Mexico hopes US will deport Julio César Chávez Jr., Sheinbaum says

By Emiliano Rodriguez Mega and Annie Correal

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said late last week that she expects the prominent boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. to be deported to Mexico to face charges of organized crime and arms trafficking, a day after American officials announced they had detained him for being in the United States illegally.

Citing Mexico’s attorney general, Sheinbaum said Friday that prosecutors had begun investigating the boxer in 2019 and had issued an arrest warrant in March 2023. She said Mexico had been unable to detain Chávez because “he lived most of the time in the United States.”

“We now hope he can be deported and he can serve his sentence in Mexico,” she said.

Chávez’s detention by federal U.S. agents in Studio City, California, was announced on Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security, citing the arrest warrant in Mexico. It also said Chávez was thought to be “an affiliate” of the Sinaloa cartel, a powerful fentanyl smuggler that the U.S. and Mexican authorities have sought to crack down on.

A former World Boxing Council middleweight champion, Chávez, 39, is the son of a Mexican boxing legend, Julio César Chávez Sr., who appeared with Mexico’s president twice in recent months, at a news conference and a government event in Mexico City that drew tens of thousands of people. The younger Chávez was detained just days after he lost a high-profile bout in Anaheim, California, against the former YouTuber Jake Paul.

A lawyer representing Chávez, Michael A. Goldstein, said his client had been picked up by a group of more than two dozen immigration and law enforcement agents outside of his home.

“The current allegations are outrageous and appear to be designed as a headline to terrorize the community,” Goldstein said, adding that Chávez was not a threat to the public.

An escalation in immigration operations in Los Angeles, which has the largest undocumented population in the country, recently led to protests and to legal challenges by immigrants rights groups that claim the tactics of federal officers in Southern California have been excessive and even unconstitutional.

Chávez’s arrest also comes as the Trump administration has zeroed in on Mexican cartels. Earlier this year, amid tariff negotiations, the Mexican government agreed to send more than two dozen people accused of being cartel heads to be tried in the United States, a departure from the government’s previous stance on extraditions.

Late Thursday, Chávez’s family said they had “full confidence” in his innocence.

“We respectfully ask that due legal process be guaranteed and that early judgments that violate his dignity, and the dignity of those around him, be avoided,” said a statement posted online by his father.

The U.S. authorities said Chávez had entered the United States legally in 2023 with a B2 tourist visa, but that it had expired in 2024. He then filed for lawful permanent resident status based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen, who U.S. officials said was “connected to the Sinaloa Cartel through a prior relationship” with a son of the cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo.