PECOS — On Monday, Judge David Counts sentenced Ojinaga cartel boss Sergio Menchaca Pizarro to life in prison. The life sentence applies specifically to a “continuing criminal enterprise” charge, but he also faces 120 months on a count of “conspiracy to transport aliens” and 240 months on “conspiracy to possess firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes” to be served concurrently.
Menchaca will also be ordered to pay a money judgment of $20,237,557.80 — a figure determined by the government that represents the amount of money he took in over the course of breaking federal law as the leader of the La Linea cartel.
During Monday’s proceedings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Spitzer described Menchaca as “a kingpin in every sense of the word.” For more than a decade, Menchaca controlled an area known as the Ojinaga Plaza, a triangle that includes Alama, Coyame and Manuel Benavides in northeastern Chihuahua. “He commanded a mass army at his beck and call,” Spitzer said.
Menchaca, a United States citizen, was first apprehended by authorities on August 17, 2023, when he was encountered by Border Patrol walking along FM 170 southeast of Presidio. A judge approved a motion to detain him without bond, heeding former U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza’s warning that the high-profile inmate was a flight risk.
Conditions remained relatively calm in Ojinaga after Menchaca’s arrest until September of 2024, when a wave of violence broke out in the region. Six people were murdered over the weekend of September 6, with a presumed retaliatory killing of 11 on September 20. (Seven were ultimately arrested, but none ended up being prosecuted in a string of controversial decisions by a supervisory judge in Chihuahua City.)
The region has remained quiet since the fall, but pieces of Menchaca’s bloody legacy have continued to be uncovered. In September 2023, he provided information to authorities that led them to discover a mass grave of migrants believed to include the remains of 13 who went missing near Ojinaga in 2021.
Attorney J. Warren St. John of Fort Worth, representing Menchaca, spoke respectfully of his client and his family on Monday morning, saying that among his “violent” and “dangerous” clientele, they were notably cooperative and “gracious” throughout the proceedings.
There is no opportunity for parole for federal charges, per the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Charges against his co-conspirators — whose names are redacted in a grand jury indictment from last spring— are still pending.