The world's most powerful drug kingpin pled not guilty this morning to weapons, money laundering, and drug trafficking charges.

Those drugs included cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that killed 100,000 Americans last year alone.

Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as El Mayo, founded the Cinoloa cartel with his imprisoned partner in crime, Joaquin El Chappo Guzman, and has been

wanted by U.S. authorities for years. Garcia was arrested with one of El Chappo's sons,

Joaquin Guzman Lopez, at an airstrip in the United States.

For more on what their arrests will mean for the fentanyl crisis, we turn to Keegan

Hamilton, criminal justice editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Kagan, welcome back.

So before we dive into how this happened

and what it all means, just tell us a little bit

about these two men.

Ishmael Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, who are they and what were their roles in the Cinoloa

cartel?

El Milesambada is one of the highest profile drug traffickers in Mexico, sort of a legend in the drug trade in Mexico.

While other high profile kingpins have been killed or captured over the years,

El Mayo has somehow remained free and atop the Cinealoa cartel.

He's known for being a longtime partner of El Chappo, and the son who was arrested alongside

with him is a son who was known as a leader of another Schenoloo

a cartel faction known as Los Chappitos. So these are both incredibly high-ranking

important individuals in the Schenoloo cartel and their arrest could be pretty significant in Mexico.

So as you noted there, Guzman Lopez is the son of the notorious El Chappo, who helped founded the Cinelloa

cartel with Zambara or L El Mayo as he's known.

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