MEXICO CITY: Former champion boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr has been detained in Mexico after deportation by the United States to face shock charges of involvement with a drug cartel, Mexican authorities said on Tuesday.

The son of boxing icon Julio Cesar Chavez stands accused of serving as a henchman for the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, which Washington designated a foreign terrorist organisation this year, and of trafficking firearms and explosives.

According to Mexican media, which claim to have had access to the case files, Chavez, 39, was allegedly a “hitman” used to punish members of the cartel.

“He hangs them [and] grabs them like a punching bag,” the Reforma newspaper reported, citing testimony in the prosecutor’s documents.

The Attorney General’s Office has withheld details of the indictment.

Chavez was handed over on Monday and transferred to a prison in Mexico’s northwest Sonora state, according to information on the country’s National Detention Registry.

“He was deported,” president Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters, adding there was an active arrest warrant for him in Mexico.

US authorities arrested Chavez in July for being in the US illegally.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2025