Blunt was arrested by Mexican Federal Police about 4:30 p.m. EDT, said Marshal James T. Plousis.
He did not immediately have details on the capture or when Blunt would be returned to New Jersey. "That's not a problem, with extradition," Plousis said.
Authorities and the office of the Rev. Al Sharpton had no immediate word on whether the civil rights leader's visit Tuesday and Wednesday to Mexico City in an effort to arrange Blunt's surrender played a role in the arrest.
Blunt's capture came on the day that authorities revealed that it took guards 20 hours to notice that the two inmates had escaped from the most fortified section of Union County Jail.
The ongoing investigation into the breakout has found no evidence that guards knowingly assisted the prisoners, one of whom was captured Tuesday night in a basement apartment a mile from the jail, Union County prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said.
"At most we're looking at negligence by corrections officers," Romankow said.
The escape was discovered by Corrections Officer Rudolph Zurick, who found a sarcastic note left by the prisoners thanking him for his help. Although authorities repeatedly said they had no evidence that Zurick gave any aid, the guard committed suicide at his South Amboy home Jan. 2, the day he was to speak to investigators.
When asked by reporters if he felt bad about Zurick's suicide, captured inmate Jose Espinosa responded: "It wasn't my fault."
Authorities have said the pair used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they dug through cinderblock walls in a jailbreak that echoed the plot of "The Shawshank Redemption." In the movie, the main character uses posters of women to conceal his escape tunnel and eventually flees to Mexico.
Guards first raised an alarm for Espinosa, 20, and Blunt, 32, about 5 p.m. on Dec. 15. The men had piled sheets under their blankets to make it appear they were sleeping. However, authorities now believe the men had escaped about 9 p.m. on Dec. 14 by squeezing through the openings onto a third-floor rooftop, and then leaping over a 25-foot-high fence topped with razor wire.
Prior to Blunt's capture, Romankow had criticized efforts by Sharpton, who since Sunday has said he was trying to arrange for Blunt's surrender; Romankow said Sharpton failed to keep his office informed.
Sharpton's office said it has been in daily contact with the Union County Police Department.
Sharpton left Mexico City Wednesday after speaking by telephone to Blunt on Tuesday night, spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger said.
Blunt was awaiting trial for robbery and weapons offenses.
In outlining miscues at the jail, Romankow said that Blunt swiped a steel valve wheel from a standpipe in an area that should have been locked, and that the inmates made a lot of noise for about two weeks while using the approximately 10-pound implement to bash the cinderblocks between their cells and on an exterior wall.
A re-enactment created "extremely loud" noise, but it remained unclear if other noise - perhaps from passing trains - obscured the sounds, he said.
A thick wire that authorities believe was used to scrape mortar around the blocks appears to have been something found by the inmates inside the wall.
Debris from the smashed cinderblocks was flushed in the toilet, Romankow said.
Once outside the jail's perimeter, Romankow said the men went in separate directions.
Espinosa, who sprained his ankle, walked north, hailed a cab at the nearby train station, and stayed in a motel before holing up in the apartment.
Authorities got a tip about Espinosa's whereabouts and he surrendered without incident.
"We believe that other people were assisting him," Romankow said.
Also arrested in the apartment was a 19-year-old woman, Odalys Cortez, whom authorities said formerly lived in Elizabeth but had moved to Pennsylvania while Espinosa was jailed. Cortez was charged with resisting arrest; it was unclear if she would face other charges.
Espinosa now faces a charge of escape that could add three years to a possible 17-year term he faces after pleading guilty to manslaughter in a 2005 drive-by shooting.
Acting jail director Gary Hilton, who was brought on a week after the escape, said Espinosa was to be taken to New Jersey State Prison in Trenton to avoid any reprisal at the Union County Jail.
Meanwhile, new security measures have been instituted since the breakout, the first since the jail opened in 1986, and more will be installed, Hilton said. Head counts, for instance, are now taken with inmates standing, he said.
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Associated Press writers Shawn Marsh in Trenton and Janet
Frankston Lorin in Newark contributed to this report.
