By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and JOSHUA GOODMAN
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico has despatched 29 drug cartel figures, together with drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to america because the Trump administration turns up the stress on drug trafficking organizations.
The unprecedented present of safety cooperation comes as high Mexican officers are in Washington making an attempt to go off the Trump administration’s menace of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports beginning Tuesday.
These despatched to the U.S. Thursday had been introduced from prisons throughout Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico Metropolis that took them to eight U.S. cities, based on the Mexican authorities.
Amongst them had been members of 5 of the six Mexican organized crime teams designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
In addition to Caro Quintero had been cartel leaders, safety chiefs from each factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a person needed in reference to the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.
FILE – Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the purported chief of the Juarez cartel, is led to a helicopter after his arrest on the hangar of the Mexican Lawyer Generals Workplace in Mexico Metropolis, Oct. 9, 2014. (AP Photograph, File)
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former chief of the Juarez drug cartel, primarily based within the border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez, throughout from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, often known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in a botched cosmetic surgery in 1997, was amongst these turned over to the U.S.
In line with prosecutors in each international locations, the prisoners despatched to the U.S. Thursday confronted prices associated to drug trafficking and in some circumstances murder amongst different crimes.
“We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels,” U.S. Lawyer Common Pamela Bondi stated in an announcement.
The removing of the drug cartel figures coincided with a go to to Washington by Mexico’s Overseas Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente and different high financial and navy officers, who met with their counterparts, together with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In alternate for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, unlawful immigration and fentanyl manufacturing, regardless of vital dips in migration and overdoses over the previous yr.
“This is historical, this has really never happened in the history of Mexico,” stated Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of worldwide operations. “This is a huge celebratory thing for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
Mexico’s shock handover of one of many FBI’s Ten Most Needed Fugitives was weeks within the making.
Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in jail when a courtroom overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal homicide marked a low level in U.S.-Mexico relations.
Caro Quintero, the previous chief of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles within the northern Mexico border state of Sonora till he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.
In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena household despatched a letter to the White Home urging the Trump administration to resume longstanding U.S. requests for Mexico to extradite Caro Quintero, based on a duplicate of the letter supplied to The Related Press by an individual conversant in the household’s outreach.
“His return to the U.S. would give the family much needed closure and serve the best interests of justice,” the letter states.
Strain elevated after Trump threatened imposing stiff commerce tariffs on Mexico and designated a number of Mexican cartels as overseas terrorist organizations, based on an individual on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate diplomacy that went into Caro Quintero’s removing.
The appearing head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, supplied the White Home with an inventory of almost 30 Mexican targets needed within the U.S. on legal prices, based on the particular person. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest the U.S. had supplied a $20 million reward, was primary on that record, based on the particular person.
“This moment is extremely personal for the men and women of DEA who believe Caro Quintero is responsible for the brutal torture and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena,” Maltz stated Thursday.
The particular person stated President Claudia Sheinbaum’s authorities, in a rush to hunt favor with the Trump administration and present itself a robust ally within the struggle towards the cartels, bypassed the formalities of the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty to take away Caro Quintero and the opposite defendants.
Which means it may doubtlessly permit prosecutors within the U.S. to strive him for Camarena’s homicide — one thing not contemplated within the current extradition request to face separate drug trafficking prices in a Brooklyn federal courtroom.
“If he’s being sent to the U.S. outside of a formal extradition, and if Mexico didn’t place any restrictions, then he can be prosecuted for whatever the U.S. wants,” based on Bonnie Klapper, a former federal narcotics prosecutor in Brooklyn who’s conversant in the case.
The U.S. had sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after his arrest in 2022. However the request remained caught at Mexico’s overseas ministry for unknown causes as Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with DEA to protest undercover U.S. legislation enforcement operations in Mexico concentrating on senior political and navy officers.
Additionally amongst these eliminated had been two leaders of the now defunct Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, often known as Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers have been accused by American authorities of working the successor Northeast Cartel from jail.
FILE – Troopers escort a person who authorities recognized as Omar Trevino Morales, alias “Z-42,” chief of the Zetas drug cartel, as he’s moved from a navy airplane to a navy car on the Lawyer Common’s Workplace hangar in Mexico Metropolis, March 4, 2015. (AP Photograph/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
The removing of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the top of a protracted course of that started after the seize in 2013 of Miguel and two years later of his brother, Omar. Mexico’s Lawyer Common Alejandro Gertz Manero had described the delay as “truly shameful.”
Mexican safety analyst David Saucedo stated that since negotiations with the Trump administration started, he had anticipated the U.S. authorities to demand three issues: a rise in drug seizures, arrests of high-profile drug trafficking suspects and the handing over of drug traffickers lengthy focused by the U.S. for extradition.
He known as Thursday’s removals “an important concession” by Mexico’s authorities to america.
The choice additionally threatens to upend an unwritten understanding — with notable exceptions — that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons the place they had been usually in a position proceed to run their illicit companies, Saucedo stated.
“There will surely be a furious reaction by drug trafficking groups against the Mexican state,” he stated.
Goodman reported from Miami. Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico Metropolis.
Initially Printed: February 27, 2025 at 7:25 PM EST
