MEXICO CITY – In a major blow to transnational organized crime operating across Mexico, federal and state security forces announced two high-profile arrests Monday: one being a top lieutenant to the deceased founder of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) long marked as a potential successor to the group’s leadership.
Nemesio Oseguera, universally known by his cartel alias “El Mencho”, died in February from injuries sustained during a firefight with Mexican armed forces in the western state of Jalisco. His death triggered a wave of coordinated violence across the region, including widespread highway blockades and open clashes with security personnel that claimed more than 70 lives.
According to security analyst David Saucedo, speaking to AFP, Audias Flores Silva – widely nicknamed “El Jardinero” or “The Gardener” – served as El Mencho’s closest confidant and right-hand man in the years leading up to the cartel leader’s death. Citing intelligence from both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies, Saucedo added that Flores Silva was the key architect behind a rare operational alliance between CJNG and the Chapitos, the powerful Sinaloa cartel faction controlled by the family of imprisoned kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. Regional security think tank Insight Crime had previously named Flores Silva as one of the leading candidates to take control of CJNG following El Mencho’s death.
Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch confirmed via the social platform X that elite Mexican naval special forces apprehended Flores Silva in the western coastal state of Nayarit. Harfuch also noted that the captured cartel leader is actively sought by U.S. law enforcement, with Washington intending to request his extradition to face charges in American courts.
In a separate high-value operation staged hours earlier, authorities in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas announced the arrest of a second senior gang leader: Alexander Benavides Flores, better known by his operational alias “R9”, who served as the head of Los Metros, a key faction of the Gulf Cartel. The Gulf Cartel, once one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations, has been significantly weakened over the past 10 years following a string of leadership arrests.
Benavides Flores’ capture prompted an immediate retaliatory response from his allies, who erected at least eight blockades on major highways surrounding Reynosa, a northern Mexican border city of roughly 690,000 people that sits directly across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas. A spokesperson for Tamaulipas state security confirmed that security forces rapidly moved to reestablish full control over the affected areas, and no injuries were reported during the unrest following the arrest.
The dual arrests come amid ongoing tensions between the Mexican and U.S. governments over counter-cartel strategy. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has pressured Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to ramp up operations against transnational criminal groups, but Sheinbaum has consistently rejected controversial U.S. proposals to deploy American drone strikes or ground troops inside Mexican territory to target cartel operatives.