production on Canadian soil.