Four days after losing his sold-out fight against YouTube influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul on June 28, Julio César Chávez Jr. was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is now facing an “expedited deportation.” That means he doesn't get a hearing in court or even a chance to protest.
Swarmed by a large group of U.S. ICE agents who'd blocked off his street, the arrest took place on July 3 while Chávez Jr. was riding a scooter in Studio City, CA. His family was not informed, according to Michael Goldstein, Chávez Jr.’s attorney.
The Feds allege Chávez Jr. told multiple lies when applying for permanent residency on July 2, 2024 after his February 2023 tourist visa had expired. Chávez Jr.'s U.S.-citizen wife Frida Muñoz is the ex-wife of assassinated Sinaloa cartel scion Edgar Guzman Lopez (murdered in a Culiacán, Mexico shopping center parking lot in 2008 by 15 assassins armed with automatic rifles and grenade launchers who were sent by then-fellow Sinaloa Cartel partners the Beltrán Leyva brothers for a betrayal they blamed on his father Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman) and the mother of his child, a grandchild of the aforementioned infamous Sinaloa cartel founder, “El Chapo.” The Feds maintain Chávez Jr. is tied to the Sinaloa Cartel.
On Nov. 21, 2019, the deputy attaché of ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) at the U.S. Embassy filed a complaint with the Mexican Attorney General's Office for arms trafficking,
"The Feds maintain Julio César Chávez Jr. is tied to the Sinaloa Cartel."
After that, the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime tapped the phones of a number of suspects from Dec. 11, 2021 to June 11, 2022.
Allegedly, one of the tapped cartel members was overheard describing how he took a girlfriend to a safe house containing kidnapped people and a warehouse full of weapons. There, he witnessed Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, better known as "El Nini," a very powerful member of the Sinaloa Cartel, ordering a subordinate to be tied up and hung like a punching bag for Chávez Jr. to hit.
On July 3, DHS stated: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services made a referral to ICE that Chávez is an egregious public safety threat." The Feds also say they determined Chávez Jr. was eligible for deportation on June 27, the day before his fight against Paul. It isn't clear why they first waited half a year to decide he really was eligible, then another four days after that before scooping him up. One reason might be because, according to the DHS, there was “an entry in a DHS law enforcement system under the Biden administration” that said Chávez Jr. was “not an immigration enforcement priority.”
Julio César Chávez Jr.'s father, one of Mexico's greatest-ever boxers, is fully supportive of his son and has declared him innocent. "It's complicated; there's a lot of talk, but we're calm because we know my son's innocence," the elder Chávez told the El Heraldo newspaper. "My son will be anything you want, anything, but he is not a criminal and less everything he's being accused of."
Chávez Jr. lost the June fight to Paul in a 10-round decision. The former WBC middleweight champion from Culiacán has a 54-7 lifetime record. He’s currently being detained by DHS in Hidalgo, TX.
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