President Claudia Sheinbaum denied this Monday that drug trafficker and former Canadian Olympic athlete Ryan Wedding was captured in Mexico by US forces, stating that he surrendered “voluntarily” and that there are no “joint operations” in security matters with Washington in the country.
“(Wedding) appeared before the US embassy because he considered, according to his considerations, that his surrender was better than continuing under persecution (…) It must be very clear that there are no joint operations in Mexico,” said the president in her daily press conference.
Sheinbaum thus came out against some information indicating that the former athlete was captured by US agents, insisting that agencies such as the FBI are “very clear about their limitations” established by the country’s Constitution.
“What there is is coordination regarding information from both sides, but there are no joint operations in Mexico, we would not allow that, we do not agree with it. I have expressed this several times personally to (American) President Donald Trump,” he added.
Read more: Ambassador Johnson confirms that Ryan Wedding voluntarily surrendered
Ryan Wedding would have published his voluntary surrender on social networks
The ruler explained that Wedding “voluntarily” surrendered to the United States embassy, after hiding in Mexico for more than a decade.
As proof of this, he highlighted a social media post by the former Olympic athlete himself, in which he explained that he surrendered to the authorities in search of a “fair process.”
Although the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, Kash Patel, referred to the existence of a bilateral operation, Sheinbaum recalled that this point was denied by the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) of Mexico, Omar García Harfuch, as well as by the US ambassador to the country, Ronald Johnson.
Ryan Wedding faces charges of cocaine trafficking and murder in the United States, where he was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives.
In November 2025, US authorities increased the reward from $10 to $15 million for information leading to the capture of Wedding, who represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City (Utah, United States) in the ‘snowboard’ category.
According to the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, Wedding is the leader of a transnational criminal organization that traffics dozens of tons of cocaine each year to the United States and Canada, from Colombia and through Mexico.
With information from EFE
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