On 9 November 1999, two agents from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were threatened at gunpoint and nearly killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, by gunmen of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in the area. The two agents traveled to Matamoros with an informant to gather intelligence on the operations of the Gulf Cartel. As they cruised through one of the properties owned by the criminal group, they noticed several vehicles following them. The agents were forced to a stop and were corralled by a convoy of eight vehicles, from which 15 gunmen emerged and surrounded the agents' car. Some of them wore uniforms of the local police. Among the gunmen was the former kingpin Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who recognized the informant and ordered the three of them to get out of their vehicle.
Fearing torture and interrogation, the agents agreed they would not allow the Gulf Cartel to take them alive. They decided their best chance of survival was to talk their way out of the incident. The agents repeatedly refused to comply with Cárdenas Guillén's orders and tried to reason with him that killing U.S. federal agents would result in a massive manhunt by the U.S. government. The incident escalated; profanities were exchanged and the gunmen prepared to shoot but Cárdenas Guillén ordered them to hold fire. One of the agents had a concealed handgun next to his thigh and was planning to kill Cárdenas Guillén if the gunmen opened fire. After 20 minutes, Cárdenas Guillén allowed the agents and the informant to return to Brownsville, Texas, U.S., and threatened to kill them if they ever returned.
The standoff triggered a massive law enforcement effort to crack down on the leadership structure of the Gulf Cartel. Cárdenas Guillén, who was previously regarded as a minor player in the international drug trade, became one of the most-wanted criminals in the world. The FBI and the DEA mounted numerous charges against him and issued a US$2 million bounty for his arrest. He was arrested in 2003 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007, where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking, money laundering, and assaulting U.S. federal agents. He was also ordered to forfeit US$50 million, a small portion of what U.S. authorities believe he made in the Gulf Cartel. Several Gulf Cartel members involved in the standoff were also eventually arrested and convicted.
Background The Gulf Cartel, a drug cartel based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, was founded in the 1930s by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra. It initially smuggled alcohol and other illegal goods into the U.S. but grew significantly in the 1970s under the leadership of kingpin Juan García Ábrego. By forming alliances with Colombian drug traffickers, García Ábrego coordinated marijuana and cocaine shipments into the U.S. and helped consolidate the Gulf Cartel as a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise. In 1996, he was arrested and extradited to the U.S., where he was sentenced to eleven life sentences. Without a clear leadership, the Gulf Cartel underwent internal strife. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, a low-level drug dealer, rose through the ranks of the cartel as other leaders were arrested or killed in the infighting. In mid-1999, Cárdenas Guillén ordered the murder of his friend Salvador Gómez Herrera (alias "El Chava"), the last man in line in the Gulf Cartel's leadership structure. With Gómez Herrera's death, Cárdenas Guillén consolidated himself as the top leader of the Gulf Cartel. To protect himself from rival gangsters and security forces, Cárdenas Guillén formed a private army known as Los Zetas, which consisted of former military officials. Unlike García Ábrego, Cárdenas Guillén did not enjoy the same level of protection and favoritism from government networks, and consolidated his power through the use of violence.
Previous operations In August 1996, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched an anti-drug investigation known as Operation Limelight that initially targeted Mexico's Juárez Cartel and Amado Carrillo Fuentes. During the operation's second phase dubbed Operation Impunity I in January 1998, the DEA focused on the Juárez Cartel's drug corridors in Tamaulipas and South Texas, where the Gulf Cartel was based. The DEA suspected Cárdenas Guillén was the leading crime figure in the Matamoros corridor and was working closely with the Juárez Cartel. In 1998, the DEA opened an investigation known as Operation Cazadores with the intention of arresting him. Undercover agents met Cárdenas Guillén in person at least twice. On 9 June 1999, Cárdenas Guillén threatened to kill Abraham Rodríguez, an undercover Cameron County Sheriff's Office investigator working with the U.S. Customs Service in Brownsville. The undercover agent refused to deliver a load of marijuana on behalf of the Gulf Cartel.
The Mexican and U.S. governments signed an agreement in 1998 prohibiting undercover work by U.S. officials in Mexican territory without the explicit approval and supervision of the Mexican government. Until then, most of the undercover operations in Mexico were often conducted by U.S. officials without the authorization or knowledge of the Mexican government. The agreement did not instruct U.S. officials how they should defend themselves when facing threats. One anonymous U.S. official confirmed the agents were armed during the standoff, although he stated that they never flashed or used their weapons. Other U.S. officials refused to comment on whether or not the agents were armed during the standoff. When the standoff occurred, it was illegal for the U.S. officials to conduct law enforcement operations or carry their firearms into Mexico.
In 1998, Juan Raúl Bermúdez Núñez, a journalist from El Diario de Matamoros who accompanied the two agents in Matamoros, became an informant for the DEA and the FBI. He contacted the agencies and asked them to help him become a protected witness. Bermúdez Núñez had interviewed Cárdenas Guillén at his newspaper offices a few months before the standoff; in the interview, Cárdenas Guillén said he was the leader of the Gulf Cartel and threatened to kill Bermúdez Núñez. The journalist also wrote an article describing Cárdenas Guillén's ordering of the killing of Gómez Herrera. After the interview was published, Cárdenas Guillén gained the nickname "El Mata Amigos" (The Friend Killer). The Gulf Cartel had tried to bribe Bermúdez Núñez multiple times to prevent him from releasing articles about its organized crime activities. According to Bermúdez Núñez, the head representative of the newspaper, Mario Díaz, met with Cárdenas Guillén, his lawyer Galo Gaspar Pérez Canales, and Gulf Cartel member Víctor Manuel Vázquez Mireles to discuss bribery payments. They offered the newspaper US$500 a month to stop publishing about the Gulf Cartel. Bermúdez Núñez said he never accepted their money.
In October 1999, a month before the standoff, federal agents confirmed the links between the Juárez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, and extended their law enforcement efforts to both groups under Operation Impunity II, the third phase of Operation Limelight. Most of the operation's focus was in the border cities Reynosa and Matamoros, where the Gulf Cartel had a stronghold. They confirmed that Cárdenas Guillén had united remnants of the Carrillo Fuentes' organization and those who once reported to former Gulf Cartel leader García Ábrego. Operation Cazadores continued mostly as an undercover operation against Cárdenas Guillén; it included support from the U.S. Customs Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the DEA, the Cameron County Sheriff's Office, the Brownsville Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and Mexico's Attorney General's Office (PGR).
Standoff At around 2:30p.m. on 9 November 1999, DEA and FBI agents Joe DuBois and Daniel Fuentes traveled to Matamoros to gather intelligence on the operations of the Gulf Cartel. DuBois was based in the DEA office at the Consulate General of the United States in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and Fuentes worked at the DEA offices in Houston, Texas. They picked up their informant and collaborator, Bermúdez Núñez, at a restaurant close to the Gateway International Bridge. The agents drove a white Ford Bronco bearing diplomatic plates through the streets of Matamoros. The informant gave the two agents a tour of the houses where several Gulf Cartel members lived and of the stash houses they used to keep drugs before they were transported to the U.S. They reached La Aurora neighborhood, where Cárdenas Guillén lived, and tried to take pictures of his pink-colored mansion. Within moments, they noticed a Lincoln Continental, which was followed by a second vehicle, following them. The agents called the DEA offices in Houston using their mobile telephone and asked them to investigate the Texan license plates of a cherry-red Explorer, one of the vehicles that was following them. The DEA confirmed the vehicle was stolen. The persecution continued in Matamoros' streets but the agents' car was cut off by three vehicles and forced to stop. Within moments, they were surrounded by a caravan of eight vehicles.
According to the federal agents, up to fifteen Gulf Cartel gunmen carrying AK-47s, AR-15s, and .45-caliber pistols left their vehicles and surrounded the agents. Some of them wore police uniforms, and the agents suspected that several of the gunmen were from the Matamoros Municipal Police or the Tamaulipas State Police. The incident occurred a few blocks away from the city's police station. The Gulf Cartel blockaded the road on which the agents were corralled while other men in police uniforms helped direct traffic in another direction. The agents tried asking Tamaulipas State Police commander Gilberto García Garza through their cellphone to call for backup, but they claimed the commander took no action even though he was reportedly monitoring the incident over the telephone. DuBois and Fuentes recognized they were outnumbered and surrounded; they briefly discussed the situation and agreed they would not allow the Gulf Cartel to kidnap them. "[Fuentes] and I decided, if we are going to die, we are going to die here", DuBois said in an interview. Both agents made this decision after considering their options and recognizing they would likely be kidnapped, tortured, and interrogated before being killed. "I knew what they'd do to me. I'd seen many pictures of the bodies [the Gulf Cartel] leave behind", DuBois said. They decided the only viable option was to try to talk their way out of the incident.