Gerardo Merida Sanchez, the former public security secretary of Mexico's northwestern Sinaloa state, appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Friday after becoming the first of ten indicted Mexican officials to surrender to US authorities. The 66-year-old was taken into custody on 11 May by the US Marshals Service at the Nogales border crossing into Arizona, after crossing from Hermosillo in the neighbouring state of Sonora. He was subsequently transferred to New York, where he was ordered held in federal detention but allowed to request bail at a later hearing. He is due back in court on 1 June and was not required to enter a plea at his initial appearance.

Merida Sanchez served as an appointed, cabinet-level head of the Sinaloa State Police from September 2023 until his resignation in December 2024. He was charged in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court on 29 April alongside nine other current or former Sinaloa government and law enforcement officials, including Governor Ruben Rocha Moya and Juan de Dios Gamez Mendivil, mayor of Culiacán, the state capital. Prosecutors allege that Merida Sanchez accepted at least $100,000 in monthly cash bribes from Los Chapitos — a powerful faction of the Sinaloa Cartel run by the sons of jailed drug lord Joaquin